Archives 2013

On my home last night I came to a sudden slow down of traffic on Pine Ridge Road.  Cars were stopping and swerving wide around the middle.  When I got closer I saw the source of the slow down, a live, scared and intact (thank goodness) turtle, trying to complete a suicide run across the very busy road.  Without thinking I whipped my Tacoma into the center median and jumped out to grab the turtle.  Luckily the vehicles behind me understood what I was doing and stopped.

Like I said this turtle appeared to be pumped up with adrenalin.  Even after picking him up he never full retracted into his shell.  I took him across the far lane and down by the tree line where he appeared to be heading.  As soon as I sat him down he was on the move.  I stuck around for a few seconds to make sure he was going the right way.

Today is Randall’s 40th birthday, I figured there was only way to properly celebrate it, with a birthday shout out.  I had wanted to do this at home but it had slipped my mind.  I made an impromptu camera rig by leaning my iPhone against the instrument cluster with a box of Tic Tacs behind it to adjust the camera angle.   I then “sung” the birthday shout out behind the wheel. No worries, both hands were solidly on the wheel and eyes forward. 🙂

So you may recall last March I had Rhinoshield repair and repaint my pool deck.  Back in 2008 I had them paint the house with their ceramic coating which has a 20 year warranty.  I have been very pleased with the product and how it covered up and eliminated any further hairline cracks from appearing on the walls of the house.  Based on that happiness I contracted them to do the pool deck, expecting similar results.

Well as documented here, getting the pool deck painted was extremely aggravating because of the person I was dealing with.  Repeatedly he would not follow through on work dates and often not bother to let me know.  The work was completed 2-3 weeks later than it was originally supposed to be.

Part of the job was repairing the various cracks in the pool deck.  When I talked to them about the work they said they couldn’t use the same elastic primer they used on the house which is so good at hiding the cracks. However they said they would repair any existing cracks using other methods.  Well these other methods appeared to be just jamming some thinset mortar over them.  After that they just sprayed some clear “primer” over it and painted the deck using regular paint, not the ceramic coating that is on the walls. When the deck was done it looked nice.

Well within 60 days I started seeing the cracks reappear.  I didn’t contact them right away because I didn’t feel like dealing with the bullshit again to be honest with you.  However several weeks ago I finally got out there with the camera and took several pictures of the cracks that have already returned. I sent the images to the guy that did the actual work asking for information about how I get Rhinoshield to come back out and fix them once again.  I got no reply, what a surprise.

I then contacted the main office which is up in Jacksonville.  It took a couple days but I eventually got in contact with the owner, who is the father of the guy I dealt with when getting the house painted.  I explained to him my situation, including the problems I had getting Giovanni to do the work in the first place.  The owner understood my issue but said the 2 year warranty I have on the work is just the paint itself not the concrete work.

I did my best to hit him from different angles, pointing out how Giovanni indicated the concrete repair he did should last and how I felt he misrepresented the expectations I should have regarding the repairs.  I reiterated how I went with Rhinoshield for the deck because I had them do the house first, hoping maybe some customer loyalty might get me somewhere.

The owner said that actually they are getting out of the pool deck painting business because of these types of issues.  So my hopes of getting a free crack repair went down the drain.  Needless to say my opinion of Rhinoshield has been knocked down quite a few pegs.

Whenever I get around to pressure washing the pool area again perhaps I will try my hand at crack repair, I can’t do any worse than they did.

Last night I spent pretty much my entire evening doing running club/race related activities.  Create this race, update that one, put in paper entries, update the website, add this event, send out e-newsletters, put stuff on social media, somehow it all rolled into a several hours of futzing around.

I had my dentist appointment this morning.  As has been the case for the vast majority of my visits since moving to Florida, no cavities mom!

My Saturday morning was a bright and early one as I was doing my once a year timing of a cross country meet.  Timing a cross country meet is a different beast from what I normally do on a race day.  There are 4 races total in the meet, held one after the other.  It’s a fast paced day.

I like that I get to set up in the middle of the football stadium for this race.  I don’t like how my sneakers become stuffed with the little black rubber balls that cover the NexTurf playing surface.  Timing the event, despite it’s additional complexities went well.  The only problem I had was we didn’t get back about a dozen of the timing chips, despite written warnings ahead of time that we HAD to get them all back.

I got an unexpected treat while I was there, I got to fly a DJI Phantom, the high end quadcopter I eventually hope to get.  One of the coaches had his there to shoot some aerial video of the event.  I told him I had the smaller quads.  He immediately told me I should give his a try.

Wow, what a difference compared to the very twitchy, always on the stick flying experience my Blade MQX offers.  The Phantom was so stable.  If you took your hands off the controls it would keep itself nearly stationary in the air.  I asked Chris if he took the recommended path, buying a smaller quad first?  Nope, he went right to the Phantom and really hasn’t had any issue because it is so smooth.  This test flight just happens to coincide with my being made aware that the Phantoms have recently had $200 cut off their price tag, sweet.

Despite the smooth event I still was out there all morning, not getting off site until a little after 11:30 am.  By the time I got back home it was well after noon.

