Archives June 2024

Last night playing volleyball was a test of endurance. The extreme heat and humidity had me sweating buckets all night. When it was combined with a higher than the already high amount of times I normally hit the sand, I was coated head to toe. I wasn’t happy with how I played. I was not being as aggressive when hitting, trying to not hit into the net or out but the end result were balls that were not that hard to defend. We also seemed to have incredibly bad luck with the other teams hitting shots that just caught the line repeatedly. Anyway, it added up to a rather frustrating evening, it happens.

After play I grabbed dinner at Tacos n Tequila. They had the debate on some of the TVs but I chose to watch UFC fighting instead. I really had no interest in watching two old men, neither of which would be my choice to lead anything, participate in a debate that had the build up of a wrestling PPV. It’s nuts.

The couple recaps I saw of the debate were not glowing for either candidate. Biden evidently looked like a confused old man for much of it which was the opposite of what they were hoping to do. It sounded like Trump ran his normal game plan of misinformation/outright lying however I did see he was described as more calm than normal which was somewhat surprising. Regardless, my outlook for what is ahead is pretty dire, no matter the outcome of the election.

I do find it strange that evidently a lot of people seem to think if Trump wins things are going to magically drop in price and inflation will go away. It seems to me that a lot of people are misplacing blame here. During the height of Covid the world supply chain got f’d, causing scarcity everywhere you looked. The cost of shipping items skyrocketed as well. So the end result of all of this scarcity was the raising of prices, however the catch is even though that scarcity has relaxed for quite a long time the prices never dropped. Instead businesses made huge profits from continuing to keep prices elevated regardless of if we were no longer in crisis mode or not.

Remember when airlines claimed all of the bag fees and other nickel and dime charges were a result of high fuel costs years ago? Even when fuel later dropped to the cheapest prices in ages they never pulled back those fees. Once prices hit a certain level it’s damn near impossible to reverse them as businesses are always looking to maintain or increase profits, not reduce them, just to be nice. Anyway my point is I think people that are convinced reinstating Trump will be the magic wand to fix all that is wrong will be disappointed. I am just going to keep my head down and do my best to keep my small slice of existence stable and intact.

This weekend I have a number of small to do’s to mix among pickleball and going out to dinner on Saturday night. My July is going to have some pretty busy sections so I guess I should enjoy the calm while I can.

Wednesday is our normal pickleball day. It rained yesterday morning, torrentially at times so I was ready to call off our games. I checked the cameras at the courts. Nobody was playing and the courts were soaked. However a little after 11 the rain stopped and some of the guys in my group suggested we give it a go. One of the guys said he would bring his leaf blower to help dry a court. I said sure, why not, it was worth a try.

When we showed up it looked bad. There was standing water everywhere however a few of the courts only had a little water on them. I used the court squeegee to push that off and then luckily the sun came out to finish the job. We were literally the only people playing in the huge 65 court facility. It felt weird in a cool way. We got our games in with out issue, well except for my falling flat on my back trying to get out of the way of a ball.

So yesterday I came home and immediately took Elsa for a walk as we always do. I was glad to see she did a number 2 on the walk since she did not make one yesterday. She was put on antibiotics for a UTI and a side effect has been her poop has been like soft serve ice cream. She just had her last dose on Tuesday so I was looking forward to more normalcy in that area. We got back home and for the first time my gaze turned to my bedroom and I saw it, an absolute apocalypse of brown.

As I walked into the bedroom the sheer scale of the disaster was revealed. Evidently during the day Elsa had a huge soft serve crap accident in my bedroom. My Shark robot vacuum which runs automatically at 1PM everyday then ran into and over it, continuing to “clean” the area. It evidently ran for quite awhile despite being filled with dog shit. I found it in my bathroom where it had trailed the mess in there, getting it on the floor, baseboards and two of the rugs. When I picked it up it the bottom was just nothing but brown with it being up in the motors, the brush area and god knows where else. I mentally wrote the vacuum off as a casualty to the shit bomb.

I was in shock as I took in the full scenario. Elsa came walking over like nothing happened, wondering what was taking me so long to make her dinner. I pointed to the mess and said “what did you do!” in my stern voice which sent her out of my line of sight. All of sudden any other plans I had for my Wednesday night were now replaced with disaster recovery.

