Rained out, Rocky Lite, 50 Shades, Periscope Up, 2 million scovilles, finally flying

This past weekend has been one of the most dreary and waterlogged as I can remember in quite a long time.  It basically has been raining to some degree since Friday.  The end result is our property has once again turned into lake front.  There are standing bodies of water all over the place.

On Saturday morning I wanted to get the weeding done and I didn’t care if it was raining.  When I stepped outside it was a light, tolerable rain however the intensity went up and down the entire time I was out there.  At a few points it was an outright downpour.  I was already soaked all the way to my underwear so I didn’t even bother trying to escape the deluge.  After weeding I had my first of three clothing changes during the day due to wetness.

While I was weeding I pulled this huge mutant grapefruit that was in the orchard.  It had split open.  After slicing it with the machete I saw the fattest rind ever.  Unfortunately the fruit did not look appetizing at all so after it’s photo op the monster grapefruit was tossed in the compost bin.

After drying off Cindy and I went out for what is a pretty normal weekend shopping circuit of Dunkin Donuts, Home Depot and Rural King with a Pinch A Penny stop for good measure.  We grabbed five more 50 pound bags of sand for the chicken run.  In total I bet we have dumped a couple thousand pounds of sand in there.  The goal is to eventually have a few inches of sand in the entire 8′ x 12′ run to make clean up easier as well as raising the elevation slightly, something that became an apparent need this weekend.

On Saturday I introduced Cindy to the world of Periscope, an app I only recently discovered myself courtesy of Bubba talking about it on the radio.  Periscope is a way to basically instantly get yourself broadcasting video live.  There are already have been many ways to do this for several years ( I used JustinTv to broadcast live 5 years ago) but somehow they way Persiscope handles it just feels slicker and easy.  When you like what you are seeing a viewer taps his screen and it generates a heart which is the Periscope equivalent of LIKE.  It’s twitter integration and seamless notification system allows you to grow an audience pretty easily.

It is also like Snapchat in a way, something I never used.  You have an option to make the video stream only available live and even if you do archive it, it is still only alive for 24 hours on the Periscope servers until it goes away.  I guess it adds a sense of urgency to viewership. If you want to see the content you better watch it now. The only broadcast I still have alive is some WoW footage.  Better watch it soon, it goes away in 3 hours. 🙂

So Cindy and I took turns shooting silly Persicope videos at various points during the day, the longest of which was sitting in the car before we went into the movie.  It’s a weird thing how a bunch of random people would instantly jump into your broadcast.  A handful of them would use the chat function but the vast majority are silent voyeurs. What they were hoping to find is beyond me.

So after a tasty meal at Olive Garden Cindy and I went to see Southpaw, a boxing movie with Jake Gylennhall.  The lobby of the theater seemed pretty empty so I was looking forward to an equally empty theater.  This was opening weekend for the film, for most big name movies Coconut Point will have a 7:00 and 7:30 showing.  Southpaw only had a 7:20 showing which meant it was not getting big film positioning.  The theater it was showing in was one of the mid-sized rooms instead of the big ones we are used to. This theater had the love seat layout which is nice but actually a little less comfortable than the seating in the bigger theaters.

Well slowly the theater started to fill up with a steady stream of patrons filing in during the previews.  I bet the theater was 75% full, normally unheard of during the summer.  Of course the more people that are in your nearby vicinity the more likely you are to have an annoying asshole in range.  This time it was a hispanic woman that had no understanding of talking quietly during a movie.  Every time she spoke it was at full volume.  It didn’t take long until she drew stinkeye glances from Cindy who said she was ready to yell “Callete su boca!”  If our only option to see movies was in theaters that were this level of population I would stop going to the movies as much as we do.  The more human beings, the less fun, is my general rule of thumb.

So the movie itself was good.  Jake got himself into incredible shape for the film.  It had a real Rocky flavor to it which in my book is a good thing.  Sure it was predictable but that isn’t such a bad thing with this kind of film.  Jake seems to be a lot like his deceased co-star of Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger, in that he really tries to transform himself into the character he is portraying.  He did an equally good job of turning himself into a mega-creepy dude in Nightcrawler. Anyway, I would give Southpaw an A-, just try to watch it out of range of the annoying people.

When we checked on the chickens via the security dvr we saw that all of them were in place except Peaches, who decided to fly up to one of the shelves and sit in a box.  Despite having the chickens integrated for quite a few weeks, more often than not Cindy still has to go out there at bedtime and rearrange chickens which has to stop.  Basically what happens is Lucy decides she is not happy with having the younger chickens close to her and starts to peck at them.  Instead of retreating to any of the three lower perch bars the chicks instead have often used the side shelves or nesting boxes as a sleeping spot which we don’t want.  For clean up efficiency we need them all to stay on the perches.

We tried to address the problem somewhat by adding two half perches a few inches below the top perch so the birds could all be together without having to squish onto one bar.  Cindy also added additional screen hanging from the roof to block access to the top shelves.  Last night seemed to be the best sleeping outcome yet.  Not only did we not have to place the birds, Lucy actually allowed Stephie to cuddle up next to her, a first.

So Sunday morning I had hopes of getting out to do a bike ride since it was not raining when I woke up.  However a quick glance at the precipitation radar indicated we were just in a small break of the wet misery so we bagged it.  It started to pour shortly thereafter.

