Archives January 2016

Last night I did not watch one second of the State of the Union address.  I instead passed the time doing data work for the half marathon and then fell asleep watching a home improvement show on HGTV.   I just had no interest in Obama’s final SOTU speech which is always filled with skewed numbers, partisan clapping, and fluff.  Unless Bernie Sanders somehow manages to beat the odds and take down the Hilary juggernaut for the democratic presidential nomination I really am sort of burned out on divisive, toxic, corrupt American politics that excel at little else than manipulating the majority of the general population while quietly stuffing the pockets of those that own the politicians.

Cindy and I still watch some reality tv shows, one of which is The Biggest Loser.  For some reason some genius decided the show needed to be completely rebranded this season.  They redid the house, the gym and the logo for the show which I guess is fine, although I think the new logo is really unimaginative and dumb.  What wasn’t fine was the loss of Alison Sweeney as the host of the show.  It all seems foreign without her there.  She was such a good source of positive energy, it is really disappointing to see that removed. I have to admit I also found it intriguing seeing how they changed Ali’s outfit, hairstyle and make up for each segment of the show.  I enjoyed discussing what I liked and disliked about her look in each scene with Cindy.

The show has undergone many changes throughout the seasons that mostly involved different trainers and changes to some of the rules.  Some of them were good some were not.  This latest change feels like the biggest yet and my initial feedback is I don’t like it.  Watching obese people both succeed and fail towards their goal of weight loss is interesting tv for sure but certain cast members help define the show.  Ali was one of them.

Cindy has a rare trait, she actually loves to clean and organize.  Yesterday she got went on one of her kicks where she targets various areas for clean up.  She reorganized the kitchen pantry and our walk in closet.  The closet work was extensive since it involved pulling in one of the chest of drawers from the spare bedroom and relocating it to the closet where it will house a lot of Cindy’s clothes that to this point were residing inside of some wash baskets.  She put a lot of time and energy into the work just like everything else she does.  I’m lucky to be the ultimate benefactor from her efforts.

I could hardly believe my replacement Ring showed up already yesterday considering I ordered it Saturday afternoon.  I guess having an Amazon warehouse in Florida does have some advantages although I don’t like having to pay sales tax on most of their stuff now.  You can see what my video feed from the Ring looks like since it took a shot from my falling ladder.

My plan is to put the new Ring at the front door.  I will try to first take apart the damaged device to see if I can somehow get the picture back in focus.  Even if I can’t I will redeploy it at a different location for shits and giggles.

Tonight I will start working on getting the half marathon numbers organized.  This race has more demands when it comes to bib number assignment than most.  The first 200 bib numbers are “special” and are assigned to elite runners.  Then there are random numbers that are permanently assigned to  “lifetime” race members, something they offered years and years ago.  Finally you have the meat and potatoes of the race field which get assigned to numbers 201 and above which then are sorted alphabetically and assigned in numeric order.   This will be just the start to a very data entry intensive few days.

Just like the last several years, I once again did not watch one second of the college football championship.  I just can not make myself interested in college football for reasons unknown to me.  Maybe it’s because I only attended college for three months.  However to keep my man card I did feel required to at least know who won the game and a few highlights of how it happened.  Go Bama…

Saturday morning Cindy helped me get started on the somber job of putting away the exterior Christmas decorations, an annual depressing project.  Cindy helped me get most off the lights off the trees out front before she had to go inside to get ready to leave for a seminar.  I moved to the entryway to the house where I had my “smart” app controlled icicles hanging.

I had my smaller ladder out so I could reach the lights that were maybe 10-11 feet high.  I had the ladder haphazardly placed unevenly.  One leg was on the concrete landing  and the other on the stone covered landscape strip.  The ladder was against the high wall of the house with only one leg touching as a result.  I figured I could just use my cat-like balance to quickly unclip the lights from the gutter.

So I have a long and dangerous history of ladder stunts.  During my adult life I have put myself in precarious positions on them repeatedly, often a couple stories up in the air.  Every single time I was able to survive the situation unscathed, since I was only a few feet off the ground I used even less caution than I normally do.

Well there was no warning this time. As I reached to unclip the farthest point the ladder was under me one moment and falling down the next.  I instinctively reached for something to break my fall, which happened to be the gutter.  In a quick symphony of banging, crashing and creaking I was back down on the ground with a nice contusion/gash across my left shin which of course immediately started to seep blood.  The one plant out front was a little smushed from the ladder and some stones were thrown out in the yard.  The gutter I grabbed was bent as well, luckily I was able to push it more or less back into shape.

