Archives August 2023

I hosted my fantasy football league draft once again last night for what seems like the 20th year in a row. Christine helped me do the reconfiguration of the living space to accommodate the 10-12 people that would be in attendance. My food prep was minor consisting of ordering 3 pizzas from Domino’s and picking up some snacks to be in bowls on the tables, a far cry from the extensive food prep I used to do. Even though the living space in my new house is appreciably smaller I came up with a layout that worked pretty well.

I got my laptop connected to the TV in the great room and was ready to go almost an hour in advance of anyone showing up. The pizza arrived just as the first set of cars pulled up. The only thing I had to change once we got rolling was bringing over some additional lighting for the wall where the draft board was located. We only had two owners connected in via Skype. In years past we had as many as 5 people remote but nowadays some of those people just do their picks through the website without being dialed in live.

As has been customary for most drafts, my preparation was bare bones. I simply printed out a draft cheat sheet that ranked players numerically and went from there, normally choosing the highest available player for whatever position I needed. I had the number one pick in the draft so that meant that most rounds I was drafting two players in a row which can be challenging. According to our league website I drafted pretty well as I got an A rating. We will see how that translates to success during the season.

The draft wrapped up right around 10PM. I went into whirlwind mode, cleaning up and reverting the house back to it’s normal state. I had everything back in place in a little less than an hour which I thought was a decent result. Even with it being late I had a rough time falling right asleep. I probably didn’t close my eyes for good until a little after midnight. I fell asleep content that the draft went well, despite the shift in venue along with all the other shifts in my life.

On Monday I was taking in my trash cans when one of my neighbors was walking by. I started talking to her about the incoming storm and how I felt lucky that it looked like it would not affect us in a major way (it didn’t). During the conversation I asked her if there was any flooding from storm surge last year from Hurricane Ian, she said there was not. She said the only time there has been standing water on the street was during Hurricane Irma 6 years ago. She said the water started to touch the sidewalks but never threatened the houses.

This was all good information but the most interesting part of all of it was she told me all of the houses in the development have emergency drains. There is a capped off 4 inch PVC pipe near the front of my house which I never knew it’s purpose. That is the emergency drain. If there is a flooding threat I unscrew the cap and it will divert water away. I thanked Barb for the information, information I would have never learned without initiating the conversation, something I historically have been poor at doing.

Like I mentioned, the storm was pretty insignificant for us except for about a one hour period yesterday afternoon when tornado warnings were flying around. I am not exaggerating when I say between calls to my cell, my home and texts I was notified at least 20 times about the potential threat. Is it odd to admit that I eventually found these notifications intended to protect me from harm, annoying?

Tonight I host the fantasy draft for the first time at the new house. It should be interesting to see what sort of arrangement I come up with.

Since I have moved there have been a lot of changes in my routines as you can imagine. One of those has been my tv viewing habits. For many, many years I utilized a DVR to record episodes of my favorite shows. I would open up the menu and see all of these recorded shows I felt I needed to watch and I did just that, pretty much watched it all. This was something that I spent a lot of time doing with my significant others. Even after I split from Cindy I continued that habit although there were a number of shows that I cut from the list.

When I first moved I continued this behavior, recording shows to be watched back as I pleased. However over time I started to have these episodes pile up. I would start deleting all of the prior ones and only watch the most recent. Eventually I just said, f it, and deleted the recordings scheduled and stopped the practice altogether. At this point it has probably been at least 4-5 months since I discontinued recording tv content for consumption later. Sure I will binge stuff on streaming services if it interests me but my days of spending large blocks of time watching recorded content seem to be behind me.

It’s not like I made a conscious effort to stop watching as much TV it just has sort of faded away and now that it has I can’t say I really miss it. Absence and time can make a significant difference in behaviors and feelings about them. It’s a lesson I could apply across various aspects of life.

It looks like Hurricane Idalia is going to pass far enough to our west to avoid causing major impact to our area. With my new living arrangements the only prep I did was take the trash cans into the garage, there seriously is not much more to do than that.

