Archives November 2015

So even though yesterday was a day off from work it didn’t feel much like one.  Maybe that’s because I started off the day going into the office.  I have been trying to get something implemented at work that require it to be done off normal working hours. Cindy tagged along since we had a few errands to run on the way home.  I spent a couple hours at work spinning my wheels trying to figure out an issue that has been in my way for awhile.  The end result was once again having to punt, making me feel like I just wasted my time.  I left feeling very frustrated.

Our first stop after the office was the nearby Goodwill.  Cindy was there the other day looking for cheap children bikes.  The reason was I needed to replace the wheels on the chicken tractor, which are repurposed from an old kids bike.  The bearings on those wheels were shot and hardly wanted to roll.  Cindy picked up a bike earlier in the week but the wheels were too small.

The store had another bike with wheels that were a good match.  The $20 price tag seemed a bit high considering the brakes were permanently bent in such a way that caused them to constantly rub on the wheel.  The chain on the bike was horribly rusted as well.  If I wasn’t dealing with a charitable organization I would have went into Craigslist mode and offered them half of the price tag since it wasn’t good for anything but parts.  However the two wheels I needed were in decent shape so I paid my $20 with a smile.

After a stop at Sam’s for some grocery items we were back home where I could continue to do more work.  The first project was to do the wheel swap.  This was a little more challenging than I expected.  The old wheels came off of a single speed kids bike.  The bike we bought was a geared model.  This meant the rear wheel was a bit wider because of the hub.  I had to take a pair of vise grips and bend the frame mount points on the tractor out slightly to make it fit. The wheels are a fraction of an inch bigger than the old set so the clearance with the frame is tight but by the time I was done the tractor was once again rolling freely.

You would think with our chicken coop palace we built that the chicken tractor would be obsolete.  It actually is heavily utilized by the chickens during the day as they free range.  We have water and food in there that they utilize all day long.  They like feeling safe while eating.  The hens sometimes use the tractor as a playground, going up and down the ramp and jumping out one of the side doors that we normally have open.

After I gave the tractor a new set of wheels I pulled out my roughly 25 year old mountain bike from the small shed.  I told Cindy that I want to buy us a set of inexpensive mountain bikes so we can ride the big loop at Rookery Swamp.  My old bike just is not up to the task with two dry rotted tires, horrible brakes and a seat that is leaking impact dampening gel.

I bought this bike as a young man.  I recall riding it up and down in the street in front of my first wife’s parents home after I bought it.  I remember being very proud of the purchase.

Before relocating the bike to the roadway where it will surely be picked up by one of the many scavengers in my area I wanted to remove a couple accessories that could be useful when we get new bikes.  I carefully removed a rear cargo rack and two vertical handle bar grips that allowed me a more upright riding position for variety and comfort.  Sure it will be sad to get rid of something that has been part of my life for longer than it has not but it’s definitely well overdue.

My next task was continuing the work in transforming the shipping box my race clock arrived in into a crude carrying case.  I had started work last weekend by installing metal L brackets on each corner as well as a handle.  However in my testing with the clock inside the wood was bending dangerously, too thin to support the weight in that configuration.

During the week I went out and bought some more supplies to further reinforce the box. They included some 5/8 inch fencing boards.  My thought process was to put one board on the handle side and the bottom of the box since those were the two points supporting the majority of the weight.

I cut and attached the boards in both spots as well as attaching the front “door” section with hinges with Cindy’s help.  I thought I was going to have to go buy a latch to lock the box but Cindy made the good suggestion of taking one of the four I had installed on the chicken tractor.  I had to do some creative mounting to get the latch in place but it worked out.

I replaced the wood screws that were holding the handle in place with machine screws using nuts and washers which are much better suited to support the concentration of weight in that area.  I placed the heavy clock back in the box, closed the lid and lifted it up solely by the handle.  It felt much stronger with the additional boards able to support the weight without significant flex.  I was able to carry the clock the 200 feet from the back yard to the hobby room exclusively by the handle which was a good real world test.