I had a lot to do Saturday afternoon since Cindy and I were supposed to go to a 7:20 movie that night.  After doing the post race processing I wanted to get the property weeded and mowed.  I also had promised Cindy I was going to make her a belated birthday cake, the magical chocolate variety that I was only partially successful at creating once before.  It was a lot to get done in a limited time window.

By the time I got the outdoor work done it was after 4PM.  Despite feeling very sleepy from my 4:30 alarm I had no time for drowsiness, there was cake to be made.

Cindy has made the chocolate cake a number of times but ran into several roadblocks.  She kept trying to tweak the recipe, making it “healthier” by substituting in some healthier options like Truvia for sugar, coconut flour for regular flour and a few other changes.  Her efforts were good but never quite hit the mark as the original that uses good old fashioned 100 year old ingredients.

I learned a few things from my first attempt at the cake like using the hand mixer instead of the platform mixer to make sure I wasn’t leaving a layer of unblended ingredients at the bottom.  Having the butter at the right softness level helps a lot too for the icing, if it is too hard or too melted the icing will suffer.  Of course I also made sure to not put the cake pan on top of a hot burner afterwards this time around.

I was very pleased with the end result, it was quite a good facsimile of the cake I have enjoyed for decades courtesy of both my mom and Ali.  Cindy agreed that my end product was outstanding.  I guess certain recipes are best left alone.  If I want to eat healthier I’ll chew on some celery, you can’t f with the cake. 🙂

Saturday night we went to see Escape Plan that featured two of my favorite action stars of all time, Stallone and Arnold.  Despite both of these guys being of social security receiving age they actually still managed to pull off an entertaining and enjoyable action movie.  Sure neither of them exposed anything beyond their forearms for the film but it really didn’t matter.  It was a good time. A- believe it or not.

On Saturday I suggested a different running plan to Cindy compared to out circles around the track the week before.  I said we could try to run 10 miles but do it starting at the waterpark, doing the Oakes loop 10K first and getting the last 4 miles inside the park courtesy of 2 laps.  However if I was going to attempt a double digit mileage run, the first since the half marathon in March, I said I had to start early, as in before the sun comes up early.  During last weeks track run the sun beating down on me really destroyed my motivation to continue on.  Plus, the forecast for Sunday was summer-like with lows only in the mid-70’s with high humidity.  Cindy agreed that starting early was a necessary evil.

So as we approached the entrance to the park around 6:30 Sunday morning I noticed there was a lot more traffic than normal for that time of day.  As I turned in and saw the park lights lit up and cones in the road it hit me, there is a 10 mile race going on that day that I totally forgot about, doh.  Oh well I wasn’t going to change the plan based on that.  The race didn’t officially start until 7 am.  We hit the pavement around 6:40.

Running in the early morning hours definitely brought me some relief compared to the week before.  However even without the sun hitting me the thick humidity had me dripping with seat in short order.  I was tired by the end of the 10K loop but not wrecked.

As we ran back to the truck to grab a quick Gu and water break we crossed the official race route.  We got a few strange looks from people that wondered if we were part of the race or not.  We headed back out and did the first lap clockwise, opposite the direction the runners were going. We didn’t run the exact race course but spent a good amount of time running head on into the stream of race participants which was kind of a pain.  At the end of lap 1 we spun around and ran with the flow.

Running amongst the racers actually was beneficial, it helped me keep my mind off the physical discomfort.  I always have found that running in a large group helps reduce the misery somewhat.   Cindy I finished the 10 miles pretty strongly although the overall pace was not fast, in the high 9’s.  Still just completing that distance was an accomplishment for me and the last mental hurdle in being officially prepared for the Tough Mudder in a couple weeks.

Wow that Eagles came didn’t quite go as planned.  Yes I expected them to lose but I expected it to be a high scoring game with the Cowboys running rough shod over the Eagles nearly last ranked in the NFL defense.  Instead the game for the most part was a defensive struggle.  The Eagles D played well, probably the best they played all year.  The offense was horrid.  Nick Foles fresh off his great game in Tampa looked totally lost yesterday.  He was just making a lot of poor throws, missing open receivers in crucial situations.  The receivers did their fair share of pouring gas on the fire, dropping several easy balls.

The game extended a pretty embarrassing streak, the Eagles have not won a home football game in more than a YEAR, a YEAR.  That is sad.

After the game I went outside with Cindy with my two mini-quad copters.  She had indicated she was interested in trying them out.  At first I gave her the controls for the Blade but power and twitchyness of it was a bit much.  After she “landed” it on top of a cabbage palm, requiring my extension ladder to retrieve, I gave her the controls of the X1 which is less aggressive.

For the most part Cindy did well considering it was her first time ever flying a RC quadcopter.  Other than a small incident where we had to retrieve the copter from the far side of the neighbors, she did fine.  I did my first considerable damage (required part) to the Blade when I came in hard at an angle, striking one of propellers and bending it.  Luckily the copter comes with 1 full set of replacement blades.

