No ride Randall, Exosleep, Conflict of interest

On Friday night Randall didn’t show up until after 8PM but it didn’t really matter since I had race prep to work on anyway.  Randall showed up bearing gifts of beer which was very nice of him.  The dogs were THRILLED to see Uncle Randall, they both sat by his side happily as he petted them.

Randall talked Cindy into running the race on Saturday since he planned to do so.  That set Cindy into race prep mode which is a very complex process.  I decided to use the van for the race equipment since it would be three people plus equipment which just would not work in the Tacoma.

I decided to only load a couple things Friday night due to the cold temperatures.  I didn’t want the battery based electronics or the timing mats chilling in the van all night long so I just planned to get up 10 minutes earlier to do it in the morning.

I really bundled up for the race, wearing jeans, wool socks, a t-shirt, Under Armour Cold Gear long sleeves, and two sweatshirts to battle the temps in the mid to upper 40’s.  I needed every layer.  We were the first ones on site.  I got the gate code to let us in and was given permission to raise and fire up the light tower used to light up the registration area.  This event is a stark contrast to the Thanksgiving race where the club has soooo many responsibilities to handle.  For this race since it is done in coordination with a PGA golf event most of the planning and set up is done in advance by the tournament organizers.

I had Randall and Chris handling data entry for me as I attended to other details before the race started.  There were around 450 people for the race, a far cry from the 3000 plus we handled a couple weeks ago but it was still a good crowd.

The race was started by Greg Norman, the tournament organizer and the race had at least one of the PGA pros running which was cool as well.

I had some timing difficulties once again although luckily this time it didn’t result in any dropped times.  I had two timing boxes at the finish once again and for some reason could not get one of them online during the race.  I also had a number of participants that had bad/missing registration data since this race uses a rather klutzy in house registration web site that is not designed for taking race entries.  This bad data resulted in quite a few people being thrown into the wrong age group. However I had 356 chip start times and 355 chip finish times so that was the number I was most concerned with.

Both Randall and Cindy did well considering the circumstances.  Randall has not been doing any consistent running (despite having a half marathon coming up in January).  Cindy has still not gotten back on a consistent running schedule and HATES running in cold air as it makes her chest close up.  They both finished pretty high up in their age group rankings.

After the race we got cleaned up and off site by around 9:15 which is great.  On the way home we of course had to stop for celebratory coffee.

Once we got home I dug into post race tasks as Cindy worked on other stuff and Randall chilled with the chickens.  Randall seems to find the chickens interesting and liked interacting with them, petting and holding them routinely.

Once everything was done Cindy made us a special grilled cheese and tomato soup lunch designed to combat the chill we all felt most of the morning in our bones.

Cindy suggested that it would be a smart thing if we tried to take naps since we were planning to see Exodus Saturday night, a very long movie.  If we hit it napless there was a good chance we would be watching a lot of it with closed eyelids. All three of us laid down in our respective beds but I was the only one that actually fell asleep and only briefly at that.  Randall and Cindy reported no actual napping took place for them.

I suggested to Cindy it would be nice to give her a break from cooking and just eat at Stir Crazy up at Coconut Point.  Although Cindy really loves cooking she was down with the idea.  We all enjoyed our meals during pre-movie warm up.  Randall graciously but sneakily paid the check on the down low without my knowledge.

So we saw the 3D version of the film.  As I have professed for awhile now, 3D is pretty much a non-feature for me, not even worth the premium you pay to see it.  It just happened that we got done with dinner right around the 3D showing so that is what we saw.  It just doesn’t add anything to my enjoyment of most films.

So Exodus is basically a remake of the holiday classic, The 10 Commandments, starring Yule Brenner and Charlton Heston, a film I think I only watched in it’s entirety once without falling asleep, it’s something like 4 hours long. With Exodus they trimmed it’s length to under 3 hours but it still felt very long.

I’m not sure if it was the lack of naps or the movie itself but Randall spent a large portion of the movie with his eyes closed.  Cindy likewise had a lot of nod off moments.  I only had a few of them but there was no disputing the film had slow moments.

Just like the original 10 Commandments, I question why this story would be one that Christians would want to embellish.  God in this story, is in my opinion, depicted as more or less of an asshole that punishes the innocent for the actions of the guilty, a premise that seems more appropriate for Islamic extremists.