I also added some secondary L brackets to some of the sides, doubling up the strength of those joints.  Cindy suggested that a set of roller wheels on one end might be a final helpful addition, allowing you to pull the box like a set of luggage if need be.  Now of course this box is not designed to be tossed around like luggage and surely would not hold up to severe abuse however I think it will manage to fulfill the basic needs I have.

Yesterday I stumbled across some old pictures on my local NAS at home of Nicki.  It inspired me to put together a memorial type video similar to what I did for mom.  Getting through the process was tough and impossible without having to reach for the tissues more than  once.

One of the perks of being a government employee is you get a lot of paid holidays off, including Veterans Day.  Veterans Day is one of those holidays that does not have a flexible date so it can be conveniently moved to a Monday each year.   As a result many years it falls right in the meat of a work week as is the case this year with it falling on a Wednesday. It makes for a different sort of week working two days, taking a one day breather and then finishing out with another quick two days.  It certainly is a schedule I could get comfortable with very quickly.

Of course tomorrow may mean a day off for me but it’s real importance is taking a moment to recognize the countless veterans that have served and continue to serve our country each and every day.  I am proud to have a veteran under my roof as well and appreciate how much she continues to give to myself and others on a daily basis.

I had yet another clean bill of health from the dentist.  I am thankful that my many horrific experiences in the dentist chair as a child and young adult transformed my dental hygiene habits for the better.  Despite it not being very PC nowadays, a little physical pain/punishment is still a very effective tool for behavior modification in my book.

One of the negatives about going to the local Retro Fitness gym is the drive back to the office.  The exit out of the parking lot does not have a traffic light.  Instead you have to try to time a left turn crossing three lanes of oncoming traffic. This is further complicated by mostly clueless drivers on Davis Blvd turning left into the lot that are not familiar with right of way rules and/or are too old to have reaction times necessary to deal with the often small gaps in traffic where they could cross but chose not to.

Quite often there will be a half dozen cars waiting to turn left out of the lot combined with another three or four waiting to turn left INTO the lot from Davis.  Up until recently I felt I had no choice but to enter into that quagmire and get progressively more angry as bad drivers compound the delay.

I recently decided to make another decision when I see a rats nest of vehicles at the exit waiting to turn left.  I now head out a rear exit of the complex and head roughly a half mile east, the opposite direction I need to go, where there is a traffic light, allowing me to make a stress free left turn.  Even though the majority of the time by the time I pass back by the noted trouble spot the parking lot traffic has cleared, I feel better choosing the simpler, less stressful route.

I have realized this is a template I have been applying across other aspects of my day to day existence. I just don’t need the hassle.

Saturday was our second race in as many weeks.  Cindy and I got to the race site a little after 5:15am.  We went right into setting up the start line.  We did things differently this time, laying the mats across the street instead of off to the side.  My thought was the mats are designed to be able to withstand a vehicle driving over them so why not set them up across the road right away to save time.  Well of course this plan turned out not to be ideal when one of the volunteers told me the mats were shifted/slightly buckled.  Evidently some idiot thought it would be cool to either accelerate or brake hard while they were going over the mats.  I should know better than to trust in people doing the right thing.  We were able to tug and push in the mats to straighten them out.

I had another equipment incident where one of the senior club members rode through the finish line before the race on his bike.  We had one set of mats set up and one other row of mats partially set up so the mat wires were partially exposed.  Well evidently he was not paying attention and somehow managed to snag one of the wires with his pedal.  This resulted in one of the timing boxes getting yanked off of the table and smashing into the ground.  He also managed to take out my GoPro which luckily is built to withstand abuse.  The timing box is another story, it is not designed to be thrown onto asphalt.

When I first tried the box it did not show a connection to the timing mats, great.  I shut down the box and redid all of the BNC connections which got the mats talking to the box but I am concerned that the impact could have done some unseen internal damage.  It was shaping up to be one of those days.

