Another chapter, shortly snow

Saturday morning I followed through with my plan to reboot my running program.  Cindy and I did a little over 3 miles at the nearby track.  Running on the track can deliver a pretty high dosage of boredom as you circle the same 400 meters again and again but it is also nice to know exactly how far you have gone and how far you have yet to go without a GPS.

I had to derail Cindy from her usual talk heavy tendencies as the run went on.  Since I hadn’t run since New Year’s Day I wasn’t feeling all that great.  When I don’t feel all that great I try to insulate my mind from my body by letting it drift to whatever subject it lands on.  Responding to someone else’s conversation breaks that process.  The good thing is Cindy knows that and if I give her the NTZ (no talk zone) indicator, she is pretty good at just letting me be.

My GPS and Cindy’s had a pretty large disagreement on how far and how fast we ran.  My Garmin said we logged something like 3.29 miles at an 8:33 pace.  Cindy’s said we did something like 3.17 at a 9:00 pace.  I liked my numbers better.  Either way I felt well exerted and as a bonus left the track without a limp.  My right knee felt ok.

When I got back to the house I headed outside to tend to outdoor chores.  Despite the extensive efforts that were put into the protecting the garden during recent cold spells the tomatoes have officially bit the dust.  I ripped out the two dead plants.

I had everything finished up by noon clearing the way for my next automotive project, bypassing the transmission cooler on my Tacoma.

You may wonder why I was bypassing my perfectly good factory trans cooler?  Well recently a guy commented on one of my other Tacoma videos, thanking me for the guidance it gave him on his repair.  He also clued me in to another common failure of Tacomas around the age of mine, trans cooler ruptures.  Evidently the factory transmission  cooler, which is enclosed within the radiator has a history of failing.  If that happens, antifreeze is pumped into the transmission which will kill it shortly thereafter.  Well the last thing I need to is to replace the transmission on my 15 year old truck so I figured installing a $40 trans cooler was a good insurance policy.

I won’t go into vast detail on the trials and tribulations of the replacement (there were many) as they are outlined in the video.  The end result was I got the cooler installed albeit using methods that are less than ideal in my book.  I will be keeping an eye on the front end of the truck to make sure I don’t see any trans fluid puddles going forward.  So far, so good.

On Saturday night we watched Don Jon, a movie about a guy that is majorly addicted to porn.  The movie was entertaining enough but I can’t really tell you much about the plot, I am not sure if there really was much of one. It was a solid Netflix rental but if you are a sexual prude, steer clear. It gets a firm (no pun intended) B.

Sunday morning was utilized mostly to get more maintenance done, both the automotive and landscape variety.  Cindy’s Miata was due for an oil change.  She helped me do the work and actually enjoyed participating.  After that I recharged her AC system as it was not blowing cold air anymore, despite the large chunk of money Cindy spent getting the compressor replaced last year.

Adding coolant to the system got it blowing cold again.  I am hoping whatever is leaking is doing so in small quantity so I can just recharge it every couple of months of instead of throwing more repair money into the Miata which is already firmly in the “throwing good money after bad” category when it comes to repair costs.

After car maintenance was completed we headed to the backyard for landscape work.  The areca palms outer fronds had all turned brown from the cold temps.  I wanted to give them a nice haircut, they were overgrown anyway.  I threw the hedge trimming attachment on my weed whacker and went nuts, leaving piles of decapitated palm fronds in my wake.

Cindy was on clean up duty, picking up the fronds and throwing them in the yard cart I had attached to the tractor, dumping them in the trench in the rear of the yard.  Having her help made the task go MUCH faster than it would have flying solo.

Most of Sunday afternoon was low key.  Sometime mid-afternoon a thought hit me as I glanced at the calendar while doing my bills.  I noticed that next Monday was President’s Day, a day off for me.  I recalled that Cindy said she had off Friday and Saturday as well.  I wondered if somehow I could turn this into a short notice road trip to PA to visit my dad and step mom?

In March I have work and race commitments that would make a trip impossible.  If I wanted to do it in 2014 it would have to be now.  When I mentioned the idea to Cindy she was all for it, she was excited about the prospect of seeing and playing in snow in person, something she never has had a chance to do, ever.  Of course this was all preliminary, I had to get a number of things lined up, first of all checking with Dad if he is ok with a short notice visit.

Dad was surprised by my proposal but happy to hear it.  After verifying with my step mom, since she is the one who winds up doing most work associated with having company, he said he was cool with us coming up.

Next up I floated the idea to Ali. Ideally I would have liked to take both dogs along for the visit, despite the fecal disaster I encountered last year from Nicki.  Ali was not agreeable to my taking Nicki again for fear of a relapse of that very poopy scenario so Sadie will be making the trek solo.  However once we get to my dad’s place she will have my dad’s three dogs to keep her company.  She will have a TON of fun.

Today I got the green light from work to take the time off so the trip is officially a go.

All of a sudden I now I have a massive list of things to get handled before the early Friday morning departure.  I have a lot of mental checklists to mark off.  Of course a lot of those marks are party van related.  Everytime I push off for another road trip in the van it is always a leap of faith to some degree since it is an 18 year old vehicle.  However each time I have called it into action it has gotten me to and from my numerous destinations with only a few small bumps in the road.

This winter in PA has been brutal, cold and long.  The temps at my dad’s place have been non-stop frigid almost every day since Christmas. We will be lucky to see a couple days that get above freezing. It will be quite the eye opener for Cindy since she gets cold when temps dip into the 60’s. Seeing the new sheep and llama additions to my dad and stepmom’s animal menagerie should be fun as well.

I got a call from my accountant yesterday letting me know he was done with my taxes already.  I am hoping the refund I am getting will be enough to cover getting the pool enclosure re-screened, something that is probably a year or two overdue.  There are a number of panels on the top of the cage that are torn along the spline.