I reattached the winglet to my Tuffwing last night however I also determined I need to get a new radio/receiver for it.  The AM 3 channel receiver I am reusing from the Speedwing is glitching when power is applied.  All of a sudden the prop will start spinning or the servos will fire off without input.  Neither situation is acceptable.

Sunday night we watched my latest Netflix dvd, 7 Psychopaths.  It was an “interesting” film that mixed in some gore with various oddities.  It was half decent but nothing that made me stand up and take notice.  It gets a solid rental B rating.

Last night I took Cindy out for dinner for her birthday to Seasons 52, one of my new favorite restaurants.  Not only is it a beautiful place, they serve healthy, seasonal meals.  Supposedly nothing on the menu is over 500 calories.   We actually ordered the same meal, some grilled shrimp thing that was quite good.  I washed it down with two Miller Lites. 

When Cindy was in the bathroom I mentioned to the waitress that it was her birthday and asked if Seasons 52 does anything for birthdays.  The waitress said YES, but she couldn’t tell me what it was.  Haha, ok, fine.

So the waitress comes back with the mini-desert tray along with a cup with what looked like brown sugar and a candle in it. She told Cindy to make a wish and blow it out.  Cindy then was allowed to pick out her own desert which was free and I grabbed one as well.  Then the waitress comes back over and takes a picture of us with a camera and a few minutes later comes back with a 4″ x 6″ print already mounted in a Seasons 52 fold out frame.  Wow, I’m glad I asked.

Cindy had a great time which was my goal.

So I have done the Tough Mudder for the last 2 years and am once again signed up to do it in less than a month. However I have to tell you, this might be my last time, for several reasons.

When I did my first Tough Mudder, mud racing was still sort of a new thing and the Tough Mudder was seen as the king of them all, being the longest and most grueling of them.  It did not take long for others to try to cash in on the mud racing craze.  The event popularity sky rocketed with thousands of people showing up, all shelling out huge entry fees to get muddy, frozen and shocked.  Today, doing the Tough Mudder doesn’t have quite the badge of honor as it once did.  It’s become a “me too” event with a bandwagon that is quite large.  I never feel great about being part of that crowd.

I also have an issue with the way the race misrepresents it’s commitment to the Wounded Warrior Project, a great charity that benefits wounded members of the military.  To the casual web site visitor, you would assume a portion, a large portion, of the race proceeds goes directly to this noble charity.  The reality is not one dollar of the HUGE $100 plus registration fee goes to the charity.  The only money that goes to the charity is that which is raised by the participants outside of their race fee.  The race itself is totally a for profit enterprise and that profit is MASSIVE.   I think it is pretty shitty to prey upon the sympathy of participants that assume part of the reason they should pay the sky high race fees is because it is going to a good cause.

Finally there is the email I received yesterday from the race.  The email said you had three options for parking this year, all of which will cost you money.   They have always had a flat 10 dollar fee for parking which I found to be annoying considering what they charge you to do the race.  On top of that, the money you spent on parking certainly wasn’t used to plan for an efficient traffic control/parking system.  Last year there were participants that sat in 5 hours of gridlock, trying to get into the event.  It was utter chaos.

So this year to make amends for the horrible parking situation in the past they are now offering you, more EXPENSIVE parking options!  If you pay $25 you get PREMIUM parking which supposedly is less than 1/4 mile from the main area.  If you drop a 20 dollar bill you get select parking which is about a third of a mile away.  If you are a tightwad and only pay the $10 they have charged in the past you are rewarded with at least a 1 mile walk to the event after you park your vehicle.

To me it is utter bullshit to charge NFL stadium parking rates to attend a mud race you already spent triple digits on the entry fee.  Despite the huge steaming pile of annoyance I opted to get the premium parking because I don’t want to have to do a 5K if I need to run back out to the vehicle before the race starts.  Greedy bastards.

Plus there is the injury factor.  Who can forgot the horrible swelling in my right knee after running last year’s extremely treacherous course?

Anyway the combo of things listed above might be enough to make this year the last that I participate in the Tough Mudder.  Let them make their tens of millions on the backs of others in the future.  I proved my point already.

This weekend I am timing the same cross country meet I have done the last 3 years.  Timing a CC meet is a lot different than a 5K.  It also takes a lot longer since it is actually 4 different events.  I probably won’t get off site until lunch time.

So I have to wedge in other weekend work into that condensed time frame which is going to include mowing the front yard and other fun stuff.  I also am planning to make my chocolate cake as a belated birthday treat for Cindy on Saturday afternoon.  I am hoping to avoid a repeat of this situation.

When I got home last night I got busy.  First I jumped on the tractor and finished mowing the back half of the back half of the yard, giving it a much more uniform cut than the first time.  I am hoping it is the last time I have to do it in quite awhile as the wet season weather pattern seems to officially be behind us.  Cutting the grass that late in the day is actually a good thing.  The grass is completely dry so all the clippings that pile up on top of the mower deck could be blown away with some brief work with my leaf blower.