So the start of the race approached.  I headed to the start line much later than I normally would, thinking I would need much less time since the mats are already across the road.  The race started and I immediately realized I had a problem, two of them actually.  The MyLaps timing boxes are different than the Ipico boxes that I would always set the time on manually before a race.  The MyLaps boxes have an internal GPS which is used to automatically synch/set the time.  Well I realized that I got to the start line late enough that the box did not have time to do the gps synch yet which was slow due to the start line being next to a large building.  Problem two was I had given no thought to daylight savings time changing since the last race.  This is a manual setting that you have to change yourself.  The end result of these two issues was I had a file on the timing box full of incorrect start times for the runners.

So luckily I also started my stop watch at the start of the race.  I was able to use it combined with my watch which is synched to atomic time, like a GPS, to back figure what the correct start time was.  Once I had that I was able to determine that the start times were off by 1:01:56, now all I had to do was figure out how to apply an adjustment to those start times.

I thought I had seen a spot to do this in the timing software in the past all though I never had this situation come up personally before in 8 years of race timing.  I futzed around for awhile looking for a spot I could make the adjustment but came up empty.  I decided to just let it go and figure it out once I got home since we don’t utilize chip start times with official results which are based on gun time.

I had one of the running club board members shadowing me most of the race as she is goign to be part of the team that they are hoping can step in and fulfill my responsibilities.  She got a good taste of the pitfalls that can come up with any race and how fixing them is not about knowing all the answers, it’s about being a proficient troubleshooter.  I was able to get the solution to my start file issue later from the author of the timing software.  Despite doing race timing for a long time I still learn new things on a regular basis.

After getting race stuff done and eating lunch I wanted to get the dash of the SSR back together, something I tried to complete unsuccessfully Thursday night.  I pulled the truck out into the driveway earlier so the plastic/vinyl in the dash could get nice and warm, making it easier to get stuff back in place.

Despite being warm and despite me taking the dash off and putting it back on a number of times in the past it still was a struggle getting everything snapped back in place.  After a lot of grunting, sweating and frustration, a lot of which was captured on video, I was finally able to get the dash back together.

Saturday night Cindy and decided to do dinner and a movie, despite being up since 3:55 AM, which in retrospect was not a great idea.  We opted to have dinner at The Brass Tap which is only a few doors down from the theater.  They have a HUGE selection of craft beers and a nice selection of elevated bar food.  I stayed nice and boring with my beer choice, downing a couple Miller Lites.  I was not interested in toying with craft beers that could have unwanted effects on my well being the following day.

Our food was delicious but very fried.  The jalepeno corn fritters we ordered as an appetizer were filling enough to be a meal.  When combined with the fish and chips I ordered as my main dish I felt like a bloated pig.  Cindy felt even worse than I did, not because the food wasn’t good but because our bodies just aren’t accustomed to eating that sort of food in those amounts.  The two female bartenders had great personalities that really made the meal enjoyable.  Cindy and I will surely eat there again although we may skip the appetizer next time.

So I have seen all of the Daniel Craig Bond movies.  Casino Royale was GREAT, every subsequent installment of the movie seemed to be sliding downhill.  I hoped Spectre could reverse that trend.  Now as a disclaimer, the early alarm combined with alcohol and heavy dinner made me very drowsy.  During the first half of the movie my eyes were closed a lot, enough that I was fuzzy on some plot points when I woke up more during the tail end of the movie.  On the plus side, the movie had some great fight, chase, and action scenes which pretty much all Bond movies rely upon to some degree.

On the downside I just felt like the movie was dumb overall based on the parts I was conscious for.  It felt hokey and contrived.  When I was trying to evaluate the movie overall I thought about previous Bond movies, like the classic Roger Moore installments.  Looking back they certainly had things about them which would seem equally hokey and silly so maybe I am being overly critical.  Even after that extra consideration and sleepiness disclaimer I can only give a B rating to it overall, meaning it’s fine to wait until it releases on Netflix.  Based on the way things turn out it appears this is the last Daniel Craig based Bond film we will see.  I’m ok with that.

Sunday morning we awoke to more annoyingly warm and humid conditions.  The weather recently has been pissing me off.  We are over a week into November and still experiencing temps dancing around 90 degrees with high humidity.  It just is out of hand.  Despite the soupy weather I was determined to get a bike ride in to help burn off the caloric penalty from the rich dinner the night before.   Despite having a tail wind most of the way to Dunkin Donuts we were both absolutely drenched with sweat when we stepped into the heavenly AC at our halfway point.  The ride back I lead into an unrelenting headwind which doubled down on the misery.  When I got home I could hardly wait to jump into the 80 degree pool which felt quite cold since my body temperature was so elevated.

