Archives August 2015

So after work on Friday I made the mistake of stopping at Costco.  It was a mistake because I forgot to consider that people were worked up into a frenzy about tropical storm Erika.  The mere mention of a remote possibility of it becoming a hurricane is all it takes to set off mild panic.  The aisles of the store were crammed with people preparing for end of days.  It seemed like almost every cart in the store had a case or two of bottle water jammed in it.  As is always the case for me, I don’t react well to mob mentality.  Sure be prepared if there is a serious reason for concern but what the fck, we get severe thunderstorms weekly that deliver as much if not more punch than the storm was predicted to have.  It turned out to deliver even less than that as Erika fell apart Saturday morning.

The state of Florida jumped right onto the overreaction bandwagon with Rick Scott declaring a state of emergency far in advance of there being one.  His declaration meant other government agencies had to fall in line and overreact in kind.  State agencies were given orders to do stuff like shutdown, unplug, and cover equipment with plastic.  It was all just a big production over a very small threat.  Since Florida hasn’t had a hurricane make landfall in 10 years it seems like some EMS agencies are just chomping at the bit to put their emergency action plans in place, regardless of their actual need.

Saturday morning Cindy and I headed to the track to run.  We wound up running slightly over 5K in distance, the first time I have run that far in at least 6 months, maybe more.  I felt ok during the run besides being drenched from what felt like 100% humidity.  The rest of the weekend I had an off and on limp but I didn’t expect to emerge from the run pain free.  As long as it fades in a day or two that is the best I can expect nowadays.

We picked up the dogs after the run on our way to do a couple errands.   At Home Depot I picked up some hardware to work on the door to the chicken run.  Since it was built it has twisted somewhat, making it difficult to open and close. My idea was to drive an anchor point into opposing corners and then use vinyl coated steel cable with a tensioner in the middle. My thought was this would resist the twisting forces.

Well it seemed like all it wound up doing was actually make the door even more difficult to close.  I decided to take a new approach, grabbing my large wood chisel and a hammer.  I used it to shave down the 2×6 along the bottom frame of the door until it was able to swing open and closed without friction.  It took a lot of trial and error and I had to keep chasing away curious chickens that thought wood shavings were treats.

Over the weekend I also tried to further address water problems and the coop.  The seam between the chicken run and shed still has been allowing a lot of water to seep through.  The water runs down the side of the shed and then drips onto the chicken door landing, splashing water inside as well.  Yesterday I used an entire tube of caulking to fill that seam as much as possible.  Hopefully I have finally got the issue handled.

During the afternoon Saturday I also completed the rebuild of my pool cleaner.  I installed the new bumper assembly and gear box.  Having ripped it apart several times recently and using my power drill made the work go very quickly.  I was quite happy when I put it in the pool for a test run and it immediately took off, hauling ass around the bottom of the pool like it was brand new.

Saturday night we again stayed home and watched Run All Night, another Liam Neeson action flick.  Cindy didn’t expect much of the film but it was quite good.  Liam and action films have proven to be a pretty solid combo.  I’d give this one an A- rating without batting an eye.

On Sunday I woke up feeling very blah.  I felt unmotivated, lazy, and just down on the world.  I felt like I have such a busy week ahead of me that I should be doing stuff to prepare but had no desire to do so.  The wet swamp outside did little to help alleviate my cloudy mood.  Instead of doing productive work I played some games of Hearthstone for awhile to soothe my mind.  As the hours passed I started to feel a little better, aided by a cup of DD coffee.

I couldn’t mope that long because I needed to get busy on making my famous chocolate cake.  A friend of ours and her kids were coming over Sunday evening so we wanted to give them a treat.  Cindy Periscoped a good portion of the cake prep process.  The end result was what may have been the best version of the cake I ever pumped out.  Both the frosting and the cake itself were dead on.

The rains once again came mid-afternoon making any outdoor activities with the kids impossible.  Instead when they showed up they were entertained by the dogs, Tuki, and the latest Transformers movie that was streaming on Netflix.  Cindy prepared a very tasty meal to compliment the chocolate cake which everyone gave kudos to. It was nice to have them out to the house, hopefully next time the weather is more accommodating.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a super packed week.  I host the fantasy football draft party tomorrow night, have a race to time on Saturday, and oh by the way, a two week western road trip to prepare for.  Yay.