I ignored my injury and kept working.  I couldn’t believe Cindy didn’t hear it.  When she came out and was ready to leave she was horrified to see my bloody shin.  She quickly cleaned and bandaged my gash.  She felt guilty, feeling like if she wasn’t inside I wouldn’t have hurt myself.  I assured her this was 100% due to my stupidity. I wished her a safe trip to Bradenton where the seminar was being held.

I later discovered there was an additional, much more concerning casualty to my ladder stupidity, my Ring smart doorbell.  Cindy had sent me a text saying I needed to wipe the camera lens off, she said it looked like it had condensation on it.  I poked my head out the door and saw the damage.  It looks like somehow one of the legs of the ladder smashed right into the doorbell, breaking a plastic casing above the camera and bending the metal casing around the button.  Although I did not see any visible damage to the camera itself obviously the impact somehow fcked it up as well.  I fruitlessly tried futzing with the Ring a bit, hoping a couple Fonzie like smacks would undo whatever damage was done.  I was so frustrated with myself that my leg injury wasn’t enough of a lesson to practice better ladder safety, I now had to pay a financial penalty as well as a new Ring was ordered that afternoon.

As I said, removing all of the holiday lights outside was depressing, but the set I hated removing the most was the big bulbed, colorful led lights we bought for the chicken coop.  I gave serious consideration to just leaving the those lights up but I decided I wouldn’t be the weird neighbor that leaves Xmas lights for months on end.  The chickens huddled around me as I removed the lights.  I don’t think they were happy about it either.

So like I said, Cindy was gone for most of the day, leaving me a rare weekend day left to my own devices.  It seemed like I immediately flipped into my old routine when I was living solo.  Of course I buzzed around the house tending to a number of items but I also found the time to do a random physical challenge on video and even pose for a stupid selfie wearing the George Washinguns tank top Patrick sent me for Christmas.  For whatever reason this sort of behavior happens most frequently when I am alone.

Late in the afternoon I had another first, loading Sadie into the SSR for her first ever ride in the vehicle, despite me owning the truck for over four years.  I had an edict that no dogs were allowed in the SSR due to my wanting to keep it as pristine as possible.  For whatever reason, that edict expired and after putting a seat cover and towel over the passenger seat, I had Sadie jump in for her first convertible experience.

It took awhile for Sadie to find her optimal position but once she did she seemed to enjoy having a total open air driving experience.  The SSR had not been driven by me for a bet closing in on two months.  The clutch still felt like it had some air in it, releasing closer to the floor than I was used to.  It still felt good to hear the exhaust note rumbling behind us as we did a coffee run to help me kill my appetite so I could wait until Cindy got home later to eat dinner.

Cindy’s drive home was treacherous, taking her through a severe storm that actually resulted in a tornado touching down in the Cape Coral area.  It was the sort of storm you get in the middle of summer, not January.  When she got home we ate dinner while watching our latest Netflix rental, Air, that starred Darryl from The Walking Dead.  The premise for the movie seemed interesting, the Earth’s atmosphere is toxic, forcing mankind to retreat underground, but both Cindy and I found the movie very hard to follow.  Darryl’s co-star was a black guy with an accent that I have seen in other films.  For some reason the director didn’t think it was important for the audience to be able to understand much of the dialogue.  Despite my having the volume up quite loud,  we found ourselves looking at each other saying “what did he say” repeatedly.  It was very annoying and detracted from what was already an average at best flick. I’d give it a B.

On Sunday morning we originally hoped to get out on our new mountain bikes but the rainy weather made us redirect those plans.  Instead we got shit done around the house and did our normal weekend run to Rural King and Home Depot.  The rainy, cool weather made the entire day feel sort of blah.

I found myself watching the final half of the Vikings/Seahawks playoff game.  It is a rare thing for me to watch NFL playoff football if the Eagles are not involved in it.  The one exception is if the game is played in bad weather, I LOVE bad weather games.  In this particular case the weather was clear but it was freeze your ass off cold.  At the start of the game the temperature was -6 degrees.  The artic cold made for an odd visual as the players lined up for each play.  You would see their breath freezing as it exited, making it look like there were 22 angry bulls on the field.    As you would expect the cold weather kept the score low.  The Vikings were in position to win the game with 30 seconds left when they drove down to chip shot field goal distance.  The Viking kicker, who already made three much longer field goals, choked hard, pulling the 27 yard field goal left, handing the Vikings a crushing defeat.  Wow I can only begin to imagine how low he feels today.