After cooling off we did a Home Depot run, where I bought an improved loppers for the impending tree trimming project and some hardware to modify the box the timing clock was shipped in.  I worked on the box modification early in the afternoon.

My goal was to transform the box the clock traveled from China in into a carrying case to transport it to and from events.  The box was constructed of a thin hardwood that reminds me of the wood that some of our low end chicken coops were constructed out of.  The sides were attached with a number of small nails which would not hold up to a lot of wear and tear.

I bought a bunch of 2 inch metal L brackets to reinforce each corner.  I screwed through the thin box  into a supplementary pieces of wood that was left over from the coop build.  The corners felt significantly stronger .  I attached a handle to the top and again screwed into a piece of backer wood for additional strength.  The hinges I bought to attach the “door” were too small so I had to stop there.  I did however put the clock in the box  to see how it felt picking it up by the handle.  I didn’t even have to get the box completely in the air to recognize the thin box wood was not going to be able to support the weight of the clock concentrated into the small handle area.  The wood flexed badly.  I am going to have to try to do some further strengthening of the handle side of the box if I want any chance of this working.  Otherwise I would have to carry the box around like a small coffin which I can do if push comes to shove but would prefer not to.

During last week Cindy took the initiative to make a sign for Nicki to mount on the memorial planter she created for my mom which I thought was very sweet.  On Sunday afternoon we mounted it out there, under mom’s name.  The picture that Cindy snapped of Sadie in front of the memorial where it looks like she is looking at the names made me cry as I posted it to social media.  It still seems hard to believe that they are both gone.  I sometimes find myself wondering what Sadie thinks happened, if she realizes she will never see Nicki again or if she thinks she is just on vacation and will just walk through the door one day.

During dinner last night we watched my latest Netflix rental, Citizen Four.  I knew it was regarding Edward Snowden, I did not know it was actually a documentary with Edward Snowden events going down in real time.  I had never heard that journalists had documented this and certainly didn’t know Snowden was on film describing what he knew, how he knew it and why he felt it was important to make it public.

What he revealed for someone like me, who already has a very dark opinion of just how far the federal government will go to manipulate the public, was not all that shocking.  In a nutshell, the NSA has been recording/tracking almost any sort of communication the American public has been participating in for a number of years, all under the umbrella of the Patriot Act and the catch all “preventing terrorism” justification.    It’s disappointing that under Obama, who railed against abuse of government powers under the Patriot Act, the abuse if anything has only accelerated.  I suggest you watch the documentary to educate yourselves.  Basically know that if you type, text or talk into a device that is connected to any voice/data network more than likely someone associated with the federal government has the ability to review it at any point they deem fit. I’d give the film an A.

Last night I totally expected to fall asleep during the Eagles/Cowboys game, which I did at various points.  Luckily I woke up to see the last third of the game which was filled with suspense.  As far as Eagles/Cowboys game go, I went into the contest caring very little about the outcome, perhaps the least I have cared in the last 10 years.  Both teams just are not very good.  For the Cowboys their problems are mostly rooted in being hammered by injuries.  The Eagles just have not been able to get this mismatched pool of individual talents to play well as a team consistently.

When the Eagles kicked a late field goal to go ahead I was excited but worried that there was far too much time on the clock.  Having the Eagles D shut down a team when they have to at the end of the contest is as rare as a Blood Moon.  Once again they failed to get the job done, mostly thanks to Byron Maxwell and his two pass interference penalties on the drive, further reinforcing his status  as one of the worst free agent signings of 2015.  He has shown me NOTHING except a tendency to get beat when it matters, take stupid penalties, and tackle poorly while he tries to rip the ball out instead of getting the player to the ground first and foremost.  When the Cowboy kicker bounced the game tying field goal through the uprights with a second or two to go I assumed the Birds were now set up for yet another crushing defeat.