So yesterday was a big day for Cindy.  It was test day for her ACE personal trainer certification exam.  This was the culmination of a journey she started about 6 months ago.  She has been reading and studying from day one but the past month or so she was studying her ass off and taking endless rounds of practice tests.    She was very nervous about the exam, worried that despite her hard work she would not pass.  I felt anxious for her because I knew she would devastated if she did not pass.  Well a little after 1PM I got the text message from her that she did indeed pass the exam and was now an ACE certified trainer.  I talked to her on the phone.  She was actually crying which I think was just the culmination of stress and happiness for reaching her goal.   I told her I was very proud of her.

When she first talked of getting this certification I honestly did not think it would be quite as difficult as it turned out to be.  You are required to have a pretty in depth knowledge of physiology, exercise, client analysis and much more.  It was much more comprehensive than I expected.

The certification will help open a number of doors for Cindy.  She already has several promising leads which will allow her to embark on her new career.  To celebrate her accomplishment we went out to dinner at Carrabbas last night.  We enjoyed the non-season light crowds and were able to sit down without waiting, a near impossibility from the months of October to March.  We had a nice meal.  Cindy certainly deserved it.  I could tell she felt so relieved to have the looming test off her shoulders.  I swear during the last week she was studying/testing 8 hours a day.

So almost on cue, after I proclaimed I had been smoke smell free for going on two weeks on Wednesday, the smell returned yesterday.  I can smell it today as well to some degree.  Maybe if I just stop thinking and talking about it it can fade away.  My Uncle Randy messaged me about my Aunt Sis, who was mom’s aunt.  Aunt Sis was very much a believer in reincarnation, ghosts, and that sort of stuff.  He told me the day Aunt Sis died he had a black bird that was watching him and he had an odd sense it was her.  My grandfather also was a believer in reincarnation. I remember one time my mom telling me when I was very young I talked in depth about living a previous life which I have no recollection of.

If you read my blog you know that as an adult I have a very logical view of the world.  I don’t subscribe to religious beliefs nor do I think there is much waiting for anyone when they die besides an eternal nap.  However I also am not the type to be afraid to reevaluate my thoughts when new evidence is presented to me.  I just haven’t had that happen concretely to this point although there have been many moments of coincidence and deja vu throughout my life that don’t have any explanation that would compute logically.

For the first time in a long time Florida is potentially in the cross hairs for a hurricane.  As of now Erika is projected to hit the east coast of the state and swing right up the middle.  I have been a Florida resident long enough and seen enough tropical storm forecasts to know that there is still a lot of opportunity for the forecast track to change.

However regardless of it’s final destination it is very likely that regardless we would see significant rain and wind at the homestead.  The rain especially is unwelcome since our property is still sopping wet.

This is our last full weekend before the road trip which is scheduled to kick off two Sundays from now.  I need to start developing checklists so all that needs to get done is handled before we leave.  It doesn’t help that there is a race to time next Saturday to complicate matters.  Of course my biggest concern with the trip is the welfare of the chickens.  Our chicken sitters are stopping by over the weekend to make sure everything is clear.

Yesterday my pool cleaner parts showed up so I wasted little time ripping into my old Navigator.  I was surprised at what I found.  I already knew I was missing part of a bracket inside, I didn’t know I was missing a lot more than that.  As I dug deeper into it small ball bearings fell out on my lap.  One of the bearings on the main impeller had totally shattered.  When I turned it upside down a few other things fell out, a piece of styrofoam and a red plastic disc that looked broken.  I never figured out where they came from.  (I just discovered they are from the gearbox)

I had the thing almost completely ripped apart on the patio table.  I carefully swapped in my rebuild parts.  At this point the only thing that has not been replaced is the gear box at the top of the cleaner which sounds like shit.  After reassembling the Hayward I dropped it in the pool.  It was tracking much faster but not turning great, surely due to the gearbox.  I ordered a new gearbox and bumper assembly a few minutes ago. I’ve come this far, I may as well do a complete teardown so I can add “Hayward Pool Cleaner Repairs” to my resume.

