Archives November 2014

This morning I was back at the dentist office despite getting a clean bill of health a couple weeks ago.  At that visit the dentist recommended we finally go about replacing the last silver filling in my mouth.  I have had my other numerous childhood silver fillings replaced with composite by my dentist down here.  She is great, she does everything she can to make an unpleasant experience as getting your teeth drilled not bad at all.  She even numbed my gum with a gel before injecting the Novocaine so I didn’t even feel that part.  She even provided me with a headset so I could listen to music instead of the sound of the drill.  Really the only unpleasant thing you have to deal with is the smells of burning tooth and the rubber lip afterward from the numbing solution.  I was in and out of there within a half hour.

It’s such a contrast to how I viewed the dentist when I was younger , I was absolutely terrified of the place.  I had tons of cavities as a kid due to poor brushing habits.  My childhood dentist was not a big fan of pain management.  In fact many times he would suggest I don’t need any novocaine because the cavity was “small”.  Of course the few times I took his suggestion it felt like he was drilling a hole straight through to my brain.

I had a constant dentist countdown running in my head at all times.  It was like waiting for your father to get home to give you a spanking for doing something bad.  I had that sort of anxiety about it.  Thankfully my dental visits got progressively better as I got older, once I realized that if I didn’t want the pain, hassle or expense of extensive dental work I needed to change my ways.

I had a very enjoyable mid-week day off yesterday.  The weather was awesome with temps remaining in the 70’s most of the day. Except for a quick trip to grab some coffee I spent the entire day at the house and was totally content doing so.  The chickens were quite glad I was home as it meant they could be free ranging literally all day long.

I attended to a few minor chores including fixing the one screen door, laundry, dishes and a few other odds and ends. But for the most part I just relaxed, watching some of the huge Blizzcon feed collection and geeked out on the computer.

There was a brief period of the day where I was not relaxing.  I headed out to the bar park to get some exercise in. First I made an attempt at a timed Century circuit (40 BW squats, 30 push ups, 20 hanging knee raises, 10 pull ups) for time, something I had not tried to do seriously for around a year.  Considering the overall decline of my fitness level in 2014 I surprised myself by posting a time 15 seconds better than my previous best of 2:47.  It was encouraging.

I then got the idea in my head that I want to try something different in the tire flipping department.  I have two tires in my back yard, one is about 200 pounds and the other is 300.  Flipping the 200 pounder is pretty easy, the 300 pounder is more challenging but still very comfortably inside my wheelhouse.  Well I wanted to try something outside the box.

I got the idea in my head to try to lift both tires together which would add up to a formidable 500 pounds of rubber.  Simply stacking the tires on top of each other wouldn’t be sufficient since the top tire would slide off the bottom once the lift started.  I decided to use my ratcheting straps to lock the tires together temporarily.  My first attempts went nowhere, the weight of the tires pressed the bottom edge into the loose sandy soil, which gave me no grip whatsoever.  I got my post bar and my piece of 1″ schedule 40 pvc pipe that I use for dragon flags.  I pried up the tires just enough to kick the pipe under the edge so I at least had an edge for my fingers.

Even with the grip I still failed multiple times with my best effort getting the tires a few inches up in the air before I dropped it.  500 pounds feels heavy, imagine that.  Having two tires on top of each other made the act of tire flipping more difficult.  As you can see from the picture I had a wall of rubber to deal with. The height of the tires meant I could not get by upper body up and over the top edge of the tire to get into a better leverage position.  I was getting quite frustrated.

Finally after I don’t know how many fails I stepped back from the tires and started to get angry. Anger is normally seen as a negative emotion but when it comes to tackling difficult tasks it is a positive for me.  Anger focuses me.  After getting sufficiently pissed off at the tires I got down one more time gripped the edge and pushed up and into the rubber as hard as I could.  As the stack started to move I saw stars in my field of vision due to the strain.  The tires rose slowly past the prior dropping points and to the upright position as I grunted mightily.  When I pushed the tires back over they made a very satisfying THUNK as they crashed back into the ground.