I took the shit encased robot out and just hosed it off. Even if I was going to dispose of it I did not want to do so with it covered in excrement. I then filled the tank on my carpet cleaner and headed to the bedroom. There were areas of the carpet where the robot really ground the brown gold into the carpet and my carpet cleaner was not doing a good job of getting it up. I had to go grab my second carpet cleaning device, the SpotBot which does a more concentrated cleaning job. It’s designed for small spots. It did a much better job of cleaning the area but it could only do so one 10 inch circle at a time.

I wound up alternating between both cleaning methods to try to recover. Multiple times during the recovery I thought to myself “man it sure would be nice if I had someone to assist me in this” sharing both the physical and mental load. Reality soon returned and the me, myself, and I cleaning crew worked until almost 8PM cleaning the space. It’s much better but there still may be some spots that might need a round two of cleaning.

Years and years ago I had a similar incident where a Roomba ran over excrement but it was nothing close to the size of the bomb that went off yesterday. I hope to never experience that again, it was simply awful. When I get the new robot I might need to rethink it’s cleaning schedule.

Last year I had bought Christine a used XR so we could OneWheel together. I also referred to people that complain about the consequences of their decisions. The personal truth these sort of statements were based on still stings me. If I think about some of the decisions/actions that I made last year I clearly should have been the front runner for Idiot of the Year.

Yesterday for whatever reason I did not feel like creating a blog entry. I don’t believe it was for any particular reason other than just a lack of inspiration, I guess. I did however arrive at work yesterday with this massive and beautiful rainbow to help frame the day, which I appreciated. Rainbows always make me think of my mom since she loved them so much.

Last night I shot a video where I went through the hilarious instructions for a helmet intercom that I bought off Temu. The random and bizarre words that were used to describe the install process were so ridiculous I just felt the need to share my amusement. The manual repeatedly refers to both magic and even demons at one point.

As I mentioned I lacked the motivation to say much yesterday and that feeling of less has carried over somewhat to today. It’s not an unusual thing to have cyclical ebbs and flows in many aspects of my life, creative, emotional and physical. I just try to ride the waves while I keep my feet on the board, most of the time. Falls are never fun.

My weekend felt like it went quickly as I kept myself busy in one way or another most of my waking hours. Friday night I skipped happy hour completely and just went back to my old school pizza and Mexican Coke, concluding with a session of WoW. Although it was unsocial behavior, I enjoyed it.

I played pickleball both Saturday and Sunday mornings. On Saturday I didn’t set an alarm and didn’t get to the courts until close to 10 so the broiler effect was already in action. I played 6 or 7 games with a couple people as partners and won all of them. I felt I played well, better than Friday at lunch when I was making unforced errors at a much higher rate than I should be. On Sunday morning I played with my good buddy Juan who makes every session funny with his uncontrollable outbursts of emotion. I played with him at Talis Park where I have not been in a couple months.

On Saturday night I wound up doing a live stream. Before doing so I had dinner at Tacos and Tequila where I had a couple of the stronger margarita varieties. Two of them was enough to get things flowing.

The stream was a unique one where I had a friend of mine, Dale, from Australia on the stream as well as Roger, one of my friends from California. We talked about EUC and non-EUC content in a free flowing manner which was fun and enjoyable. Roger was sort of a captive audience as he was stuck slow charging his Tesla in the middle of nowhere because a component on his car stopped working which prevented it from super charging.

One of the tasks I tended to was trying to touch up a section of drywall that is butted up against the tile for the shower. It’s the edge right along the shower door. It had sections of rust showing through the paint where the metal edging material was deteriorating. I had just hit it quickly with some paint months ago but the rust had returned.

When I was sanding the rust down the drywall in a couple spots sunk down since it no longer had an intact metal frame behind it. I had to then expand the scope of the repair where I used heavy duty drywall patch to fill the sunken spots to build them up and then let them dry overnight so I could sand it back to flat the next day. The repair is good enough that you won’t notice unless you are looking for it. One of my longer term project ideas is to renovate the master bathroom. When that happens that wall will likely be torn down or transformed into a half wall so hopefully my patch work will get me through until that happens.