Cindy’s daughter stopped by last night to have dinner with us.  She hung around for awhile afterwards.  When Cindy and Katie get together they often wind up getting quite silly.  Last night was no exception.  You can see some of the sillyness here, but only for another few hours until it is vaporized from the Periscope servers.

It is amazing how the name of a Periscope broadcast can influence the viewership.  I named the stream simply “Cindy and Katie”.  Two female names instantly brought in a ton of male viewers, surely hoping for something risque.  At one point the total live viewers swelled to almost 300 which is crazy considering most broadcasts Cindy or I do barely scrape double digits.

I had a bad dream last night.  I showed up at the finish line to time a race and finishers already were crossing the line. I had no timing equipment set up at this point.  The race clock had just passed 7 minutes and this was a half marathon so I had no idea what the hell was going on.  My mind raced to figure out what my options were.  The dream ended just as I concluded “I’m fcked”.

So I have described the very odd phantom smoke smell thing that was going on with me for several weeks.  At some point last week I realized I had not smelled it for a few days and I have not had it reoccur since.  There are many medical possibilities that could be related to phantom smoke.  There also is a theory it has something to do with the spirit world reaching out to you which seemed ironic since the one year anniversary of my mom’s passing happened a couple weeks ago.  I am not making any presumptions either way, I am just glad to not feel like I was just in a smoky casino anymore.  I have enough other ailments to worry about.

Our new chickens have been digging a few holes here and there as they have gotten older.  Recently they started digging at the exact same spots Betty, Wilma, and Pebbles used to, right at the corner near the lanai.   There are currently two holes there.  Quite often there will be a bird in each hole with another three or four standing near by waiting their turn to get in.  Chickens are funny.

So when I got home my immediate task was to work on the pool cleaner.  Despite putting a new set of feet on the cleaner it was going around the pool floor at a snail’s pace.  When I pulled it apart I saw a bracket that has fallen off 3 or 4 other times had worked it’s way loose again.  When I did some quick internet research I saw a recommendation to replace the inner a-frame if certain components are loose.  When I checked these components they were very loose and worn.   I was able to find a rebuild kit for 30 bucks.  I figured it was better than spending 300-400 on a new cleaner.  I am hoping this latest repair will help me squeeze another year or two out of the Hayward.

While I was out there I saw the small hawk had once again showed up, perching defiantly on a nearby fence post.  Once again the bird was unfazed by BB gun warning shots, I had to again walk at the hawk until it retreated to the back of the property but it still was hanging in a nearby tree.  I decided to try another method of deterrent.  I went inside and grabbed my drone.

I got the quadcopter airborne and walked to the back fence line.  The hawk was still in the same tree.  I steered the drone towards the bird and it immediately took off, flying to another tree.  It evidently was not a fan of the copter, it is quite noisy, like an angry swarm of bees.  I chased the hawk back and forth around the back of the property until it finally flew far away.  I’m hoping if am consistent with my hawk sorties they will learn there are better spots for them to hang out than our property.

So I was happy that it did not rain yesterday, giving the standing water an opportunity to evaporate to a good degree.  I calculated that by today the areas I could not mow on Sunday should be passable.  Well that plan was dashed when a tremendous storm rolled through last night.  The sound of water being dumped on the roof by the bucket was not music to my ears.  It was accompanied by frequent, close lightning and window rattling thunder.

About five or six times we had momentary losses of power.  This a very common summertime occurrence in Florida.  Unfortunately since we installed the Philips Hue bulbs this is a MUCH more annoying problem if it happens when you are trying to sleep.  The power to a Hue bulb is always on, the light may be off but the electronics inside are not.  When power is removed and then restored the Hue bulbs default to turning back on.  So every time the power burped the house lit up, requiring Cindy to grab her phone to turn them all off again.  I have to see if there is a way to change that default behavior, it was getting somewhat maddening.