Cindy and I tended to various things throughout the day.  I began getting my ducks lined up for the half marathon that goes down this upcoming Sunday.  I have a pretty solid mental game plan of how it will all go down but two of the last three years I have run into some huge unexpected issues on race day.  I am taking more precautions this year to ensure my last year of timing this event goes as smoothly as possible.

Yesterday I got word that the finish line arch I had bought used last year had completed it’s refurbishment process.  You may recall the arch had a section where the paint was flaking off and it needed to be rebranded for GMT.  I found a place down in Texas that was willing to do the work so I shipped it off to them a couple months ago.

The top 2/3 of the arch has been completely replaced.  The painted 45 degree area has been replaced with a dark green, non-painted material.  The yellowed white top section was removed and replaced with black which will hold up better, showing less dirt/wear.   The areas where the logos go now are branded with GMT however the signage is velcro attached, meaning if there was a situation where an event wanted their own branding on the arch it could be accommodated. I should have the arch back sometime next week.  I look forward to seeing it in action sometime later in 2016.

During the week Cindy has been working on getting the indoor Xmas decorations put away.  Last night when I got home we completed the task by disassembling and bagging up the two artificial trees, returning them to their 11 month sentence in the small shed.  As always, removing the holiday cheer from the house brings a degree of sadness to my heart. This weekend we will complete the dirty deed by taking down the outside decorations as well.  This years decorations were the best ever in my opinion.

This weekend in addition to pulling down lights I have to do a major server upgrade at the office.  Luckily I should be able to work at the office from home thanks to the wonders of robust remote control.  We also would like to get out to the movies.  The last movie was saw was Star Wars in NYC, the last movie we went out to see down here was probably 6-7 weeks ago, an eternity for us.

Yesterday the Stern Show announced Riley Martin, a long time participant on the Stern channels had died.  Riley claimed he had been abducted by aliens many times and told his story in his very unique manner. If you want to read the story go here.  Riley was also a raging alcoholic and did a lot of his shows shit faced drunk which added to the entertainment factor.  I found it odd that he actually died before Christmas but the show was asked to not make it public until yesterday for some reason.

Riley always complained about not having money.  One of the ways he made money was to hand draw “symbols” for people willing to pay for them.  According to Riley the symbols would be the only way earthlings would be able to get on the mothership that is parked out around Jupiter when the end of days comes to our planet.  I almost bought one yesterday as Riley had some stock leftover but when I saw the price had risen to almost 50 bucks I thought better of it.

I will definitely miss hearing Riley’s unmistakable voice on the Stern show.  I can only hope that he somehow wound up in the big spaceship in the sky.  Rest well, friend Martin, rest well.

Yesterday I also heard a segment on the show where Howard had a doctor of his in.  One of the things they talked about was how Howard was having a number of odd symptoms that he had undergone a battery of testing for without any definitive diagnosis.  This doctor told Howard to get his mercury levels tested.  He suggested this after hearing how Howard had started on basically a pescatarian diet (fish only).  Well Howards levels were indeed high and once he changed his diet his symptoms improved.

Cindy and I have a VERY seafood heavy diet.  I would estimate 5-6 meals a week have fish as the main protein.  When I looked up some details of the symptoms of high mercury levels it raised a lot of red flags.  Memory, concentration, vision, and numbness issues are just a few of the possible symptoms that jumped out at me.  I shared this with Cindy.  She was very surprised as well.  The end result of this will be our diet getting more balance with us using more plant based protein sources instead of leaning so heavily on seafood.  It will be interesting to see if the some of the symptoms that we instinctively write off to old age start to improve.

Last night I drove home, changed clothes and then headed right back out with Cindy to meet Katie and her boyfriend for dinner.  I was worried that since it was now officially the worst of snowbird season we would be treated to a horrible wait at Carrabbas.  Luckily we only had to wait around 15 minutes to get a table.

While we were waiting I grabbed myself a beer and a sangria for Katie to celebrate her 22nd birthday.  After we sat down at our table we actually had a manager come over and card Katie, worried they had served alcohol to a minor.  I assured the woman she wasn’t a minor and I was the one who purchased the drink on her behalf anyway, relieving any blame from our waitress for not carding Katie.  Katie does look young so it wasn’t surprising.