While I was out front I pulled out the WD-40 and sprayed a couple points on the Tacoma driveshaft.  You see ever since I bought the truck back in 2000 it had an off and on problem with a horrible sounding metallic squeal that I determined was the driveshaft after much investigation.  During that investigation I found out that my truck was in a pretty serious accident while being driven by the prior owners 16 year old son.  That accident I assumed caused the driveshaft problem and is also the cause of the ugly section of the exterior of the truck where it was repainted poorly.

Well the noise was quite annoying, annoying enough that I eventually bought a used driveshaft to silence the squeal years and years ago.  It worked, for awhile.  In the past couple years the noise has been gradually coming out of retirement, occurring more and more frequently.  Since it is a different driveshaft making the same noise I can only assume it is because something in the factory geometry of the drive train was altered in that accident which over time causes the driveshaft problems.

Now I am certainly not going to put another driveshaft on the truck.  I am however thinking about jacking up the back end, putting it in DRIVE and seeing if I can pinpoint exactly where on the shaft the noise is coming from.  If I can, I’ll see if I can take that area apart and lube the shit out of it.

So since I had a freshly mowed and completely dry flying field behind the house I figured it was a good time to take the Tuffwing out for it’s initial flight.   I eyeballed the ailerons to make sure they looked like they were even and at a small angle upwards so the wing would go up instead of down after launch.

My Speedwing had a small wooden frame/handle on the bottom which I would use to launch it.  The Tuffwing does not have this.  Instead the recommended launch technique is grabbing a wing and sort of flinging it Frisbee style.  I was a bit nervous about launching it in this manner.

I shelved my launch anxiety, powered up my transmitter and plugged the battery for the plane in.  After hearing the series of beeps that indicates you are ready to go, I held the right wing, applied enough throttle where I could feel the plane pulling strongly and gave it a little flick.  Within a half second the plane had barrel rolled left and was upside down.  A split second later it was nose first into the ground where it bounced high off the ground like a super ball.  I killed throttle before it came back down.

The good thing about EPP foam planes is they designed to crash, hard.  Besides some grass stuck to tape I didn’t see any noticeable damage although the prop adapter was a bit loose.  My non-expert flight crash analysis seemed to indicate the plane was trimmed too far left which caused the immediate roll.  I used the trim adapter on the transmitter to compensate right a little bit, hoping it would prevent a repeat impact.

So once again I found myself at launch time.  Again I throttled up, tossed the plane and before I could get both hands on the radio it again had barrel rolled and found it’s way into terra firma, this time impacting in such a way that sent the plane into a cartwheel knocking off one of the glued on wing tips, great.

Well I was annoyed.  I mean the plane was not even close to being stable or gaining altitude.  I will need to repair the wing tip and do some more tweaking of it’s set up.   I am hoping I will be able to get this thing in the air before I push the impact resistance of the EPP foam to it’s breaking point.

The majority of the rest of the night was spent attending to running club and race timing issues.  I did manage to find about 45 minutes to play a little Hearthstone.

Hey the government is open for business today again!  The republicans finally conceded that their ill advised hostage taking of the federal government was doing their cause more harm than good in the big picture.  I am glad the doors are open once again.  Do I wish that the federal government wasn’t 17 TRILLION dollars in debt? Of course.  Do I think I will ever see that debt eliminated in my lifetime? Not a chance.

The bottom line is massive federal debt is a deliberate act, masterminded by those deviously brilliant crooks at the Federal Reserve.  They want the government to owe money, lots of it, it’s good for (their) business.   Short of nuking the planet, I really don’t see any scenario where the corrupt system that is in place can be rebooted.

Today is Cindy’s birthday, wish her a happy one if you see her.

The theme for last night was late.  Good thing I grabbed a large coffee on my way to running club board meeting which I arrived for a few minutes late.  By the time the main meeting and follow up meeting was done it was almost 8:30PM.  Of course no board meeting would be complete without a trip to South Street afterwards.

I drank two high octane pumpkin beers back to back before throttling back by eating a small pizza while sipping a third.  The 2 beers on a thoroughly empty stomach hit me fast and hard.

I didn’t leave the premises until after 11 and my head didn’t hit the pillow until slightly after midnight, yawn….

No words of wisdom today, sorry.

Woot off today.

Yesterday Jeremy sent me this link, a page that visually represented the typical amount of groceries a family consumes in a week in various countries.  It was pretty fascinating comparing the diets around the world.  As you may expect, the American family food collection was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of junk/processed food with barely any fresh fruits or vegetables. I did find it fascinating that the typical Mexican family consumes 15 two liter bottles of Coke a week. 🙂

When I got home last night Cindy, whom was off yesterday was out washing her Miata.  She also had washed the SSR for good measure.  Earlier in the day she removed a to do item from my list by applying water seal to the bar park.  Cindy loves to keep busy.  Lucky for her I have a long list of things to fulfill that need. 😉

I went out back and hopped on the tractor.  First I headed out front and completely mowed down the trenches that were now finally dried out.  I then headed to the rear of the property and re-mowed about half of the area with the deck set at the normal level.  I was able to to do this at nearly top speed since the first pass was just done on Saturday.  I plan to knock down the remaining section sometime soon.