I was actually fuzzy about the modified NFL overtime rules so when the Eagles went down and scored a quick touchdown I thought the Cowboys still were allowed a chance to possess the ball.  When I saw the FINAL status flash up on the scoreboard I realized that only applies if the team kicks a field goal on their first possession.  If a touchdown is scored it’s game over.  I was so tired that my celebration was silent and was little more than an internal grin.  It was nice to get revenge over the Cowboys for the horrible beat down they put on the Eagles in week two.  In the game of , who is the worst team” tag in the NFC East, it seems like for now the Cowboys have taken the lead. How bout them Cowboys?

Yesterday Kristen, one of our two aracuana chickens laid her first egg.  Her breed is also called “Easter eggers” because they lay greenish/blue eggs.  Cindy was very excited to see Kristen started laying.  In total we got 9 eggs yesterday.

Cindy also recorded a bunch of quick hitting exercise videos for her YouTube channel yesterday. The 2-3 minute long videos are a good fit for today’s ADD riddled society that is only able to consume content in small segments until something else grabs their attention.

This weekend I have another race to time.  After I get past that I will only have 6 events left although the next one is the Thanksgiving race which is typically the largest event of the year which is always a large pain in the ass.  My attitude now however has shifted as I can simply tell myself that the end is near.

This weekend I need to get some stuff done like putting the SSR back together and working on converting the shipping box the timing clock came in into a carrying case.  I also have the need for the awful tree trimming project to take place before Thanksgiving.  Of course with the refusal of the record setting hot and humid weather to cooperate, that chore sounds even more miserable than normal.

I am hoping if I am not running on fumes to do a dinner/movie date with Cindy on Saturday night.  Sadie will be coming over as well to help keep things lively.

My SSR instrument cluster showed up yesterday.  The guy I sent it to was extremely fast in turning it around. The new silver face plate for the instruments looks cool.  Despite the lack of daylight courtesy of the time change, I thought I would take a shot at putting the truck back together last night.

I got the cluster back in but gave up trying to reinstall the dash cover.  The lack of light and cramped working conditions resulted in me getting nowhere for 15 minutes or so.  This job is actually best done in warm temps and with direct sun to help soften up the plastic/vinyl that has to be manipulated.

Despite there being no sunlight, by the time I was done I was sweating through my shirt, a tribute to the stupidly warm temperatures we are still continuing to experience despite now being into November.  The temperatures have been at or above record setting levels.  I believe the high yesterday was 91 degrees.  Usually by this time of year we have had one or two real cool fronts blow through.  There has not been one yet this year.  It may seem odd to hear a Florida resident bitching about it being too warm but after the 6 month long summers I really do look forward to temperatures and humidity levels that don’t invoke instant sweat responses when stepping outside.

I neglected to mention yesterday that Monday night I did a dual broadcast of my latest head shaving session, recording it for YouTube as well as broadcasting the event on Periscope simultaneously.  It was an attempt to add variety to my growing collection of head shave videos.  I’m not sure how successful it was.

Nothing to say today for no particular reason.

Yesterday Cindy told me a wooden box was delivered.  The only thing I knew of that would be coming was the timing clock I ordered last week which I did not expect yet since it was shipping direct from China.  Well I was pleasantly surprised when I cracked the box at home and saw it was indeed my clock.  I was very pleased with the turnaround time.

So before dinner I wanted to take the clock out and give it a try.  I pulled out the clock which was pretty heavy since it is dual sided with large 8″ high LEDs.  After attaching the tripod mounting foot I stuck the clock on the tripod and plugged it in.  The typically sparse Chinese directions indicated AC power is controlled by the green toggle button which I pressed.  The clock remained dark.

I went into a series of double checks, making sure I had power to the strip, reviewing the instructions and even moving the clock near another outlet to try, still dead.  I unlatched the bottom of the clock which allows it to easily swing open to look at the interior.  The transformer had a little green LED that was illuminated meaning power was getting inside the unit.  I closed the clock and ate dinner quite frustrated at the potential process of returning the clock that evidently did not survive the ride from China intact.