I was pumped up after finally defeating my 500 pound rubber nemesis.  I celebrated by box jumping on top of it’s flipped over corpse.  If you didn’t see this unfold yesterday, here is the link.

I strongly support inserting one day off in the middle of the work week, permanently.

Just watch and it will all be explained.

Cindy and I drug ourselves out of bed Saturday morning with the 4AM alarm to head to downtown Naples for the 10K race I was timing.  As is nearly always the case Cindy and I were the first ones on site which I actually like.  There is something peaceful about moving about the world at a time when most others are sound asleep.  By the time the next person showed up Cindy and I had already dropped off the start line equipment and had most of the other stuff in the van unloaded.

This was a first year event and sign ups were on the light side, light enough that I told Ali she could skip her normal data entry responsibilities.  Cindy helped me handle the walk up data entry.  The pre-race scene went smoothly, the last time we had a race at this venue in May it was a mess as nobody remembered to order port-o-potties.  Thankfully we had four of them on site Saturday.

Everything from my side of the race went well but there was one major problem that was rather embarrassing.  The race course was marked incorrectly, resulting in runners completing a 5.70 mile course instead of the full 10K distance of 6.24 miles.  Runner after runner crossed the line with looks of confusion/frustration on their face knowing that their finish time was impossible if they ran a full 10K.  Personally, I didn’t freak out about it, it wasn’t my responsibility although it made the club look unprofessional and unprepared, something that you just don’t expect from an organization that puts on as many races as we do.

Since this was a new race it meant it was also a new course.  Even though the people setting up the course had course maps in hand, they evidently were not looked at closely enough.  I felt bad for the runners as I know how would I feel if I ran a short course.  Other than the course shortcomings, the event went fine, the race shirts were nice, people liked the award podiums/back drop and we got offsite by 9:30 which is good for a 10K race.

When we got home, while I worked on post race data needs Cindy got busy working on other to do’s around the house. When I finished up I helped her outside while the chickens mulled about.  Mid-afternoon we did a Home Depot/Rural King/Dunkin Donuts trip which was logistically sort of inefficient since we were going back the same direction a few hours later to go see Interstellar.

We expected the movie to be decently full, even at Coconut Point.  After all snowbird season has sort of started again and the movie was really being promoted.  Surprisingly the huge theater we were in was very sparsely populated.  That fact made it very annoying that a group of loud younger people decided to take root within 10 feet of us.  Once the movie started the talking died down but one girl in particular had her feet up on the chair in front of her (our row).  Periodically she would start shaking/bouncing her legs which would send tremors down the row of connected seats.  I sent two or three stink eye warning shots to try to curb the behavior.

The movie was long, very long, clicking in damn close to three hours in length.  For 85% of the movie I was totally on board, it was meaningful, visually epic, and cool.  However as the movie entered the home stretch things started to get a bit too weird/far fetched for my tastes.  (ever see 2001 Space Odyssey?) Of course I won’t go into detail but I am curious if others felt the same way as I did.  Even with the clunky finish I liked the rest of the movie enough to squeeze it into an A- rating.

On Sunday morning Cindy and I had talked about ambitious plans to do a bike/run/bike brick.  Those plans vanished when we slept in until an incredibly late (for us) 8:45 AM and awoke to a cold, wet drizzle outside.  The nasty weather lasted all day with rain of varying intensity and temps not escaping the 60’s.   Other than one small coffee/store run, Cindy and I spent most of the day inside.

I actually sort of enjoyed having to be forced indoors.  Other than a few must do tasks both Cindy and I did whatever we felt like doing independently.  For me that meant mostly playing some WoW while watching Blizzcon footage via my virtual ticket.  Blizzcon is a a conference held by Blizzard, the company that makes all the games I currently play including Hearthstone, World of Warcraft and Diablo.  It is a geekfest to the max.  The virtual ticket allows you to see EVERYTHING that went on if you chose to do so.  In my case I cherry picked stuff that interested me.  I still have a ton more of things I’d like to check out, luckily they give virtual ticket subscribers two weeks after the event to view the content.