On the way home from work I had to stop at Walgreens for something.  I inadvertently found myself in the Halloween aisle.  My eye was immediately drawn to the plastic pumpkin designed to look like Spiderman.  To make things even better it has a small orange light in the back of it, making glow eerily at night.

To make my Spidey-pumpkin visible to the general public I utilized my beat up blue ottoman that Nicki has spurned and an axillary box to get it high enough to be clearly visible in the window.  I automated the coolness by hooking the pumpkin up to a spare timer so it will go off an on without human intervention.

Once it was dark outside I walked out the driveway to see how the Spidey-pumpkin looked. Awesomeness was confirmed.

Hey the government is still closed, awesome.

So Saturday morning I suggested to Cindy that instead of getting up hella early to drive all the way into the club run that we instead run laps at the nearby middle school track.  I used to run this track quite a bit but I haven’t been there since my epic 10 mile Tough Mudder training run last year.  The temps had actually dipped into the high 60’s for the first time in 6 months Saturday morning so I figured getting a little later start would be fine.

The optimal goal was to do 10 miles, splitting it into four 2.5 mile segments for water breaks.  We started off and it didn’t take long for me to start feeling warm and bothered.  Despite the relatively lower air temps, the sun was unobstructed in the clear blue sky and felt like it was melting me.  By the time we got to the 5 mile water break I felt gassed and was debating pulling the plug right there.  I reset my goal to complete one more 2.5 mile segment.

During this segment I felt miserable, I was hot, tired and not in the state of mind I needed to be.  I failed to even complete my revised goal and bailed after exactly 7 miles on my GPS.  Cindy ran 7.5 miles and then for good measure wanted to see how fast she could run a single 400 meter lap.  The answer was, pretty damn fast.  She circled the track in about 1:37 which works out to be just above a 6 minute mile pace.  It was very impressive.

As I was leaning on a recycle bin sucking wind next to one of the light towers I felt something hit my head.   I instinctively reached up with my hand and came back with something black and wet.  I look up and see a starling about 75 feet up on top of the tower.  The damn thing shit on my head.  It was quite the shot from so far up.

So I felt like a failure for missing even my downward shifted goal.  Cindy on the other hand could have kept going I am sure, all the way to 10 miles if I had the energy to do so.  It’s good that she pushes me but frustrating when I don’t answer the bell like I should.

When we got home we were in the driveway and Cindy made a comment about a wasp dive bombing her as she walked by.  For several weeks I have allowed a wasp nest to be built under the left cut out of the garage entrance.  In my sometimes neurotic compassion for animals, I have not knocked it down because of the effort the wasps have put into constructing the nest.  I have walked by it many times without incident so I figured I would just continue to let it go.

So to demonstrate to Cindy that the wasp nest was harmless I walked towards it and stopped less than 6 feet away from it.  I said “Aw, good wasps, good wasps…” in a voice I usually reserve for my conversations with my pets.  Almost the instant I finished speaking, a wasp launched itself from the nest and rocketed at my face, stinging me less than an inch from my right eye.  I stumbled back in disbelief as I flailed at the air.  I could not believe the mf’ing wasp stung me.  Where was a camera when you needed it?

After confirming I was ok, aside from a burning sensation by my eye, Cindy and I lol’d at the irony.  Still, I have not knocked down the nest, but if I get attacked again my benevolence will have reached it’s end.  When I woke up Sunday morning it looked like I was smacked in the right eye, it was all swollen.

On the way to the movies I had one more interaction with nature, this time saving a turtle that was just about to make a very unwise trip into three lanes of traffic.  I spun the SSR around at the first intersection I could and headed back.  I scooped the turtle up, carrying him down to the canal I assume he was trying to reach.  I see so many roadkill turtles.  It angers the hell out of me that people are too lazy, stupid or oblivious to avoid them.  It isn’t like a rabbit or a deer that dashes in the road in front of you, it’s a TURTLE.  Idiots.

The movie we saw was Captain Phillips, the Tom Hanks movie about the 2009 incident where Somali pirates hijacked an American freighter.  As expected Tom delivers a stellar acting performance but that is the norm.  I thought the movie was very well done.  It made me think about the reality of living in a destitute place like Somalia.  Imagine living conditions so awful and options that are so limited that being a pirate was one of only a few choices you have to put food on the table.  People are a product of their environment.  If all you have know your entire life is misery, that becomes your norm. Anyway, good movie, I’d give it an A-.

Over the weekend I put out my limited amount of Halloween decorations.  My favorite item is the blow up pumpkin with the silly looking grin.

The back part of the yard finally got mowed.  It had attained true jungle status from weeks of being untouchable due to the never ending rain.  We finally had nearly a completely dry week allowing water to seep back into the ground.  Even with going slow and the mowing deck at max height the tractor couldn’t come anywhere close to doing a clean cut.  The grass looks like my head would if someone would cut my hair with a butter knife. If time allows this week I may zip back out there on the tractor to do a secondary speed mow.