After dinner I went out and grabbed my voltmeter from the shed.  I wanted to do some basic troubleshooting in the remote chance I could find something obvious wrong.  Well as I was taking a closer look at the interior I noticed something strange.  A brown wire in the top left corner of the circuit board looked like it had broken loose from it’s solder point.  Looking at how the LED’s were connected, which appeared to be in series, a disconnected wire could definitely exhibit the symptom I was seeing.

Although my electronics repair skills are basic at best, I do have a soldering iron on hand which I pulled out along with my roll of solder.  Luckily the solder point was large and did not require much precision.  I was able to melt the joint and reattach the displaced wire.  After letting it cool for a minute or so I plugged the clock box in and crossed my fingers before hitting the green button.

The clock jumped to life, lighting up the room in a red glow with it’s ultra-bright leds, success!  I put the clock back on the tripod and messed around with the remote control which is used to adjust the clock.  After a few minutes I understood how the process worked.  It is simple and not as convenient as having controls directly on the clock to adjust time but it works.  The gotcha is you HAVE to make sure one of the two remote controls is physically attached to the clock in some manner.  I f you would show up at a race without the remote in your possession you would be shit out of luck. I messed around with the clock for awhile, practicing setting the time, which after a few tries doesn’t take long at all.  The brightness of the digits was pretty overwhelming although outdoors that power will be an advantage, making the clock visible even in the brightest of conditions.

The clock has the ability to run off an external battery but I think instead I will use a portable, rechargeable power supply to give it juice during use.  It cuts down on the weight of the already heavy box.

It was satisfying that I was able to fix the issue myself, avoiding what surely would have been a frustrating return process.  Of course there is a tinge of hypocrisy I feel, supporting the Chinese low cost manufacturing juggernaut by buying a clock that probably would have cost me double if I bought it from an American manufacturer.  At this point in my timing business saving dollars outweighs my made in America disposition. If I ever get the business comfortably in the black I will be more inclined to pay a little more to keep my dollars more inside the continental United States.

Last nights Walking Dead had absolutely nothing in it related to the incredible drama that went down last week.  Instead it went into a back story of what happened to Morgan after Rick and the gang ran across him after he had crossed over to crazy town a few seasons back.  Normally leaving the audience hanging after such a dramatic episode would be annoying however I think the backstory they portrayed was so well done and interesting that by the end of it I was totally fine having to wait another week to find out what comes next in the main storyline.

Cindy and I got up a few minutes before 4AM for Saturday’s race.  Cindy wanted to transform us into zombies since it was Halloween.  She did a pretty incredible job for only 5-10 minutes of work.  My 25 year + old Grateful Dead concert shirt was the perfect accessory for the look.

When we got on site we had to get our bearings since this was a first year race.  There were several issues like power that was supposed to be run for us not being there and the onsite bathrooms being locked until 20 minutes before race time that were annoying but outside my realm of responsibility.

This race was unique because the start and finish line were at the same spot.  I timed the race with the same set of mats using one file for the start and another for the finish.  It worked out well from my perspective.

My timer buddy John and his family were at the race which was cool.  It’s not often that I get to talk timing with someone who actually knows how much of a pain in the ass it is.  He had let me borrow one of his timing clocks for the CC meets we did so I had it with to return to him.

My timing went fine with no hardware failures, the only errors coming from the human variety with runners switching bibs.  The awkward interactions I anticipated were not as prevalent as I expected which was good.  There were a couple people I could tell were off put by my decision to leave the team but for the most part it was business as usual which is fine by me.

I had a few brief conversations with some board members and although noone is happy about me leaving, they understand the reasons behind it. It felt weird in a good way knowing this was the first and last time I would be timing the event.  It seems surreal that in three months I will be able to abandon 4AM alarms and all of the work/stress that precedes each and every race day.

It was funny going into Dunkin Donuts in our zombie make up.  As you can imagine it merited more than few glances and smiles.

When we got home post race work took us up until lunch time.  After eating we both headed out into the heat of the day to get outdoor chores done.  We were joined out there once again by the sandhill cranes that are becoming more and more trusting of us.  We have gotten within 10-15 feet of them although the key is to act like you aren’t paying attention to them.