Like I mentioned, the  steady and at times torrential rain has drenched the yard.  One unfortunate casualty has been the ground underneath the coop deck, an area the chickens normally hang out in frequently.  It became pretty disgusting since obviously the chickens shit under there and we are unable to clean it conventionally.  It had a disgusting sewage like appearance.  The main chicken run was wet but much cleaner due to the additional sand that is dumped in there along with our normal daily poop pick up it remains relatively clean.  Unfortunately there is really nothing we can do about the ground under the deck until the water recedes.

We have had a couple freak out moments with our neighborhood hawks.  The other night Cindy went sprinting out the door when a hawk was on the ground only a few feet from the open chicken run door, being much too brave for our comfort.  Cindy has been firing warning shots with her CO2 BB pistol I bought her to keep the hawk away when she sees it.  At Rural King we went a step further and bought a fake hawk and owl.  You place and move them periodically around the yard as a visual deterrent.

The owl seems more effective as it has a bobble head that spins with the slightest breeze, making it seem more realistic.  We filled them both with sand to make them heavy and resistant to the strong wind gusts that often blow through the property.  I sat the owl right on top of the chicken run. It is annoying to have a constant paranoia about the chicken’s safety when they are free ranging but short of having them live in a bubble it’s just a risk you have to accept.

So the miserable weather on Sunday resulted in me having one of the laziest days in recent history.  I played hours of WoW and enjoyed myself doing so. You may recall me talking about the requirements to unlock flying in the game with the latest expansion.  When I first saw them I knew it would be a lot of work/time to accomplish these requirements, I had no idea just how much.

For the last few weeks anytime I have had in the game has almost exclusively been utilized in accomplishing this goal on one character, which in turn unlocks flying for all of my other characters.  It just seems like it took too much time.  To just do the portion in the new content that was released recently you have a minimum of close to 3 weeks to accrue what is needed to fly.  If you had to do the other achievements in the older areas, like I did, that gets tacked on top.  It was an annoying, extremely repetitive grind that sucked most of the fun out of playing.  I am very glad that it is behind me.

The only real “work” I did on Sunday was to pay my bills, a very minimal chore.  Late in the afternoon we decided to finally film an eating challenge I proposed awhile back, consuming ghost pepper powder.

Unless you have been living in a cave you have seen/heard of ghost peppers.  They are one of hottest peppers on the planet, registering a blistering 2,000,000 on the scoville heat index. For reference, jalapeno peppers are rated at 2,500 to 10,000 heat units.  The powder version of ghost peppers supposedly is more concentrated. Well anyway YouTube is jammed full of ghost pepper eating videos and there is a good reason for it, people like watching other people suffer.  If you eat a ghost pepper you WILL suffer, there is no way around it.

Cindy was very nervous leading up to the challenge.  I was not nervous until the last few seconds.  At that moment I had a feeling similar to prior to jumping in the Arctic Enema at the Tough Mudder.  I knew there was immense discomfort to follow.

We decided to use the dining room table for the video, hoping it would offer the best lighting.  I don’t think that spot has ever been used for filming anything else.  Cindy measured the powder and put a 1/4 teaspoon in each of our conventional spoons.  We started the cameras rolling (Cindy simulcast it on Periscope) and after a 3,2,1 countdown cleaned the spoons of the powder.

We used different techniques when it came to cleaning the spoon.  I used a method similar to if I was eating cereal or a spoonful of peanut butter.  The end result was the powder adhering to mostly my upper teeth, gums, and inside of my upper lip.  In contrast Cindy turned her spoon upside down and deposited all of the powder on her tongue.

The first sensation is the taste of the powder which was not pleasant.  However soon all taste is obliterated as the heat from the ghost peppers starts to set in.  It took very little time until I was reaching for my large glass of water, even though it did not really help.  I almost immediately started hiccuping as the burn really set in.  The watery eyes and running nose followed closely.  The discomfort actually ramps up as time goes on and lingers.  It turned into more of a stinging sensation, almost like I had hornets in my mouth.  At one point I felt somewhat nauseous and was nervous since we had no vomit containers nearby.

Cindy of course was struggling as well.  She slammed a glass of almond milk, followed by water, followed by peanut butter and yogurt.  I only used water and peanut butter to help relieve the pain.  None of it was all that effective.  Basically you just have to ride out the burn.  After about 10 minutes or so things started to die down.  It was a stunt that I wanted to accomplish and now that we have, I have no desire to revisit the ultra-hot pepper genre ever again.

Sunday night we watched 50 Shades of Grey, the movie based on the book that turned so many women into sex craving maniacs.  I was recently separated when the book was  making waves.  I recall many first dates where the woman mention they read the book which I did not know was a good or bad thing.  I heard several accounts of the book turning women into sex starved maniacs, it turned them on that much.

So the movie had a lot of hype behind it obviously when it was released which I obviously did not share.  I only rented it on Netflix because Cindy was interested in seeing it since she started the book but never finished it.  Well if the movie’s main goal was to produce mainstream soft porn it certainly hit the mark.  There was more nudity and sex in the film than any feature film I ever saw before.   However at my age it takes more than sex scenes to keep my interest.  The man in the film had all of these hang ups whose symptoms were his bizarre sexual rituals.  I think the movie needed some more focus on why that was instead of end result of his weirdness.  Overall, even with all of the skin on skin I can’t rate the film more than a B, perhaps a sign of my advancement into the kingdom of old fartdom.

I have short 3 day week ahead of me.  Cindy is having some foot surgery on Thursday so I am burning a couple vaca days to be her transport/caregiver. I have a few to use up by mid-August.