On Sunday morning I did my second endurance training session of the weekend, doing the 20 mile DD ride.  It’s funny, I have pretty much switched back to riding my dirt cheap, heavy,  Dawes road bike instead of my Trek 2.1.  The aero bars and general body position I use on the Dawes is just a lot more comfortable for longer rides than the extremely low handlebars on the Trek which cause me to put so much weight on my hands.

Sometime in the future I may see if I can simply get a different stem for the Trek but for now it is all Dawes, all the time.

I picked up the girls late morning to spend the day out at the house.  I have stopped giving Nicki “elevator rides” and picking her up for lift assist unless she clearly wants it.  3 times she has peed when I picked her up, acting like she is afraid something bad was going to happen.  She managed to get into the van herself on Sunday but it wasn’t easy.

The Eagles game went surprisingly well.  Both the offense and even the defense (at times) played well which I was glad to see.  Of course I temper my praise with the knowledge that they were playing the 0-4 Buccaneers.  But hey, a win is a win.

There was one moment late in the game that the announcers totally glossed over.  To me it was a totally incredulous (and stupid) decision by Chip Kelly.  The Eagles were ahead by 8 points with three minutes to go and were facing a 4th an inches inside the Bucs 20 yard line, an easy chip shot field goal.  I was in disbelief when I saw he sent the offense back on the field to go for it.

Why the fck would you do that? A field goal makes it a two score game, virtually sealing the win for the Birds.  The Eagles snapped the ball, Foles dropped back to pass and was sacked for a loss.  LUCKILY, the defense was off sides, giving the Eagles a first down.  Now the announcers and the media in general did not identify what a potentially dumb call this was.  Yes, drawing them off sides is a viable strategy in that situation but if that is your intention, you DONT SNAP THE BALL.  You hard count them and if they don’t fall for it you call a time out.  I don’t understand why everyone is ignoring how risky and foolish that decision was.

But hey the Eagles are 3-3 in the horrible NFC East, things could be worse.

Sunday evening I took advantage of the mowed and dried out backyard, taking my Blade MQX out there for some open air flying.    My hope was that the lack of obstacles would allow me to work out some of the issues I am having flying the quad copter.  The good news is the grass makes as a great cushion for crash landings. The bad news is I still am unable to do simple, controlled circles with it.     It is so easy to get disoriented.  I will continue practicing outdoors although that comes with it’s on set of hazards.  Several times a gust of wind sent the Blade soaring in directions I did not anticipate.

Sunday night we finished up watching Avatar in 3D.  It looked so damn sweet on the new tv.  Too bad I was so damn sleepy that I was nodding off and on throughout.

I call nights like last night character builders.  The task for the evening was to replace the front brake pads on Cindy’s Miata.  I had done my normal video tutorial before going into the job, I didn’t expect any major speed bumps.  The job started at 5:45pm. It ended at 11:05 PM. There were bumps.

When I went to take the wheels off with my newly acquired spline lug nut adapter I had my first minor issue.  It looked like someone else that did not have an adapter tried to remove a lug nut via brute force, it was all mangled.    I got around this by using my hammer to drive the lug adapter on the nut.  Luckily it wasn’t on all that tight and I could break it loose.

Once I had access to the brakes on the driver side I removed the lower caliper bolt which is supposed to allow it to flip upward, giving access to the  brake pads. Well it didn’t want to move.  It felt like the top caliper bolt was very tight and not allowing the caliper body to move.  I pulled out the Miata Haynes repair manual to double check what I recalled from the video, yep it should just flip up.  Well this one wasn’t.

So I figured the easiest way to address this was to loosen that top 17mm bolt.  Well that was easier said than done, it was almost welded in place.  I beat on it with a wrench and mini-sledge for a looong time until it started to move.  I was worried I would snap the head on it, it turned so hard.  Eventually I got it a few turns looser which allowed the caliber body to flip up.

The old pads, which looked thin to me when I peered at them with the wheel still on were actually not that badly worn, there was still a good amount of pad material left.  Well of course I was going to replace them anyway.  The actual act of replacing brake pads is pretty damn simple.  You just pop the old ones out and pop the new ones in, assuming the retaining clips stay in place.  I put the new pads in.

The old pads did not have the anti-rattle springs that I used with other brake work.  They are used to keep the pads off the discs when the brake pedal is not applied.  I wondered why they were missing but based on other shortcuts that have been done on the car, I wasn’t all that surprised.

I put the caliper back in place and spun the brake disc.  It seemed to be making more contact with the pads than it should be but I wasn’t sure if this was just because I didn’t seat them yet.  I put the wheel back on and went to passenger side.

As soon as I worked on the caliper on that side I knew something was up on the driver side.  When I removed the lower caliper bolt on the passenger side front brake the assembly lifted up easily with no resistance from the top bolt which “floated” back and forth.  There was no float in the driver side bolt.  I knew I was going to have to revisit it again. Replacing the pads on the passenger side was a piece of cake.