After finishing up the weeding and other stuff I decided to hop on the tractor and mow the back of the property.  I decided to go a step further and mow some of the property beyond the fence line which literally may only get done once or twice a year.  The lack of frequency means the area is almost jungle-like as I was mowing down grass that was three feet high or more at spots.  Mowing these spots is extremely time consuming.  Not only do you have to go at a snail’s pace, you have to mow each spot repeatedly, a minimum of two to three times until it is all knocked down to ground level.  Thank goodness I don’t suffer from allergies like I once did, there were bushels of organic material thrown into the air.  The mowing is a precursor to another horrible yard maintenance task that we have to do shortly, the annual tree trimming extravaganza.

Halloween night Cindy and I were both beat from the combo of getting up early to time the race combined with the work around the house.  We decided to skip going to the movies and instead watched our current Netflix rental, The Gambler, with Marky Mark.   The character he plays is not likable at all, a degenerate gambler that comes from a family of entitlement.  He plays the role well but this character was so unlikable overall that it pulled down my opinion of the movie to a B.

Sunday night Cindy and I finished watching Boogie Nights, another MM film which I never saw believe it or not.  The 70’s time period and copious porn simulation in the movie of course made for good entertainment but by the end things got pretty dark and depressing.  I’d still give it a B+ overall.

Oh, we kept our streak of zero trick or treaters for the last decade alive Saturday night.  Not a single soul appeared at the door.

The time change over the weekend allowed us a welcomed and needed extra hour of sleep on Sunday.  We decided to get out and do the same four mile run we did last week.  My expectation was it would feel slightly more comfortable than the week before since that is the natural course of things.  When we pulled into the park we saw cones and people running with race bibs on, evidently there was a race going on as well at that time.

We started out running against the direction the racers were going, seeing some familiar faces along the way.  We were surprised by the amount of people walking the “race” even though it was only a 5K distance.  Running among the racers had an undesired side effect of me running faster than I normally would during the first two mile lap.  By the time we started the second loop I was already feeling miserable.  The faster pace to that point combined with the annoyingly warm and humid weather considering it was November 1st was doing a number on me.

Lap two was pure drudgery, I had to declare it as a NTZ (no talk zone) about half way through it.  When I declare NTZ that means I would prefer Cindy did not speak but if she does she can expect no verbal response or acknowledgement from me.  When I am in the midst of feeling that shitty I just don’t want to communicate.  When the end of the second lap drew close I accelerated only slightly, I just had nothing in the tank.  I was very, very glad to be done.

After a DD stop we headed to Home Depot and Rural King, a near weekly occurrence.  We loaded up on a number of things including an electric pressure washer.  Regular blog readers know of my years of pressure washing hell with my gas powered pressure washer.  This electric model is much lighter and about the half the pressure of the gas washer.  We bought it so Cindy can easily use it for routine cleaning without the hassle of the gas washer and less chance of damaging surfaces with 3000 PSI.

We also bought stuff to provide some lighting in the chicken coop.  The chickens have been waiting till the very edge of darkness until putting themselves to bed.  As a result when they go into the coop it is very dark and they are unable to see well enough to get themselves situated on the perch.  Cindy and I have been going out and placing the stragglers which isn’t a good long term solution.  The plan is using a timer and an LED bulb to keep the inside of the coop lit shortly after dusk to the birds can get to bed normally.

When we got back home we went out before lunch and installed/deployed/spread the various things we purchased.  During the afternoon I had mostly indoor things to attend to, including paying my bills.  Later in the afternoon I spent close to a half hour just sitting in the yard watching the chickens and the cranes in the backyard.   It was peaceful.

While we filmed a video Sunday targeted to let people know where their eggs come from there was this funny moment caught on tape when Pumpkin decided she didn’t want to sit on Cindy’s lap.

I had a a few different times over the weekend where I was thinking about Nicki, picturing her walking around the pool deck or sleeping in one of her beds only a couple weeks ago.  The thoughts brought instant moisture to my eyes as I redirected my mind to some other subject.