I got to hang with Gladys a little over the weekend as well which was fun as she heads back to the island this week. Whenever she is in town she normally has a lot going on so it was nice to get a block of her time.

I did have a brief period of time on Sunday where I was just laying in my bed, tired from my pickleball session. Elsa came up in the bed and joined me, winding up in this cute position inverted from me with her head pressed up against my leg. It gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling I appreciated. I value that feeling and embrace it wherever I find it at this point.

I played pickleball today and played pretty well, if I do say so myself. I had a few really nice drives where the ball was low to the net and hard, too hard for the other team to touch with a paddle. After making those shots I find myself just immediately turning and walking back to my ready position with my head down, without saying much. I thought about this and I realized I did something similar when I was a baseball pitcher and a decent level volleyball player.

In baseball after I would strike someone out, preferably with a fastball, I would turn my back to the plate, walk back to the mound and keep my head down while the ball was thrown around the infield which is customary after a strikeout. I would only raise my gaze to receive the ball back from the first baseman.

In volleyball this would most often occur after I got a good hit that either went down to the ground at a rapid pace or bounced hard off a blocker and or defender and out of bounds. It would be the same deal, look down, walk to my spot and be quiet until we had the ball again, ready to start the next play.

I’m not quite sure what the psychology is behind this behavior but I found it interesting that I have somehow migrated it to pickleball as well. Maybe it’s my way of expressing that I don’t get that excited over good plays because I plan to make more of them. Funny stuff, to me at least.

I was happy to see when I got back home yesterday that the fog that Elsa was still under in the morning had finally cleared. She seemed more or less normal when I walked in the door. It felt good to have her back to normal. I gave her extra food last night to celebrate since she only ate once the day before.

Last night I played volleyball. My team of three did pretty well, going 4-2 on the night but I could have played better. Nothing frustrates me more than if I get a decent set and I hit it into the net, which happened at least a half dozen times, if not more. Although my knees genuinely suck I think most of it is in my head. The reality is with my height and wingspan I can jump very little and should still be able to hit ok if I hit with a high hand with good wrist snap. I probably should practice more if I want to clean that part of my game up.

I do take a degree of pride with my willingness to literally throw my body around the court, stupidly at times. There were multiple instances of my going horizontal trying to chase down balls. They usually result in sand getting in my face or hair as well as impacting my shoulders in ways that are not recommended at 56 years old, oh well. After play I enjoyed a low key dinner at Carrabas with the bartender Helen. It’s always nice to see her.

This weekend I have a fluid schedule which is my normal preference. We will see where it leads me.

Last Friday when our lunch time group played pickleball we had six players so we did a king of the hill type of format where if a team won they kept playing and if you lost you came off. The one team won all of their games and was a little cocky about it in a funny, good natured way. We played again yesterday and that team of two stayed together, hoping to repeat that performance. They didn’t. Instead they wound up losing every game.

The funny trash talk gave me a little motivation and I brought my A game, playing some of my better ball in a little while. It was fun to shove it back in their face. Sure I am a nice guy but I also am competitive at my core. I don’t get as bent out of shape from losing as I once did but that fire is still in there.

So yesterday was Elsa’s dental procedure. I was glad when I got the call that everything went well. They said her teeth looked good, no extractions were needed and that she was just a little woozie from the anesthesia. That last part was a bit of an understatement. When they brought her out I could tell she was still whacked out which they said could last for a little while.

When I got her home I took her for a short walk and she was still basically a zombie. She kept bumping into me as we walked, very slowly. She also had no interest in food, not even the treats she normally devours. Her tongue was poking out of her mouth most of the night which looked funny. I just encouraged her to lay down and sleep, which she did. Finally right before bed she acted like she was hungry and I gave her some food.

This morning I assumed she would be fully recovered but she still clearly has somewhat of a haze going on. I’m hoping that clears up during the day today. It made me a little sad seeing her not feeling/acting normal. It made me realize just how huge of a role she holds in my life.

I was productive at home last night. I waited until things cooled off a bit and then gave the Tesla a much needed bath after it’s first cross state journey the day before. I had the Alexa in the garage playing music as I completed the clean up. It was a peaceful sort of feeling, for some reason.