For Cindy she liked using the indoor time to do stuff like organize, clean up and spend time in the kitchen preparing more of her stellar meals and deserts.

I have had a home equity loan on my house for almost 10 years.  I had received a letter from my credit union a month or so ago informing me that if I did not “renew” the loan I would no longer be able to take out money against it.  Evidently after 10 years this is a requirement.  My HELOC has been a nice thing to have over the last decade, allowing me to get access to money on demand without having to secure a new loan.  It has been used to build the pool, replace the ac system in the house, buy vehicles, and several other big ticket items over the years.  The idea of having that convenience taken away seemed inconvenient, enough so that I began the process of renewing the loan.  Well part of this would require me paying closing costs again as well as the cost of an appraisal.  Depending on the type of appraisal required the costs could approach $1000.   Even so, I was still considering doing it.

Well last week I described the scenario to Jeremy and asked him what he would do.  He felt like the closing costs were prohibitive considering the amount of money I would be getting access to.  I was already leaning this way but having Jeremy reaffirm that position cemented it.  In fact if anything I started getting angry at myself for even considering this in the first place.  I have a stellar credit score and have the numbers to be qualified as a great credit risk within any financial institutions guidelines.  Why in the world should I pay the credit union a dime for the privilege of loaning me money?  If I need money for something I am sure I will have no issue finding someone willing to loan it to me at a low rate, fck the CU.

This is an odd week.  I work today but am off tomorrow for Veterans Day before resuming the work week on Wednesday.  I don’t have definitive plans for Tuesday but I plan to exclusively do things that I want to do.

Oh yea, we watched Sex Tape last night.  I slept through a lot of it.  I’ll give it a B rating just because you get to see Cameron Diaz’s bare ass.

Last night after work I had a meeting regarding the huge upcoming Thanksgiving race.  While I was there I picked up the latest addition to the running club’s equipment collection, a portable logo’d backdrop.  When I got home I enlisted Cindy to help me set it up.

In it’s bag, the wall folds down to a nice rectangle that is no bigger than a bag of golf clubs. However when fully expanded, amazing engineering lets the wall become a 12 feet wide by 8 feet tall portable billboard.  Setting up the frame is pretty labor intensive, with 24 separate connectors that need to be snapped into place.  The logos are printed on fabric which gave me nightmares of the wall becoming a sail with even light amounts of wind.  Auxiliary weights are going to be needed to make sure it doesn’t go anywhere.

The wall did look cool though.  It’s intention is to use it and the newly crafted 1st, 2nd, 3rd podiums for race awards ceremonies to provide some quality picture taking opportunities for runners and to make division winners feel an extra bit of pride in their accomplishments.

Taking down the wall was difficult.  Releasing the connectors required a lot of finger torque which sometimes had to be combined with frame compression.  With 24 connectors to release, Cindy and my hands were hurting by the end of it.  I think the wall and podiums will be a nice addition to our race experience but we will need to find some additional labor to set them up and tear them down.  Keeping the stuff clean will be another challenging goal. Most of the rest of the night was spent doing other race related work as I have a 10K to time on Saturday morning.

Yesterday Cindy transferred her phone service over from her Galaxy S4 to my old Iphone 5 which will be a placeholder until her contract allows her to upgrade to a 6 in several months.  Although Cindy liked several aspects of her Galaxy it was a pain in the ass in other regards.  She was a longtime Iphone/Mac user prior to getting the Galaxy so going back to the Iphone was like a warm blanket.  With IOS 8.1 there are  a lot of new things she didn’t have before so there is a slight learning curve involved but since a lot of the changes are simply adding features the Galaxy already had, it isn’t a big deal.

After timing the race this weekend Cindy and I hopefully will settle in for a nice weekend that will include some work, some exercise, some movie viewing, and even a trip to Rural King!

One of those days so enjoy this instead.