So I hopped back over to the driver side and removed the wheel once again.  I found that by turning the top bolt out a few more turns I had more clearance for the new pads but I still could not get any float from the top caliper bolt.  I buttoned the driver side back up and took the car out for a test drive.

When you first put pads in you are supposed to “seat” them.   The way you do this is via several hard decelerations.  I got the Miata up to about 60 and then hit the brakes hard.  After I did this the second time I heard the unwelcome sound of metal on metal.  I turned around and babied the Miata back into the garage.

By this time the sun had set and an army of flying insects had invaded the garage, drawn to the bright overhead light.  It made for a nice annoying distraction if I didn’t have enough annoying me already.  The noise was clearly coming from the driver side so I pulled that wheel.  I felt like punching myself in the face when I pulled the inner pad. It was in backwards, with the pad metallic backing plate against the brake disc.  What an idiot.

Luckily the disc itself felt ok, despite my boneheadedness. Now I could have flipped the pad around and tried to use it again but I didn’t feel good about doing that to Cindy’s car.  It also appeared that I lost one of the pad retaining clips (which I later found) so I figured I need to buy a brake hardware kit and a new set of pads.  I hopped on the Autozone site first seeing if they had these kits.  They did but not in stock.  I checked the Advance Auto web site, I found the part at exactly one of their stores.  I called to verify they had it in stock and in hand, I didn’t want to do a 30 mile round trip for nothing.  The clerk said he definitely had it.

By this time it was 8PM.  I asked him how long they are open? “Till 9…” Ok I will be there.

Besides being frustrated I was starving by this time.  I figured in transit to the auto parts store I would swing through McD’s for a fish sandwich.

Well I was unaware that 8:20PM was prime time for the McDonalds crowd.  The drive thru line was 5 cars deep.  I figured I may as well just park and grab something to go. As usual, the McDonalds crowd didn’t disappoint in interesting visuals.  The most interesting to me was the woman in  front of me.  She was probably 5′ 5″  and if I were to guess 300 plus pounds.

She had a few musical notes tattooed behind her right ear.  I wondered to myself what was “music to her ears”, perhaps the sound of opening a Big Mac wrapper? I was sad to see this women had two young daughters, both well on their way to continuing the proud American childhood obesity epidemic thanks to mom’s thoughtless guidance.

Mom was actually getting quite annoyed, her food order was not coming out as fast as she wanted.  In fact my order was handed to me before hers which really made her mad.  As I shuffled out of there I heard her chastising an employee behind the counter, wanting to know “What is going on???” Poor woman….

So the McD’s experience at least was a nice distraction from the Miata brake job headache I was in the middle of.  By the time I got home with the brake hardware kit and new pads it was now after 9pm, sheesh.

So my focus was now getting that top caliper bolt completely out on the driver side.  I needed to see what was going on.  Getting the bolt out was ridiculously difficult.  Despite having it turned all the way out on the threads, the smooth part of the bolt was hanging up.  I only got it out after a long grueling battle using a needle nose pliers to apply outward force while continuing to turn it with a socket.

Once I finally got the bolt out I saw why it was such a bastard.  It was bone dry and rusted, two things you don’t want for a caliper bolt.  I used a bunch of caliper grease on the bolt and made love to the bolt hole,  working the bolt back and forth to lubricate the fitting. By the time I was done the bolt once again was able to slide back and forth in the caliper housing as it was designed to do.

I put the driver side back together and then had to redo the passenger side once again, despite it not having a problem.  I didn’t want to have a different type of pads on one side.  I got everything back together and did a final test drive.  This time the brakes grabbed well with no metallic sound aftertaste, finally.  By the time I pulled back into the bug filled garage it was just after 11PM. Whew.

Now I should have gone straight to bed. However for some reason I had a second wind, instead of taking a shower and collapsing on my pillow I instead found myself in front of my computer processing the video from the brake work, which is pretty funny if I do say so myself.  By the time I actually went to bed it was 1AM, craziness.

This weekend has a loose framework, just as I like it.

So on Tuesday night I had managed to get fire ants on my sneakers in the few seconds it took to grab the trash bins.  It took them awhile to make their way to my shins, I didn’t feel the bites until I was inside.  I looked down and saw a number of them crawling on my sneakers.  I quickly go out in the garage, rip off my sneakers, and start beating them together furiously, swearing loudly with each impact for emphasis.

Well about 15 minutes after that I noticed my right ring finger looking swollen.  It wasn’t painful but the swelling  made the finger stiff.  I dismissed at as odd and carried on.

Well yesterday I looked down at my finger and realized it was now discolored, a reddish pink that stood out like a sore thumb.  It still didn’t hurt and only felt slightly swollen.

I posted the pic to FB and got all sorts of opinions, mostly bad.  This also just happens to be the finger that I cut badly last week.  If it was an infection I would have other symptoms and the discoloration would spread beyond the finger.  It still is just confined to that digit.  My noneducated  guess is when I was banging the sneakers I managed to sprain/damage something in that finger which is causing the discoloration. Of course I will keep an eye on things but if nothing changes I will just expect it to fade away.