On Thursday night I went to a country music concert with Christine, my first concert in years and my first country concert in an arena ever. Although I don’t talk about my musical tastes much, country music is not normally among them. Christine however is a huge fan so I was happy to go. My plan was to consume enough alcohol to make any situation tolerable. I went overboard. I had an unknown amount of tequila sunrise cocktails that had me drunk, really drunk. I was so drunk that I had to abruptly stop drinking as I could feel the danger signs of vomitus eruptus coming on. We had fun even with my excessive drinking and I got to meet a couple of Christine’s friends that were also at the concert.

After an understandably slow start to my Friday I eventually started kicking things in gear, getting done a number of chores that are normally slated for Saturday. One of those tasks was reattaching some fence boards that were coming loose. To do this I had to wedge myself between the outside of the fence and the 8 foot tall hedges that border it. It was a challenge but one that successfully navigated.

I also configured my laptop to be used with the fantasy football draft party this week. I have hosted the draft for almost as long as the league has existed but this is my first time doing so at my new house. It will be interesting what I come up with for the final furniture configuration. I did find out that I have the number one pick in the draft this year, hope I don’t mess it up.

The rest of my weekend was a hodge podge of activities. I got back into WoW hardcore and have managed to die twice already. It’s frustrating as hell but at least it happened before I got very far.

I shot my first video in quite awhile yesterday. It was not even a riding video, rather me doing some minor upgrades to one of my wheels.

So we have the first hurricane threat of the year for our area spinning out there, Idalia. If the forecast track holds it will be significantly west of our area while passing. However if I have learned anything since moving to Florida it’s that hurricane forecast paths are educated guesses, at best. It’s not like I would have much prep to do other than crossing my fingers that my unprotected windows don’t take a shot from potential flying debris.

For a long time I have inserted these three words randomly into context where it makes absolutely zero sense. There is no rhyme or reason nor hidden meaning to the statement as I do actually enjoy pie. However when utilized in online communication where it does not belong, has always been humorous to me. Last night I was drunk enough that “i like pie” was inserted without any context, any explanation or justification. It made as much sense to me as anything else at this point and time.

Last night I did the final sanding and painting of the trim I mildly damaged when replacing the AC unit at Christine’s place. It’s not perfect but good enough that unless somebody knew work was done their attention would not be drawn to it. I’m happy with the outcome as at one point I was not quite sure how it was all going to turn out when the old AC felt like it was wedged in place.

I also finally got around to washing my Tesla last night, something I clearly recall thinking it needed starting at least two weeks prior. Why it took me two weeks to do something that took 15-20 minutes is unclear to me.

It’s an odd thing that sometimes, really most of the time, coming up with something to talk about here is a relatively easy task to accomplish. For whatever reason that ease has been missing recently.

Friday night I did something very out of the norm for me, went to a high school football game. Christine’s oldest son was playing. The team they were playing was supposedly pretty good but the final score did not reflect it. Her son’s team won easily 42-7. It was very interesting being in that environment, the most interesting part might have been observing what current day teenagers are like. It’s a whole new world.

On Saturday I tasked myself with replacing a small 5000 BTU air conditioner that is in the back room of Christine’s place. Normally it would be an easy task. This was not so. The old air conditioner was not in a window but instead in a dedicated cut out on the back wall. Apparently after the old AC was installed they put trim pieces around both the outside and inside walls around the old unit to help secure it and make it look more finished, I suppose. Unfortunately when they did this they were not considering the difficulty that would arise if the unit failed.

I wound up having to pry trim pieces from both spots to get the old AC out. Doing so did some minor damage to the wall that I still have to address. Once the old was out the new slid in rather easily. I reattached the trim pieces and flipped on the new AC which made a pretty significant difference in the overall feel of the house.

On Sunday Christine and I drove out to Ave Maria to ride the One Wheels. Despite driving through some torrential rain to get there the weather mostly held up for the ride. Ave Maria is a great place to ride, I had not had a One Wheel out there in a loooong time. We had a pretty steady flow of Cayman Jacks to keep the fun flowing.

If it seems like there has been less blog entries and less to chew on inside of them I apologize. Like many things in life there are ebb and flow to it. Both the ebb and flow are on the lighter side lately.