I went very simple with my meal, getting a bowl of whole wheat spaghetti.  It was something I hadn’t had at Carrabbas for a long time but it hit the spot.  Everyone else seemed to enjoy their meals as well.  We had a good time.  Cindy drove me home despite the marginal effect three Bud Light drafts had on me.

So yesterday Obama once again flexed his executive order muscle, single handily implementing universal background checks for gun ownership, eliminating the silly loophole that lets anybody with a pulse buy a gun if they do it at a gun show as well as some other restrictions.   There is a very odd situation that seems to arise when it comes to the issue of background checks for gun ownership.

Every poll you see indicates a strong majority of Americans are fine with more stringent background checks being implemented.  Despite this support, any attempt to implement this through congress has been derailed, backed by strong NRA lobbyist influence.  Personally I would rather the president not use executive orders to implement this sort of policy.  History shows however this is a common thing with 2nd term presidents as they have nothing to lose.  When you are the president that is cursed with an obstructionist congress, these orders seem to be the only way to push any change through whatsoever.

I also find it hypocritical that many of the gunners are probably the same people that stood up and applauded that the FAA now requires all drone owners to register their toy aircraft with the federal government.  You have to disclose all of your personal information and are then assigned an ID number that has to be affixed to the drone.  If gun owners were asked to do the same thing they would have a shit fit.  It’s all so silly.

Some gun supporters will try to prop up an argument that background checks would have done nothing to red flag most of the mass shootings that have occurred over the last decade which is probably true.  However this again is not seeing the forest through the trees.  In the big picture, putting consistent, basic screening procedures in place for everyone interested in gun ownership is a greater good principle that overall will help prevent at least some degree of unwarranted gun ownership.   I mean think about it, why do we require people to get a drivers license if accidents still happen?  The answer is so there is at least some base standard for competency to be able to operate a vehicle.

Finally, take a look at this clip from 1999 when an executive vice president of the NRA testified before congress that universal background checks are a good thing and should be implemented.  If it was a good thing in 1999 why is it a bad thing in 2016?  Again, the logic has flown out the window.

Background checks will not stop gun violence in the United States and ironically, actions like Obama implemented yesterday actually causes a huge surge of gun buying as some people believe the government is going to take their guns away somehow.  Regardless, most people realize that background checks should be consistent and not situational.  If you don’t have a criminal record or a history of mental illness buy as much deadly force as you feel is necessary, just do it in an above board way. If you are going to walk around with something that is able to extinguish a life in an instant, I don’t think jumping through a small hoop to do so is too much to ask.

Yesterday the mountain bike we ordered for Cindy showed up.  I would have gladly put it together for her but Cindy is quite handy and was eager to do it herself.  The full suspension bike was fully assembled by the time I got home and looked sharp.  We are both looking forward to giving our bikes a real world test at the swamp sometime this weekend.

Last night when I got home I drug one of the rubber timing mats into the dining room and attached it to a timing box.  The upcoming half marathon is the most complicated event I time each year.  The extra distance and high profile adds extra pieces to the puzzle.  One of those pieces is an announcer mat.

As the runners approach the finish line I have a dedicated timing box and line of mats set up.  They are connected to a laptop that is placed in front of the finish line announcer.  As runners cross over the mats it pops their name on the laptop so their names can be announced before they cross the finish line, a nice perk for participants.

Since this is the first year I have timed the half marathon with anything besides Ipico timing equipment I needed to test out what I needed to do to duplicate this scenario with MyLaps gear.  I got the announcer mat working.  It requires a few additional steps compared to what I used to do with Ipico but it should work fine.

Today is Cindy’s daughter Katie’s birthday today.  She is 22.  In some ways Katie’s situation reminds me of myself at her age, in the midst of trying to figure out what exactly I wanted to do with my life.  She is a very talented, smart girl with a funny personality so I think she has a bright future ahead of her, whatever direction she chooses.  To celebrate we are all going out to dinner tonight.  Whenever Cindy and Katie get together both of them turn up the energy level in each other. I’m sure there will be lots of smiles and laughter to go around.

So this was definitely one of the most memorable New Year’s Eve celebrations I can remember for quite awhile.  When I got home from work I changed into the same suit I have owned for something like 25 years.  You would think a suit of this age would be in poor shape but since I wear a suit so infrequently it is still in pristine condition.