So the stock market has had another blowout the last few days.  Luckily for me when this happens I don’t freak out although on paper I will have lost thousands of dollars in my two retirement accounts.  I am still young enough that I can view these dips as opportunities to cost average as I get to buy more mutual fund shares at a lower number through the automatic purchasing that continues to go on in the accounts.  However if I was closer to retirement age I don’t think I would be willing to have my nest egg exposed to the manipulation and robo-trading that can make these dips in the stock market much more exaggerated.

On Friday night before bed Cindy and I had a joint Periscope session going on where we just laid in bed and had random conversation with a bunch of people we don’t know.  Of course I let Cindy do most of the heavy lifting in this scenario since she is clearly the more vocal of the two of us.  I prefer to lay in the weeds and just pepper the interaction as needed to add some variety.  There is something about Periscope that is isolating and inclusive at the same time.  I don’t know if there is an app that capsulizes what modern society is becoming better than Periscope and that is not meant as a compliment.  The world is becoming a screen addicted, voyeuristic, ADD riddled bunch of virtual haters.  Sure it is fun and entertaining but so is cocaine, or so I hear.

Saturday was very chore heavy.  I started outdoors with weeding.  I knew it was going to be miserable day when the heat and humidity felt oppressive at 8:30 in the morning.  I also was overdue for a weed whacking session, despite a good portion of the grounds being either underwater or sopping wet.  I emerged from it with my lower body looking like I grew a second, wet green skin.  I also did some of the vehicle prep for the road trip, changing the oil on the Prius.  I utilized Mobil 1 synthetic for the job since it would be well over 5000 miles until I get a chance to change it again.  The air filter got swapped out for good measure

We also made another trip to Home Depot to grab another 250 pounds of sand.  200 pounds of it got pushed under the coop deck to help dry out the soppy and smelly mess.While we were out we made a very unusual pit stop to grab a couple ice cream cones.  With the heat the cone had to be consumed at a very quick pace before it melted.

We decided to skip going to the movies again this week as there was nothing compelling out and saving a few bucks leading up to the road trip was a good idea.  We instead watched Blackhat, a movie where Thor plays a super computer hacker.  For the most part I found the movie good but the transformation at the end where the computer geek suddenly becomes a ruthless action hero did not make any sense nor was it backed up by any groundwork laid out in the film prior.  It was like the director said “Oh yea, we have Thor, I guess he needs to kill some people” Anyway it pulled a potential B+ rating down to B territory for me, a decent rental.

Sunday morning we did a training brick I never tried before, a bike-run-bike combo.  A traditional duathlon is the opposite where you run-bike-run.  Again it was oppressively hot and humid.  The course I laid out was biking up to Everglades Blvd and then back to the middle school track to run two miles before riding back home.  It worked out to segments of roughly a 7 mile bike, the 2 mile run and a final 3 mile ride.

Even though I wasn’t pushing the pace super hard on the bike I was sweating like a pig during the initial 7 mile ride.  If I was sweating that much on the bike I knew running in the same conditions would be extra miserable.  This was a first on many levels.  It was the first reverse duathlon brick and also the first outdoor running I have done in at least 6 months.  As expected the first couple laps felt pretty shitty as I had some pain in the right/leg knee but nothing overly severe.  The run evened out as time went on but I still was counting down the laps, even two miles felt challenging at this point which speaks to my lack of a running cardio base.

I tried to do a relatively quick transition back to riding gear, wanting to keep the cardio pressure up.  I was a little too quick and had to do some circling in the parking lot until Cindy was ready to go.  The last 3 miles to the house felt weird with my legs not being accustomed to the different demands of riding after riding and running previously.  By the time we got back to the house I looked like I was thrown in the pool, a big sweaty pool.  I used a dip in the real pool to quickly bring down my body temperature.

On Sunday and at various points over the weekend I had to scare a hawk away although I was only mildly successful at it.  It was like the hawk knew I meant it no real harm as it ignored my repeated BB gun warning shots.  Even as I approached the bird he just hung out until I got within 20 feet.  He/she only moved a few fence posts at a time.  The good news was this hawk was small in stature.  At this point all of the chickens are getting close to full size and are too big/fast to be carried off by a small hawk.  It still makes us nervous of course as there are always more predators out there.