I left work early to go home and pull out in the Tesla to go pick up Gladys at the Miami airport. As usual I gave the car the destination and let it figure out the fastest route to get there. I was very surprised it chose Tamiami Trail as the route instead of Alligator Alley (I-75). It estimated roughly a two hour trip so I followed it’s advice. I let full self driving navigate most of the way until I got into the heart of the traffic near the airport. I suspect the car would have done ok but I was more concerned with getting to the airport on time, which I did barely.

Gladys texted me when I was two minutes away saying she was ready, earlier than I anticipated. However the timing worked out perfectly as I was able to pick her up instead of finding the cell phone lot. On the way back we stopped and had dinner at a sushi place that she found online. It was in a strip mall but supposedly had good food. The review was correct. We both enjoyed our food and I had Japanese beer for the first time ever and liked it.

The drive back felt much faster than the drive there as Gladys and I were chatting the entire time. She is one of the few individuals that I am able to talk to at length without difficulty. When I dropped her off at her house I got to see her family, including her mom and dad whom I had not seen for over a year. They were happy to see me as I was them. I also got to see Gladys’s sweet little niece Leilani which is always fun for me. Gladys is only here for six days but I am sure I will be spending some more time with her and her family during her stay. I didn’t get back home until 10:30. This was the first time I went to Miami and back in a Tesla without charging. It was a little tight as I rolled into my garage with less than 10% battery remaining but it made it.

Elsa was not allowed food after 9PM and no water after midnight because of her dental procedure which requires anesthesia. This morning she sat on the sofa the entire time, waiting for me to call her over for breakfast. When the call never came she was clearly confused. The confusion continued when I grabbed the leash and loaded her up in the truck.

Once we got to the vet the shaking started. As we sat in the room by ourselves I did my best to talk to her and calm her down which helped some. This afternoon I will pick her up and this stressful deviation from her routine will be over. I always feel terrible putting her in situations that scare her.

Speaking of scary situations, 4th of July is always horrible for her as she hates the sound of fireworks. I was invited to a 4th of July party with my volleyball crew this year and I am going, however there was no way I could leave Elsa home alone being terrified all night. Instead I am going to drive her up to Ali’s place the night before so she can be with them instead which will be much better. Sure in total it will be more than four hours of driving to make it all happen but it’s better than Elsa being scared, alone.

I forgot to mention that over the weekend I went back to Costco to grab more of the pants that I really liked. In addition I found some jeans that were good looking and comfortable. The purchase allowed me to do yet another round of culling in my closet, removing any pants/jeans that were gifted to me. At this point I think anything that is in my closet was purchased with my own funds and I prefer it that way. Someone shopping at Goodwill is going to have a chance to buy some nice pants at a discount.

I have had a large leather wallet my entire life. My current iteration that you see in the picture is actually significantly less bulky than what I have carried in the past. I have had one of those modern Ridge style wallets that was gifted to me for over a year, sitting untouched in a box. For unknown reasons I was motivated to take it out of it’s box, finally, last night.

Obviously I can not carry everything I have in my normal wallet. The Rossm is designed to hold the core cards you need to carry and some cash and not much else which requires an obvious shift in my wallet habits. I migrated over the cards I deemed necessary for my daily existence and slid my cash under the strap. It will be interesting to see how this trial run goes. I suspect like most things it will be awkward at first and become the new norm as time goes on.

Today I took my Tacoma to work as I have my Tesla at home, plugged in and charging to 100%. The reason for this is I am driving over to the Miami airport to pick up Gladys who is flying in from Roatan this afternoon. We are going to grab dinner somewhere on the way back. It will be nice to have some face to face time with her. Although I still talk to Gladys regularly, in person communication is a rare thing.

Elsa is going to be very unhappy with me tomorrow. She is going in for a dental cleaning. To do this they put her under anesthesia. To be put under anesthesia you can’t have any food 12 hours prior so she won’t get anything for breakfast. Elsa, like most dogs is very much in her routine, knowing what I am going to do next even before I do it most of the time. When I do not give her breakfast tomorrow morning, give her a piece of cheese from my eggs or let her lick my peanut butter covered knife she is going to stare at me endlessly with a look of confusion and concern. It’s going to be uncomfortable for both her and I.