We arrived on site for the wedding at the Ritz, a place I never visited, about 15 minutes before the 7:30 wedding was scheduled to start.  My hatred of valet parking made me try to seek out a spot myself until a valet flagged me down and said it is valet only.  He addressed my dislike by letting us know there was no extra charge for valet for wedding guests.  I unparked myself and then had to wait in a lengthy line for a valet to be handed our keys.

Once we went inside I instantly admired the beautiful hotel interior, made even better by the lavish Christmas decorations.  We quickly saw a bunch of familiar faces since a large portion of the guests are local members of the running club.  After a short wait we were escorted out to beach where the ceremony was being held.  There was a beautiful lighted stage that the ceremony was going to take place on along with seating for 200-300 people.  I couldn’t even begin to imagine the costs involved in putting on such an event.

Despite a beautiful ceremony I managed to find myself feeling annoyed and angry.  The anger was from people a short distance down the beach that did not have the common sense or courtesy to stop firing off their fcking fireworks during the ceremony.  I mean really, how is it possible for people to be that inconsiderate?  I really felt like sprinting over there, suit and all and inserting a bottle rocket down their throat.  I mean wtf, is it really that much to ask them to wait 20 minutes until they fire off their shitty fireworks?

The much warmer than normal December weather made for some sweaty conditions during both the ceremony and the cocktail hour afterward, both of which were held outdoors.  Once alcohol was available I didn’t waste any time downing a couple beers in quick succession to help take the edge off my normal social anxiety.  Cindy drank early on but was our designated driver so she stopped early in the night.

We were then lead into the main reception hall which was exquisite.  There were a couple cool high tech spots.  One was a digital picture wall where wedding guests could draw their own wedding wishes and have them saved.  There also was a digital photo booth which had increasingly funnier pictures as more alcohol was consumed during the night.

I was drinking pretty steadily all night, mixing alcohol types, never a great idea.  I had Bud Light, white wine, champagne, and some of Cindy’s vodka and cranberry cocktails.  I was drunk for sure but not incapacitated.  Of course as is often the case when I drink, Cindy drug me onto the dance floor where I make a fool out of myself but care very little about it.

Before I knew it, midnight had arrived which Cindy and I rung in with the traditional kiss along with popping a number of the balloons that were dropped from above.  Normally after the ball drops NYE parties start to dissipate but when they are combined with wedding receptions that wasn’t the case.  We were probably there until close to 2AM.  Not only did Cindy get to drive me home we also dropped off another couple that were on the way home, they were both pretty hammered.

Like I said I was drunk but not smashed, but much like last year after the Oktoberfest, I had a very bad reaction once I got put in the passenger seat of the car.  It wasn’t Cindy’s driving but for whatever reason I seem to get acute car sickness once I drink a significant amount of alcohol anymore.  A couple times I had her stop the car so I could potentially “purge”, but I never did.  Instead I managed to get home intact by laying the seat back while Cindy drove with my window open.  The fresh air seemed to help subdue the nausea.

We didn’t actually fall asleep until something ridiculous like 4:30AM which is my latest bedtime in maybe forever.  The record setting late bedtime resulted in an equally record setting late wake up.  After letting the chickens out of the coop about 8AM I collapsed back in bed and did not rise again until 11:40AM.  I could not believe I slept half of the day away.  It was not a feeling I enjoyed and I immediately wondered how some “party people” do this sort of thing regularly and enjoy it.  I felt like death.  Even so, I was thankful for Jake and Colby allowing us to be part of their beautiful wedding ceremony.  It was certainly a night to remember.

Even though I was dehydrated and groggy I had to be somewhat productive on Friday.  I hated that I slept so late.  During the afternoon I drug myself outside and did some yard work.  Cindy and I headed out to run some errands as well.  One of the places we planned to stop was Costco.  We were surprised to see they were closed New Years Day.  No big deal, we figured we would just stop at Sam’s instead.  I was even more surprised to see it was closed as well, considering the Wal-mart right up the street was open.  Oh well.

On Saturday I still was feeling like crap.  I actually danced around like an idiot enough at the wedding that my knees hurt, ruling out any endurance training.  Instead I decided to knock another item off my winter project list, weed whacking the entire fence line.  Before I tackled this project I did the normal weed whacking which takes an hour alone.  By the time I tacked on the fence line I was out there a ridiculous 3 hours.  I had to refill the spool three times along the way, fence whacking chews up line like mad.  Since I do the fence line so infrequently it was very slow going in spots as I beat down thick and high growth of unwanted weeds.  Some areas took tons of back and forth passes as I knocked down the shit in stages.  It was miserable and did a good job of adding to the stiffness and inflammation I was already feeling in my lower body.