I have been obsessing lately about a process known as “dipping” your vehicle.  It is something I did not realize was out there until a week or so ago.  Ironically one of the big companies that does this is based in Coral Springs, right across the state.  Basically you are “painting” your car with a high tech material that is peelable like sheets of rubber if you want to remove it.

I watched a ton of videos about the process and found it pretty incredible.  It brought me back to my teenage years where I spray painted a total of three vehicles, one can at a time.  The visual impact of dipped cars can be fantastic.  The fact that it is totally reversible without damaging the original paint makes it pretty much risk free.

DipYourCar sells kits that include everything you need, including a high quality spray gun for a reasonable price, much less than any paint job you could find.  The actual process of spraying the car requires some diligent prep and masking but is nothing all that technically difficult.  Of course when I saw dipping my first thought was the Tacoma, with it’s badly deteriorating paint.  I would literally have nothing to lose although many people dip brand new cars as well since there is no problem undoing it.

I would wait until dry season kicks in down here before giving dipping a go but I definitely think it will happen.  It should be a fun experiment.  You can dip many things, including wheels, another area of the Tacoma that is in poor visual condition.

Sunday afternoon I took back outside to do a few things including mowing the grass.  The property was still wet, very wet in some spots.  When I mow in these conditions I wind up leaving muddy crop circles in certain areas.  I also have to stop regularly to clear the mow deck chute of the green globs of grass clippings that clog it. To add to the fun I was repeatedly swinging at mosquitoes that seemed adept at landing on spots of my body I could not easily reach.  I really don’t like summer in SW Florida.

Sunday evening I finally relaxed a bit playing some WoW while Cindy continued her near endless practice testing for her physical trainer exam.  She has been working very, very hard.

Last night after work I met a few of my fellow fantasy football league owners to do the draft order selection.  Basically we put 12 numbered poker chips in a bag and start pulling for order.  Since we only had 4 of the 12 owners present we also pulled for other teams by proxy.  As is pretty much the norm for me, my draft spot is not great at number 9 but my past history shows my draft order has little to do with my teams future.  Last year I had the number 12 spot and I got second place in the league, for the second year in a row.

I had three beers while I was there.  When I went in the mens room to relieve myself I had a bizarre moment.  A few seconds after I went to the urinal another guy evidently went to the toilet to take a leak as well.  All of a sudden I hear “No I’m not sending you a pic of my c*ck!”  I look over my shoulder and confirm at this point it’s just me and this burly, bearded man in there.  Being slightly buzzed I found this rather funny and I laughed.  Although I did not ask for a clarification, I am pretty sure the man was texting/urinating at the same time and he felt the need to tell someone on the other end he was relieving himself.  Presumably this third party requested the genitalia picture. As I walked out I briefly glanced at the man with what surely was a “what the fck?” expression on my face.

My short 3 day work week will lead into another conventional weekend.  I have stuff to do of course which includes some maintenance on the Prius to get it ready for our massive road trip next month.  I am hoping we manage to have a mostly rain free weekend so the massive lakes of standing water can dry up.

Yesterday was my final day off of my extended five day weekend.  In the morning I did my four day blog recap followed by a coffee/Rural King run to get a few things.  I wanted to get some sort of workout in so Cindy agreed to go in the back yard to do some head to head challenges. It was brutally hot and humid with very threatening skies nearby.

We did a several challenges outside including a couple Century circuits and one arm dead hangs before the rain drops started to fall.  We then moved inside for a wall handstand challenge.  I won all of the events except the wall handstand hold.  The Century circuits were very tight, Cindy loves to compete.

Of course we video taped all of it, we all of it except the first Century because I was a dumb ass and forgot to reinsert the SD card into the camera.

You can get a good sense of the silly aura when we workout together from this brief Cindy montage.

So the skies absolutely opened up, dropping several inches of rain on the property in a short period of time.  It instantly transformed what was dry land to instant swamp.  During the worst of it the entire front yard in front of the house mound was under water.  The chickens don’t seem to mind getting wet.  Quite often we will see them running around the yard despite steady rain coming down.