Friday after work I walked into Bruninas to enjoy happy hour and was surprised to see standing room only at the bar. Evidently they were doing some special event for their 20 year anniversary and the place was packed. I only drank one beer before heading out. Meaghan, the bartender felt bad, she thought she told me about the event. If she did I totally forgot. I used the extra time to get my grocery shopping done.

Later when I was sitting at home enjoying my pizza in front of the computer I got a message from her asking me to come back. She said it was less crowded now. I wasn’t all that excited about putting pants back on but I did and made the 5 minute drive back there. The bar was still quite full but there was a single stool open at least. I found out the motive for her message.

One of the regulars whom I know casually was there with her girlfriend. Evidently when I was standing there looking dumb the first time her friend who I assume is single said I was cute. Meaghan knows my relationship status so she was trying to be matchmaker. I did talk to the woman a little bit. I’m not sure there is a match there but she had good energy and I said that I would be open to hanging out in the future. If that ever happens, who knows. When I went home the second time I got some WoW time in which I DID know I liked.

My potential Saturday morning pickleball session was wiped out by rain so I redeployed that time in a useful manner. One of the tasks was getting around to installing the rim protectors I bought for the Tesla. The good looking wheels are very exposed potentially to damage and I wanted to do what I could to minimize that risk. The guards I got had the selling point of being individual sections that snapped together, allowing you to replace just damaged sections if it came to that. It sounded like a good concept until I started the install project.

It was in four words, a pain in the ass. Each wheel has 11 “blades” which equates to 11 pieces of the guard, per wheel. The kit requires adhering these vinyl underlayment pieces first, 22 per wheel. Then, if you followed instructions you had to peel off 22 more pieces of double sided tape that is on each plastic piece. After the first wheel I disregarded this step and didn’t bother with the tape. Finally you snap the 11 pieces onto each wheel which requires a large amount of finger and hand strength, more than many people posses I would guess. It sucked.

Even with my dropping the tape removal part of the install I spent close to two and a half hours on this project in the garage which had me soaked through my shirt very early on. The final result is decent but the combination of miserable install process and high cost would make me not recommend these guards to someone else. The good news is I recorded the install which captures my frustration pretty well.

Saturday night I opted to hit up the nearby sushi place. Now that we are out of season it was much less busy. There was no more live music which brought out the old folks that liked to dance. The amount of the people at the bar could be counted on one hand, not even needing the thumb. Regardless I had a nice time, enjoying my sushi while downing a few Miller Lites.

Sunday I got to play pickleball finally for a couple hours. I played with the same guy the entire time, we only lost one of the 7 or 8 games we played against some good competition. I started out playing very well for about 3/4 of the session. Towards the end I started making an annoying amount of unforced errors which frustrate me. I blamed it on fatigue as I was sweating buckets in the high heat and humidity.

I got an email from a lady in our neighborhood that is a realtor. She was the listing agent on my house and she was also the agent on my neighbors who are unexpectedly selling. She asked me to stop by at the open house she was hosting until 1PM, apparently the foot traffic had been nonexistent. Well I was curious what the deal was with the sale so I stopped over.

It’s a beautiful home, significantly larger than mine. I found out there was nothing “bad” going on. The wife has a new job in Cape Coral, an hour or more north of us and they want to relocate in that direction. I am skeptical that they will get anywhere close to their asking price but if they do it will raise the values of all the homes in our area.

During the afternoon I took my Master out for a ride, my first significant ride after I installed the fairing kit and new tire. It was my first real ride in awhile thanks to the rain and other things commanding my attention. It felt good to get back out there for a bit. After the ride I also got around to installing the fairing kit on my V13 which should be the last wheel related project on my plate for a little while. By the time I got done doing all the editing my weekend was over and it was time for bed.

Speaking of bed, It has now been at least 10 days since I have popped a Unisom. I have found that I am able to sleep pretty consistently without it which is a good thing. I don’t feel like it is as sound of sleep where as Unisom can almost put you into a coma but I am not suffering from those maddening episodes of waking up and then not being able to fall back asleep for hours. To me it’s a sign that some of the mental/emotional issues that used to keep me up at night are losing their once sharp edge, and it’s a good thing.