So this quick rant is about my good buddies at IX Web Hosting.  No, I have not taken the initiative to tackle the monster task of migrating all of my content/sites to some other host so in the end, shame on me. But let’s not let that get in the way of a good rant.

So I get one of those delightful TOS violation emails this morning from IX.  Every time I have received one of these, and there have been quite a few, it has to do with something on one of my sites consuming too many CPU cycles.  I was surprised but no less annoyed to see that my violation was of a different nature this time.  They said that I was consuming too much disk space.  Between all of my domains a total of 31 gigs of space was being utilized.

The email said, among other things, ” if you do not reduce the disk space used in your account to the requested levels within 7 days of this notice, your account will be suspended and content will be deleted soon after. If you receive another ticket for a disk space usage, we will have to take further action and may permanently suspend service to your account to prevent further disruption to other customers on the server.”

Well I felt two things after reading this email, surprise and anger.  I was surprised I would have 31 gig of data up there,  but even if I did, the plan I signed up for boasted that I had UNLIMITED disk space available to me.  I responded back very simply with “My hosting plan was sold with “unlimited storage space” why is this not being honored?”

In the meantime I did some digging around and found the source of bloat, a back up plug in I used for the Bar-barians web site which was dumping the back up files inside the server.  Deleting them immediately relinquished 24 gig of space but still, I was pissed off on principal alone.

IX has had so many blunders, missteps, and epic fails over the last 5-6 years I just have no patience for even the tiniest amount of bullshit when it comes from them.  So, when I received back my reply to my reply I was even more annoyed. “Please keep your account disc space usage below 30 GB in order to avoid same issue in future.
I understand your disappointed at this case but please note that by “unlimited” word we mean that we do not set a hard limit to how much space you can use. However, your account is still a shared hosting account, and you have to share resources with other customers on the server. While we normally allow customers to use as much as they need, we do have to take action when a customer’s usage becomes disruptive to others on the server.”

What the fck is that supposed to mean?  So “unlimited” means no hard limit is set, and you can have as much space as you need, as long as it isn’t too much. Have a nice day.

So I sent pack one more reply to “Prakash” who must be a member of that stellar India based help desk IX migrated to several months back.  ” I understand you are not based in the USA but UNLIMITED means unlimited, as in no limits, as in no hard limits. It seems that IX is not providing the services that it advertises.”

Of course this is just one of the many, many reasons I should drop IX webhosting.  I WILL do it, I just need to have a large block of time to make it all happen.

Yesterday I headed back to the local Wells Fargo branch to try to get another wrinkle in my mom’s estate ironed out.  In the last week I received two refund checks in my mom’s name.  One was for her auto insurance policy and the other was from her Medicare supplement, neither check was for a large amount of money.  My hope was since my mom’s bank accounts, which are now closed, were housed at Wells Fargo, that they could possibly still cash the checks for me.  Well I was there for quite a long time but the short answer is no, they could not help me.

I then decided to appeal to the companies that issued the checks instead.  I contacted each of them and asked if the checks could be reissued in my and my siblings name with an OR in between the names so any of us could cash them.  Surprisingly both companies agreed to do so if I jump through some additional hoops.  Of course until I have the checks in hand I am holding my breath.

There are also other large gaps in the settlement of my mom’s estate still open.  The stock certificates she owned have been turned over to Todd who in turn has a personal friend in Wells Fargo trying to get them converted into our ownership so they can be liquidated.  Mom’s IRA account has to be handled uniquely as well.  My naive thinking going in was it could be liquidated in a manner similar to her bank accounts.  Instead the IRA can only be distributed by establishing beneficiary IRA’s for each of us.  Only after these accounts are created can the funds be split among them.  After that it is up to us if we want to leave the money in there or pull it but if we pull it, it gets taxed as regular income.  At this point I am hoping everything is settled by the end of the year but who knows…

So last night Cindy and I watched a lot of election coverage, splitting the time between CNN, Fox News and NBC.  It was interesting seeing the contrast in coverage style between the three networks.  Interesting would not be the adjective I would use to describe the end result of the elections, both in Florida and nationally.   For that I would use words like depressing or disappointing, but certainly not surprising.