Even with it’s length, there seemed to be large fast forwards in the plot with unanswered questions, like why was it significant that Joshua felt no pain and all he did most of the movie was act like a peeping Tom when Moses talked to a God only visible to him. It was odd. Cindy said she thought the acting in the movie was really good.  I really didn’t feel the same.  As a whole the movie was a sleepy experience, only deserving of a B rating in my book.

On Sunday morning we started the day very slow.  With temps once again in the 40’s it was too cold to do an early bike ride with Randall.  We talked about doing one later in the day possibly since Randall lugged his bike across Alligator Alley.  Instead we relaxed a bit.  I downloaded the final episode of Season 2 of the Walking Dead video game and played through it to completion.  Much like the real series there are surprising outcomes, lots of people dying and tangible drama.  If there is a season three of the game I have no idea where it will go from here, almost the entire core of the group the story is based on is out of the picture in one way or another.

So we decided to head up to the outlets, something Randall and I have done quite a few times when he has visited during the holiday season.  He especially likes the Under Armour and Oakley outlets that are housed there.  Cindy was excited to go as well although excitement faded as she had multiple bad experiences with idiot, rude shoppers in several stores. I wound up buying several things from several stores.  Randall had a good haul as well including scoring two sets of Oakley sunglasses that were 40% off, something you rarely see.

We grabbed lunch at Naples Flatbread which was quite good.  As we sat there Randall spotted a black guy he recognized as the awful, Love Boat style singer that serenaded us at the same mall last year at a different establishment.  This was Cindy’s first time seeing/hearing the guys cheesy, out of tune performance.  She quickly confirmed Randall and my evaluation of this guys singing ability was accurate.  I recorded a brief 30 seconds for your enjoyment.

On the way home we had to make two more stops which  put us back in my driveway after 4PM, too late to fit a bike ride in which I felt a bit badly about.  Instead we headed outside with my Phantom.  I let Randall fly almost two complete battery packs himself which he did just fine except for a near miss with the smaller shed that had me concerned for a few moments.  While we were out there we did some tire flipping, some box jumping onto stacked tires and I even did a muscle up just to confirm I still had it in me.  The chickens and dogs were out there having fun with us as well.

While Randall and I were entertaining ourselves Cindy had begun an incredible food preparation challenge.  She was working on cooking the chicken for the dogs meals, dinner, my birthday cake AND Christmas cookies all at the same time.  It was a ton of work.  She did almost all of the work at our new kitchen corner cabinet/counter which was really cool.  She loves doing the prep there, making the time, money and effort we put into it feel well worth it.  Randall and I both appreciated her efforts greatly, everything tasted really good.

Randall rolled out around 9PM, it was another fun and festive visit, something Cindy and I come to count on when Randall is in the house.

The Eagles did not play until 8:30 against the hated Cowboys, a team they smashed a couple weeks ago on Thanksgiving, in Dallas.  Well the game started out terribly right from the opening kickoff that the Eagles totally botched allowing for a very quick Cowboys score.  The onslaught continued with the Cowboys jumping to a fast and easy 21-0 lead.

All of a sudden the Eagles seemed to get angry and aggressive, dominating the middle portion of the game, putting 24 unanswered points on the board to take the lead.  Unfortunately this seemed to be a game of thirds, the Cowboys came back and dominated the last third of the game, winning 38-27, the Eagles second consecutive home loss in as many weeks and their third loss in the last four games.

The Eagles, despite their still decent 9-5 record have shown a disturbing trend of coming up small when going up against good (winning record) teams and a more disturbing sputtering end to the season.  Last year was the opposite, the team gained momentum and confidence as the season progressed, this feels like the exact opposite.

There was some bitter irony going on for me during the game.  I felt some pangs of happiness as Demarco Murray, the Cowboys star running back was racking up the yards and touchdowns since he was on my fantasy team which was playing in the semi-finals of the league championship.  His solid game was actually responsible for my win, propelling me to the league championship game for the third consecutive year, a pretty amazing feat considering the lack of time, energy and effort I put into managing my squad.  So even though the final score of the Eagles game was depressing, my virtual outcome helped my mood greatly.

Believe it or not I am still hacking and blowing my nose almost two complete weeks after first becoming symptomatic.  I am so ready to be over this.  Oh tomorrow is my birthday, a date on the calendar that I have not looked forward to since the mid-90’s.