Last night I did my first live stream in a couple of weeks. There has been a lot of news in the EUC space to talk about. There have been a few new wheels recently announced and a big drama revolving around two riders that rode for “pink slips”, meaning the loser gives his wheel to the winner. Well the race went down but no wheels were exchanged.

Last night after work I picked up a small TV stand from a seller on FB marketplace. Buying something off marketplace is not all that unusual but the transaction logistics were. I first did the standard negotiation managing to get $15 off the posted $85 price (that was dropped from $100) I asked the lady where she lived, she told me, but then the twist came.

She told me the stand would be out in front of a two story tan garage with a coffee can. She said I can just put the cash in the coffee can, and take the stand. This was a first, a FB transaction based on the honor system?? I told her that was fine without letting on how weird it seemed.

After work I drove to the house which was on the edge of the Estates. The long driveway that wound through trees had a house off to the left and the tan garage as promised to the right. Out in front of it was the stand with a plastic coffee container on top. There was nobody around although it is possible I was on a Ring video feed somewhere. I opened my wallet and realized I was going to have to scramble to come up with the $70. The payment included two 20 dollar bills, five 5 dollar bills, four 1 dollar bills and 4 quarters. Yes, I had to dig in the truck to find those 4 quarters. I put the collection of currency in the container, screwed the lid on tight, grabbed the stand and was out of there in 5 minutes. I found myself enjoying the honor system transaction more than I expected.

I rarely remember dreams but I have the vague outline of a weird one I had last night. I was cleaning up debris and trash at my new house. For some reason I decided the old fill pit at my old house would be a smart way to dispose of the debris, despite my not owning the house any longer. I drove out to the house and without notifying the new owners I walked into the storage shed and grabbed the wheelbarrow. I then loaded up my debris and walked it through the back yard to the fill pit at the very back and started unloading it.

As I am doing this I hear noise towards the house. I look that way and I see a horse running towards me and the owners chasing the horse. The owners are yelling, “Duf, help us stop her!” I am surprised but drop my debris and start moving towards the horse that is sprinting and has a wild look in it’s eyes. I try to move in front of the horse. The owners yell “don’t let her go into the water!” referring to the fill pit that is filled with rain water. I try to move to my right to cut the horse off but it was too late. My dream ended shortly after the horse jumps in the water but evidently is able to swim. I have absolutely no idea what would inspire such a crazy dream, I wasn’t even drunk last night.

Friday night Christine and I rode the One Wheels down towards Tin City. We had dinner at a place named River Walk. I had never eaten there before. We had a nice meal out on the dock and had a couple margaritas. I was also packing Cayman Jack margaritas in my cargo shorts. The combination of these made us both pretty “happy”. We also rode down to the coast where we enjoyed the peaceful beach as sunset was approaching. Christine snapped this picture of me on the way back as I waved to no one in particular while I had a Cayman Jack in my right hand. It was a fun night.

On Saturday I had a few small things to do. One of the LED recessed lights in the kitchen went out recently. I wasn’t quite sure what was involved in replacing them, but it appeared that you just throw out the old one and put in a new one as you can’t change the LEDs themselves. I took the old light to Home Depot with me as a reference so I could get something as closely matching as possible. I found one that seemed like it would work, it had the same type of power connection and was also 6 inches in diameter. I was able to snap it into place in less than 5 minutes.

I also bought a bag of brushed nickel cabinet knobs. My intent was to replace the old white wooden knobs that are on the closet doors of the house. When I went to do the first swap I had an immediate problem. Since these knobs were technically for cabinets the bolts that are included are too short to be used on a closet door. I made not one but two trips to Ace Hardware to address this. The first time I bought bolts that were too long, doh. I do like the way the new knobs look and feel.

Sunday morning I played pickleball with my buddy Juan once again. I had been a couple weeks since I had my last Sunday morning session. The heat was incredibly oppressive. My cotton t-shirt by the end felt like it weighed 10 pounds, soaked with sweat. When I got home I had some sort of rash all over my back, presumably from the heat as well. I love playing but man, doing it during Florida summers is not easy, at all.