Rick Scott secured a second slimy term as governor with a one point victory over Charlie Crist.  To add insult to injury, the amendment to legalize widespread medical marijuana had a majority of voters support it but not the 60% required to make it stick.  On a national level, the trend continued with Republicans gaining a majority in the senate to ensure that outside of executive orders by the president, nothing meaningful is going to happen in Washington for the next two years.  Obviously I am not happy with any of these outcomes but lets analyze them anyway.

In Florida I think the two biggest forces behind the governor vote outcome were money and apathy.  Rick Scott dumped something like $20 million of his personal fortune (after vowing to not use personal funds in this election) into negative advertising during the last two weeks of the campaign.  He flooded every possible media outlet with his awkward, shining cranium slinging two fisted mud non-stop.    Hell my blog had a Rick Scott Google ad running on it yesterday for cripes sake.

Voter apathy on the democratic side was the other culprit in this sad outcome.  Voter turn out in some major democratic areas was reported to be in the 40% range.  Or from a wider angle, Florida’s population is around 19 million people, only 6 million of them cared enough to vote.   Surely better turn out would have resulted in a different outcome.

The medical marijuana defeat is another testament to the power of money to mold the minds of the general public like play doh.  At one point, support of medical marijuana in the past 6 months was polling in the 80%+ area.  Basically everyone thought it made sense.  All it took was 10’s of millions of dollars of carefully targeted and crafted advertising by those that have little moral/social concerns with MM but instead had large financial stakes in defeating it, to derail the movement.

In the big picture, my life does not change significantly no matter who is sitting in the governors office.  For “me firsters”, that is all the further their concern typically extends.  However I have this flaw that causes me to care about the bigger picture, caring about stuff like the environment, equal rights, wealth distribution, and caring for those less fortunate than I am.  I also admire honesty, likability, and composure in a political candidate. Anyone that watched any of the Crist/Scott debates should have seen there was a glaring bald black hole on one side of the stage in those regards.

I am very disappointed in the election results and would categorize it in the same realm as how I felt in 2004, when the worst president in my lifetime somehow managed to get reelected.  However perhaps that experience is what has somewhat dulled my senses with this outcome.  Florida residents have the governor they deserve.

So today is election day where the direction of our state and our country follows for at least the next couple years will be determined.  In Florida there are two big decisions to be made, an amendment permitting widespread medical marijuana use and who is going to be the Florida governor for the next four years.

Medical marijuana to me is a no brainer.  Marijuana/hemp is truly one of nature’s miracle plants.  In addition to it’s mood altering and medicinal applications, hemp can be used to make fabric, food, and even paper.  The biggest opposition to medical marijuana are cigarette and pharmaceutical companies.  They have literally spent  millions upon millions of dollars trying to brainwash the fickle Florida voters into voting against something that could help so many people.

To allow alcohol to be sold at the local grocery store, which by all accounts impairs the same or more than marijuana without any upside is just silly in my opinion.  Unfortunately the public has proven time and again that they are susceptible to fear mongering so it is utilized again and again by political strategists to play mind games with potential voters who are too lazy or apathetic to make their own informed decisions.

Then we have the governors race, a race where I have clearly made my opinions known.  Rick Scott has once again reached deep into his pockets to pepper the media with endless Charlie Crist smear ads.  I laughed out loud when I heard one spot playing on local radio, it was two younger sounding women discussing the governors race.  The discussion basically can be summarized like this.  “Yea Rick Scott is sort of a tool but at least I have a job.  When Charlie Crist was governor I lost my job.  I don’t want to lose my job again so I guess I have to vote for Rick Scott”  It was clearly aimed at light thinkers and the simpletons that basically know nothing about the world around them.