Speaking of the chickens, I forgot to mention we did out first wing clipping of the four young birds.  They are all smaller and better flyers than the six blacks and Lucy.  This was motivated by my seeing two of them by the front office window, they had flown over the four foot fence.  Cindy and I were both nervous about trimming the wings but if you do it correctly the birds don’t feel a thing.

I figured I better gather the fragments of my memory before they are lost.  Friday was my first day of my impromptu 5 day staycation.  Cindy and I started it with a DD bike ride. It was the first time I was taking my freshly modified Trek 2.1 on the road.  Earlier in the week I added a stem extension and aero bars to enhance my riding position comfort.  Despite being a much better/lighter bike, the Trek has spent most of the last two years hanging upside down in my storage shed because it just was uncomfortable to ride.  Instead my 300 dollar Dawes bike was getting all of the road time. My alterations to the Trek had the effect I was hoping for.  It felt good on the road and the higher quality and lower weight of the bike felt noticeable. The 20 mile ride went by without incident.

After we got home I headed outside to get the weeding done while Cindy attended to the chickens and some other things.  After a quick dip in the pool we were ready to head out to Costco.  We wound up getting over $200 in groceries there which is some sort of record.  Hopefully we will be well stocked for awhile.  The grocery slice of my monthly expenditure pie chart in Quicken has been getting quite large lately.

Friday my new megaphone that I ordered for Green Machine Timing showed up.  It’s smaller than the others I have for the running club, only 40 watts max power, but that is part of it’s appeal, it’s easier to carry around.  However the biggest plus for me was it uses a rechargeable lithium battery pack that is encased inside of a built in charger.  The bigger megaphones use 8 C batteries that are a pain in the ass to maintain.  Plus the housing for the batteries is very imprecise so when you have the lid closed you may not get any sound until you jiggle things around.  It’s annoying.  I no longer will have that issue. Cindy and I used it to film a funny Periscope video that she posted on FB.

Friday night was a normal pizza night.  It felt great knowing I had another four days off remaining.

On Saturday morning Cindy and I were up early to go volunteer at the kids triathlon the local triathlete group puts on.   Cindy and my primary responsibility was in the bike transition area where we helped the kids ranging in age from 7-13 stage their bikes and help them as needed during transition.  I also brought my GoPro with to film the event.  I was frustrated that I missed a lot of the little kids with a malfunction early that I got figured out later on.  You can see the kids in action here.  By the time the event was over at 9:30 it felt sweltering hot.

During the afternoon the it became quite rainy and stayed that way for most of the day.  Cindy and I kept ourselves entertained indoors.  There were no movies that came out this week that interested us enough to spend movie theater money for.  Instead we just kept things simple and enjoyed a nice meal while watching my latest Netflix rental, Tracers.  The film was basically one long parkour video but I found it entertaining enough to give an average B rating to the flick.

Sunday we did our second DD ride in three days, something I don’t think I ever did before.  It also meant that in 8 days I rode a total of 70 miles, again new territory for me.  Cindy actually cracked the century mark for those same 8 days since she did an additional 30 mile ride during the week with a friend of hers.  I strapped the GoPro on to my right handlebar for the ride.  It gives an interesting perspective/visual when combined with a soundtrack and ample captioning to fight off the boredom.

After another pool bath we were back in the car to go pick up Nicki and Sadie.  After grabbing them we made a couple stops on the way home.  Sunday afternoon Cindy was quite busy cooking.  She recorded her efforts for her YouTube channel.  I did a lot of video editing, gaming (now have 7 level 100 WoW characters) and paid my bills.