During the afternoon we decided to try Costco again.  It was open but it was also obliterated with people.  The store has a HUGE parking lot and there were actually people mongering for parking spaces.  I had NEVER seen the lot this full.  Despite knowing what I was in store for, a frustrating sea of humanity, we parked and headed inside.  It was so bad that there were hardly any shopping carts by the front of the store.  Cindy and I grabbed one of the last few available, once they were gone the flock of people descended on the parking lot cart attendant who was pushing another dozen in like hungry vultures.  It was awful.

Of course trying to push the cart through the store was miserable as well.  I actually did very little verbal complaining during the ordeal.  I knew damn well it was going to be a mess the second I pulled onto the lot.  If I decided to subject myself to the madness I had no real basis to complain.  The grand frustrating finale was trying to get checked out.  There was a river of people trying to do the same, so many that they back filled one of the main shopping aisles, further clogging the flow of traffic through the store.

As I stood in line I tried to create a theory as to why it was THIS horrible.  Most of the time I come to Costco it is a bad shopping experience but this set the bar to an entirely new level.  I decided what we were experiencing was the rush of snowbirds that flock back into the area as soon as the holidays over for their 3-4 month nesting season.  They are in dire need of large amounts of toilet paper, paper towels, and other bulk items and all choose Costco as THE source to fulfill those needs.  After maybe 20 minutes of waiting we finally got the fck out of there.  I will never shop at Costco on January 2nd again, bet on it.

When we got back home I decided to tackle installing one of the two WeMo smart light switches I received for Christmas.  Despite not being officially supported in a 3 way switch configuration like I have in the kitchen, I decided to put one there anyway.  The switch will function correctly as long as we don’t touch the second switch to control the light.  I was surprised when I discovered there is no way to just kill the circuit for the kitchen light without killing power to the entire house.  After shutting down my home network server I pulled the plug.

Installing the WeMo switch was not all that difficult.  After about 10-15 minutes I was ready to flip the power back on and test it out.  I was very pleased when I was able to turn the large overhead kitchen light with my iPhone and then a few minutes later with my voice using our Amazon Echo.   Later on Sunday I installed the second switch in our bedroom giving us voice control over a good portion of the lighting in our house.  The geek factor is high within our walls.

On Saturday night we both felt beat, still feeling side effects from the NYE gala.  We veg’d out and watched Ted 2 on demand.  It had enough dirty humor to keep the rating at a B+ level.

On Sunday we wanted to do a bike ride however the skies looked menacing, it was windy, and a bit chilly with temps in the mid 60’s.  I proposed an alternative ride to Cindy where I would ride my new mountain bike along with Cindy on her road bike over to the nearby bird rookery swamp.  I just wanted to see how it felt.  Pedaling a 40+ pound mountain bike with big fat tires and regular pedals requires a lot more effort to achieve 15-16 mph than it does on a road bike.  The last section of road before the swamp turns into a combo of asphalt and lime rock.  Cindy was hesitant to traverse it on her Cervelo but managed to do so without popping a tire.  Once Cindy gets her mountain bike we will ride back there and do some real off road riding.  The round trip to the swamp entrance is 6 miles so if you combine it with the roughly 12 miles you can ride inside the swamp you have a very tough potential 18 mile ride.

Sunday afternoon we multitasked, preparing race bibs as we watched the Eagles win their last game of the year.  We plowed through 2000 bibs, a huge number for two people.  The Eagles offense played well, the defense did not but came up big at the end to secure the win.  I found it interesting that the first game without Chip Kelly resulted in the Eagles having a number of long scoring drives, the longest of the year.  The win cost the Eagles 7 spots in draft position so they may have actually been better off losing the game but with their recent history of draft performances I don’t know it matters much anyway.  It will be quite interesting to see who the Eagles entrust the coaching duties to in 2016.  Sean Payton or Bill Cowher would make me pee my pants in joy which is exactly why it will never happen.

The weather during the day turned wet and raw with the temps dropping into the 60’s.  When I went out to do afternoon chicken duties it was a wet and goosebump inciting experience.  Last night we mostly chilled out with me catching up on some virtual WoW to do’s.

Over the weekend Cindy got a chance to try out another out of the blue Xmas gift I bought her, a camping hammock.  We set it up between one of the palm and pine trees.  Cindy really liked just chilling in the nylon hammock for a little while.  I hope she takes more time to use it more regularly.