Scott is using the national recession and recovery to influence the public in disingenuous ways.  He likes to throw Florida’s economic woes it suffered along with the rest of the nation  squarely on the back of Charlie, who was the governor during the worst of it.  Likewise, Rick likes to step out in front and claim personal responsibility for Florida’s recovery which again has been a nationwide climb.

Charlie Crist supports common good principals like climate change, gay marriage, medicaid expansion, medical marijuana, higher minimum wages, and more.  Scott does not support these things and prefers to focus on areas that bring the most wealth to his personal fortune and the others that pay him for influence.  How does a man making 160k a year as the Florida governor increase his net worth roughly 60 million dollars in one year (2012) while in office?  You can connect the dots.

Unfortunately once again this election has proven that money is the most important quality of all a candidate can possess.  It is estimated that 3.7 BILLION dollars has been spent on the 2014 elections. That is utterly disgusting.  You can thank the Supreme Court for that.

On a national level, the big drama is if the democrats will also lose the senate majority.  Again it would be disappointing if they did but in the big picture would not significantly change what has already been going on, nothing.  Nothing will change, nothing will get done, and those at the top of our society will be cackling away from their balconies, delirious with joy about just how masterfully they have manipulated this country they call home.  Fck everyone else as long as I get mine…..

So Saturday morning after I got done weeding the property I suggested that we take a quick spin in the SSR up to Coconut Point to the Apple Store.  This was because of info I pulled down using the website idevicechecker.com 

The site allows you to check inventory of Apple products at tons of retailers, it’s pretty damn cool. The tool said the Coconut Point store had several of the 64 gig Iphone 6’s in stock, cool.  The store opens around 10 we got there about 11, I figured I should have no issue walking in and grabbing one.

So Cindy and I walk in and tell the genius at the door we are looking for an ATT Iphone 6.  She said they don’t have any. I told her that was weird, I saw online the store had some inventory.  She said they did, before the doors opened.  She said people are STILL camping at the door and snapping up Iphones as quickly as they arrive.  I couldn’t believe it.  Cindy actually said she wouldn’t mind being a “door hoarder” for me.  I told her that wasn’t necessary, I don’t need a 6 that badly and I would never ever resort to to “nose on the glass” to buy any product.  We walked away with me feeling fine about having to wait a little longer to get a 6.

As we were walking I had one more idea.  My search on the website also showed that the Best Buy which is in the same vicinity had a few Iphones in stock.  I figured it was worth a shot.  We drove to the store and walked over to the phone department, it was completely empty.  We asked if they had any 6’s in stock and the answer was actually yes, only one, a white 128gb model.  I could care less about the color choice since it would live in a case and I would have been fine with a 64gb model but 128 was even better.

I went through a relaxed and easy transaction.  It felt weird after striking out at the Apple store for the second time to be able to drive a minute away and score one.  I went a different route with protection for the 6 than I have done with my previous Iphones.  I always would buy a screen protector and a separate case, typically rubber in nature.  Installing screen protectors is always a pain in the ass.  No matter how much care you take there is always that unavoidable tiny bubble or flaw that you never get rid off.

Well because of the 6’s ultra thin profile and the 6+’s infamous tendency to bend, I thought a more substantial case would be in order.  I bought a water resistant case with built in screen protector.  At first I thought that additional size would annoy me but it’s fine, it still fits in my pocket and I feel better knowing that short of running the phone over with the car, it should be safe.  The phone with it’s protective case looks giant compared to my Iphone 5.  Hell it even looked bigger than Cindy’s Galaxy S4 which has  a more conventional sized case on it. Of course I played with the phone over the weekend and thus far I have nothing but good things to say about it.  I haven’t even really dug into some of the new stuff, I just like the bigger screen, faster CPU and tons of memory.  It truly feels like an upgrade instead of a lateral move with just an incremented number.

On Saturday afternoon I headed out in the beautiful weather to complete weed whacking the property.  Cindy spent most of the afternoon doing more costume prep.  The amount of time, thought and detail she put into these costumes was nothing short of amazing.  I think she missed her calling in life, she should be a costume designer.  She lost count of how many hot glue sticks were consumed in the process of making my Groot costume.