One of the things I wanted to address was the failure email I got from my DD perks account saying the automatic reload of my coffee card failed.  When I logged into my account I saw that the credit card I had associated had the wrong expiration date.  Ok, no problem, I will go in and edit the credit card information.  Well after 10 minutes of futzing around I realized that there is absolutely no way to change the CC info.  Ok, I guess I will just delete the credit card and reenter it with the correct info.  Nope, it won’t let you do that either.  The ONLY way you fix this is with a phone call to them which I made on Monday.  The call required 20-25 minutes of wait time to speak to a person.  After explaining the issue the phone rep says it will take TWO DAYS to clear the card from the system.  I asked her in disbelief “Are you serious?”.  She said it is a limitation of their current set up for credit cards and they are looking to change things in the future.  It seems so odd because in many ways Dunkin Donuts seems very modern and tech savy in their business practices.  To have such a ridiculously inefficient set up to manage credit cards seems very odd.

Monday morning Cindy and I took Nicki (and Sadie) to the vet.  I made an appointment for Nicki to have some large masses on her belly looked at further.  She has had them for awhile but they seem to be really growing and I wanted to get an updated opinion from the vet about them to see if he thought anything needed to be done at this point.  This was the same vet that did the eyelid surgery that drastically helped Nicki’s vision.

He agreed the lumps were getting pretty big but said that labs are prone to growing fatty masses as they age.  The general advice is if they are not causing the dog pain or discomfort the best course of action is to just let them be as the risk of surgery on an old dog could outweigh the benefit of removal.  I mentioned how Nicki’s bark has been sounding progressively weaker.  He said it is likely due to another old lab trait where the tissue that covers the larynx (forget medical term), becomes partially paralyzed.  The end result is difficulty in breathing.  (Nicki also pants all the time)

The vet did aspirate one of the masses to send it out for testing to be sure. (a $200 gotcha) However we basically just confirmed that Nicki is old and is having old dog issues.  I wish I could wave a wand and make it go away.  While we were there both dogs got their nails trimmed which was very needed.

When we got home I got a bug in my head to pressure wash the pool deck and cage.  I HATE this house maintenance chore but a glance at the pure green scuzz on some sections of the cage combined with my extra time off made it seem like I would be an idiot for not doing it now.  The end result was several hours shoulder/forearm burning labor as I directed the 3000 psi wand overhead with sometimes as much as an 9 foot extension hanging off of it.  It is miserable.  Doing it during the crushing heat of the afternoon added to the misery.

I wasn’t happy that at a few spots on the pool deck which we carefully prepped and double coated with pool deck stain lifted off under pressure.  It was in areas where the deck is especially smooth.  Maybe it needs to be roughed up a bit before we touch it up.  Anyway, the pool area looked tremendously better by the time I was done.  Hopefully it will be the holidays before I have to think about it again.

After I took the dogs back to Ali’s place Cindy and I chilled most of the night catching up on a backlog of dvr’d content.  For my final day of my staycation I have no major plans other than some type of workout and whatever other minor things come to mind.  We already had excitement this morning, the unwelcomed type.  There was a hawk no more than 25 feet away from the pond area the chickens were hanging under.  It was sitting in the palm tree.  It was oddly unafraid of me.  I was able to walk right up to the tree with my bb gun in hand without it moving.  I yelled at it to get lost but he only retreated a short distance away.  I then used my weapon to fire a few warning shots and again they were ineffective.  I kept walking and firing until the hawk was a 100 yards off in a tree behind the back fence line.

Yes it makes both Cindy and I nervous to have hawks scouting out the chickens.  The good thing is the property has a bunch of hiding spots for our birds and all of them are healthy, decent sized and fast.  Hopefully this and our continued warning shots makes the hawks realize there are easier targets elsewhere.

It’s hard to believe that today marks the one year anniversary of my mom passing away.  There were many torturous moments during the four day period from when my mom was found in her vehicle unresponsive till life support was removed and we watched her body shut down.  The time since then has been peppered with pain for myself, my family, and our inner circles.

There is something life changing when a parent dies. It clarifies the transience of life despite the efforts of all of us to think otherwise.  It makes you examine choices and reconsider options.  The sadness and weight of loss never goes away.  The best you can hope for is that weight sits on the end of a seesaw which is used to push your life on the other end more upward to a brighter, more appreciative, and happier life.

Below is a collection of pictures which were used at the two memorial services that were held for Mom.  I honor her by sharing them with you.  Love you Mom.