So I had Cindy’s Miata at the house because of the iffy brakes.  Last night I planned to pull a wheel to take a closer look at the brake pads.  I pulled down my floor jack and quad lug wrench to the car to accomplish the task.  There was one problem, my lug wrench didn’t fit.   The custom wheels on the Miata had very minimal clearance around the lug nuts but that wasn’t the biggest problem.  Upon closer inspection I saw the lugs were the splined variety, requiring a special adapter to remove.

Ok no problem, surely the prior owners included the adapter with the car.  I looked in the console, the glovebox and the trunk, three times, looking for anything looking like an adapter.  Nothing was found.  Fck…  I texted Cindy and asked her is she recalled ever seeing anything like a lug adapter in the Miata, nope…..

Great. So I decided I would head to AutoZone to see if they sold the adapters for this style of lug nut.  I took the Miata there so I would have a visual reference handy.  There was good news and there was bad news.   They did indeed have the adapter I needed to remove the lugs. Unfortunately the only way I was able to get my hands on it was to buy a complete new set of splined lug nuts. Argh.

I had done a visual inspection of the brake pads, the best I could, at home with the wheel still on.  The back pads looked good but the front pads appeared to be thin.  I picked up a pair of front pads along with some Brake Klean for the job.  I returned home confident I had the stuff I needed to complete the job, hopefully tonight after work.

When I got home and opened the garage I immediately was hit with stench, the same stench I had smelled for a few days.  I assumed there was something in the trash that was stinking although I had no idea what that would have been.  Well as my nose was getting stuffed with the foul odor I just happened to look down at the corner where the garage door is seated.  There I saw a flat toad that was in the process of being taken apart by fire ants.

I recognized this toad, it was the same one I scared out of the garage several days ago.  He was a rather large toad probably the size of a racquetball. Evidently he ignored my verbal warning I gave him as I shoo’d him away and returned.  The idea of him getting inadvertently squashed by the garage door made me sad and guilty.  However I had to get his carcass and the associated smell out of there.

I grabbed my wonder bar to pry the pancaked carcass off the floor.  As I did, maggots started to spill out from the inside, it was f’ing disgusting.  I quickly flipped the poor toad into the middle of the yard like a sand trap chip shot.  I then sprayed the spot on the floor where it was with WD-40 to discourage ants from scouring the area for crumbs.

Unfortunately during my 12 years out at the house I have probably been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of frogs/toads inadvertently.  It’s a sad reality of living on the edge of the Everglades.

So this morning I was running behind schedule thanks to playing a couple games of Hearthstone before getting ready.  I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door and into the Miata.  As I put my stuff in the passenger seat I felt my pant pockets as I normally do, feeling for two things, my phone and my wallet.  Phone, check, wallet, wallet, wallet? I did not have my wallet.  Oh silly me, I must have left it inside.

So I head back inside, say hi again to Tuki and look at the spots where my wallet would reside.  All these spots came up empty.  Hmmm, that is odd.  So I did a quick retrace of when I had my wallet last.  I paid for the stuff at Autozone and then headed home.  Autozone is the last conscious use of my wallet I could recall.  Maybe I left it in the Miata?

So I head back out to the Miata and rip it apart, looking everywhere for my wallet, under, beside the seats, in the console, glovebox and even the trunk even though the only way it would have gotten in there was via magic trick.  No wallet.

So now I am entering freak out mode.  I start thinking about what a monumental pain in the ass it was going to be if I actually lost my wallet.  I went back in the house one more time.  SURELY I just wasnt seeing it.  I look everywhere, even places that made no sense for my wallet like the bathroom, nothing.

Ok my last hope was that it somehow fell out at Autozone in the parking lot.  Perhaps my wallet was still lying there or a good Samaritan turned it in to the store.  I hauled ass the best I could in the Miata, cursing out the school buses that were clogging the traffic along the way.  I pull in the lot and park in the exact same spot as last night, no wallet was there.  I walk inside and ask the manager if a wallet was turned in last night.  He checked the safe.  He had a wallet! It wasn’t mine. DAMN IT!

So I walked back out to the lot despondent, thinking about just how in the world I was going to replace everything that was in my wallet.  I literally have dozens of id’s and cards in there along with cash and credit card receipts.  I was so desperate I even dug through the Autozone trash cans, thinking maybe someone cleaned out the cash but tossed the wallet. Nope, only trash was found. For the THIRD time I reexamined the Miata, thinking perhaps somehow I missed it.  I moved both seats forward and felt around for anything resembling leather, nothing…..

I even opened up my lunch box, wondering if perhaps I shoved it in there for some reason. Nothing but food looked back at me.  I then unzipped my gym bag just because it was the only other thing I hadn’t checked.  There, nestled in my t-shirt was my wallet!  Relief flowed over my body like 6 foot wave.  What was moments before going to be an awfully dreary and frustrating day suddenly transformed into bright blue skies with rainbows everywhere.

I have no idea why I would have dropped my wallet in my gym bag last night.  I am just beyond thankful that I found it before I started the credit card cancellation parade.