Who is Groot you may ask?  Well if you lived in a bubble this year you may not know that Groot was one of the main characters in this year’s biggest movie, The Guardians of the Galaxy.  Groot is a a humanoid tree that says nothing else but his name the entire movie.  The inflection he uses in saying his name allows it to take on different meanings.  My height and affinity for animals/nature made Groot an appropriate fit as well.

Cindy was literally working on the costumes to the very last minute. We didn’t get to the party until an hour after start time because of it.  The temps Saturday night were on the cool side, thankfully they had a couple stand alone heaters to provide some relief.  I discovered very quickly that my Groot mask meant I would not be doing much more talking than him.  People could not really hear me over the loud music and I couldn’t hear them very well either.  It was fine, I’m not one to want to talk much anyway normally.  Drinking and eating was a challenge inside the Groot mask.  I had to probe around the mask mouth opening and then shove the bottle in.  Eating was even worse, and funnier looking.  I would jam food in the slot and suck it in.  A couple times I wound up with ranch dressing on the mask.

Our costumes were well received.  If Cindy wasn’t with me I don’t think anyone would know who I was.  There were a bunch of creative costumes out there, super heroes were definitely leading the pack.  I had a decent amount to drink but thankfully nowhere close to the levels that incited my roadside vomitorium after Oktoberfest.  Cindy and I, as well as everyone in attendance seemed to have a lot of fun.

Sunday morning it was quite chilly, record setting chilly for November in south Florida.  The thermometer was dipping into the upper 40’s.  Cindy was worried about the chickens being too cold but I assured her they should be fine with all those feathers.  We did a run later in the morning that I haven’t done in many years, to the end of our road and back.  If you go from Immokalee Road to the dead end it is almost exactly two miles one way.  With us using the house as start and stop point it worked out to a little less than a 3.5 mile run.  I didn’t feel particularly good on the run but I attribute that mostly to the drinking the night before.  I did like running in the cool temps.

We headed out to grab coffee and picked up the dogs en route.  We figured they would LOVE hanging out at the house with temperatures and weather that was so pleasant.   As always they were very happy to see the party van in Ali’s driveway to transport them to their home away from home.

The Eagles game was at 1.  Cindy was nice enough to offer to run the tractor to mow the grass while I watched the game.  The chickens were out while the mowing was going on.  They have lost all fear of the tractor.  In fact they were following Cindy around the yard as she mowed, at times even running in front of it.  Cindy had to keep her head on a swivel at all times.

The Eagles game was an odd one.  First the Eagles had a lot of injuries with Nick Foles, Demarco Ryans, and Todd Heremans all leaving the game.  Before Foles left he again was showing some flashes of ineptitude and brilliance, throwing another falling backwards interception after he completed a long TD pass to Maclin.  The Eagles turned the ball over 3-4 times again but luckily played well enough to overcome that and the injuries, winning by 10 points.

Mark Sanchez stepped in and played well, the offense didn’t appear to miss a beat with him taking snaps which was good to see.  They still haven’t said exactly what is wrong with Foles left shoulder.  Ryans injury was frustrating on two levels.  He picked off a pass but then fell to the ground because he did something to his ankle.  Evidently his pain reflex made him forget about securing the ball as he fell to the ground, turning the ball back over to the Texans.

It was a good road win overall.  To win in spite of the injuries and turnovers on the road against a decent team is a nice feather in the hat.  It was also amazing that the Eagles put together an 8 minute drive at the end fo the game to help close it out.  That was the longest single offensive possession the team has had since Chip Kelly has been at the controls for two years.

Sunday evening after returning the dogs to Ali’s place Cindy and I watched my Netflix rental, Neighbors, a rated R comedy.  There is a lot of naked man ass and sex acts shown which really didn’t add anything.  Unfortunately I dozed off for a good portion of the second half of the film so I can’t give it a very authoritative rating.  I asked Cindy what she thought overall.  She said it had funny spots which to me, translates into an average B rating.