Category Fitness

So as I outlined in Dufisthenics, my gym yesterday once again sounded more like a techno dance club than a fitness center.  The thumping, never ending dance mix shit was once again pouring from the over head speakers.  I had complained about this in the past, as recently as last week.  Well I was done complaining, I decided to take some action.

I have had various nagging issues with Royal Fitness (formerly Retro Fitness) over the years. I was a client from basically day one when they opened.  I remember early on being very annoyed that they refused to turn on closed captioning on the tv’s mounted along various walls, despite the volume on them being turned off.  The explanation of “it is against company policy” made no sense to me.

For at least the first two years the gym had no real hot water.  Evidently whatever hot water tank that was in the space when it was a Walgreens was never upgraded when it became a gym.  As a result if you were foolish enough to take a shower there the best you could hope for was slightly less cold water.

The gym had a pretty solid staff the first year or so but since then there has been an unending carousel of people behind the counter.  I have described in the past the odd pattern where gym members suddenly transformed into gym employees, only to fade away as quickly as they came.  The vast majority of these people possessed no common sense on how to treat gym patrons, typically keeping their heads buried in their smartphones when people came and went instead of at least greeting them.

The gym also always had a cleanliness problem.  Cobwebs are in nearly every corner, and dust bunnies roam the floor.  Anytime I get up from doing a set of push ups my hands come up black.  It’s pretty gross.

It was easy to tell that financially the gym was not doing well.  Auxiliary side ventures came into the gym to try to generate additional revenue.  The most noticeable of which was a supplement peddler that had all of his stuff locked inside a 6 foot tall square cage obnoxiously stuck in the front of the gym.  The guy and his cage lasted all of a few weeks of not having any customers before it was torn down.

There have been a number of management changes at the gym although the ownership has never changed hands.  Once they dropped the RetroFitness franchise name there was a ridiculous period of time where it seemed every other week there was somebody new in charge of the place.  During this transition the majority of the pre-existing staff quit which to me was the beginning of the end.  I have documented my thoughts on the new training staff there,  including their lack of attention to clients unless they are attractive women, as well as body odor issues that seem counter productive to their role in the gym.

Basically, since the gym name change I have found very few reasons to keep giving Royal Fitness my money, short of the few gym buddies I have there.

One of those buddies, Jim, recently jumped ship for the NCH wellness center, a gym run by the dominant hospital in Collier County.  It’s normal monthly rate was expensive, normally $50 a month, but you get a lot of things for your money including tons of fitness classes, modern equipment in a huge space, sauna, steam room, a lap pool, and more.  And yes, the place is immaculately clean.

County employees get a huge deal at NCH, paying only $25 a month, only a couple bucks more than what I am paying at Royal Fitness, making the switch an almost no brainer.  Really the only potential snag is the additional 1.25 miles NCH is located from the office although in my trip timing yesterday it actually took me less time to get there.

Yesterday after work I made it official, joining the new place after quickly walking the facility which was huge, modern, clean, and appeared to have everything I would need and then some.   After signing up I decided I may as well stop at Royal Fitness to make my termination official as well.  I was not surprised that the process was annoying and unprofessional.

I walked in and the only woman behind the desk told me she was busy and it would take a few minutes until she could help me. She was trying to figure out how to do something with the cash register she was not familiar with.  Ok fine, I patiently hung out, looking around the gym that I would more than likely never step foot in again.  Sure the sentimental part of me was there, I expended a lot of effort inside those walls over the 5-6 years I had been a member.

Whatever issue the woman was having evidently was more challenging than she expected.  She came over to me and quickly asked what I wanted.  I told her I was cancelling my membership and wanted to know what I needed to do to make that happen.  She tells me I have to write a letter that states this with my name and date it.  Um ok, that’s odd, I am standing right here, why do I need to write a letter, I thought to myself.  She pulls out a blank, unlined, blue piece of paper and a pen, puts it in front of me and goes back to her issue.

I scribble on the paper that I am terminating my membership to Royal Fitness as of 7/28/14 and then both print and sign my name.  I hand the note to the woman and confirm that is all they need?  She said she will “take me out of the system then” but I may want to “check back in a week or so” to make sure I was removed.  No, “why are you leaving?”, “we are sorry to hear you are leaving” or cancellation paperwork/reference number was offered, not that I was surprised.  To me it was an appropriately unprofessional parting of the ways with Retro/Royal Fitness.  I totally expect to have to take further action to make sure my membership is indeed terminated. I’m looking forward to my workouts morphing along with my new environment.

Last night at home I started my 1000 pull up series, an idea that came up while Randall, Lily, Cindy and I were talking this weekend.  The concept is simple, 1000 pull ups with every rep on video.  Originally I had thought I would record all 1000 reps and dump them into one MASSIVE video.  However the AdSense mogul inside me realized this was stupid.  To maximize ad revenue it makes much more sense to do a large number of shorter videos that are more likely to grab views.

I plan to try to keep things interesting by making every single set unique in some way.  I can see  a number of reps going down during our upcoming road trip. Take a look at my first 60 reps below.

So on Sunday I needed to make reservations for a rental car to use while I am in Philly for a race timers conference.  We had just rented a car last month for Meghan’s wedding so I assumed I would wind up paying about what I did before, around $30 a day.  Wow what a difference a month makes.

Even using Cindy’s USAA discount code the best rate I was finding for even a sub-compact was more than double that, wtf??  I checked all 5 major rental car places at the airport.  I really wanted to go with Enterprise again since their customer service was so good.  Unfortunately for this weekend their rate was the highest of them all.  I ended up renting with Budget and will be dumping over $350 into a 4 day rental. I can only assume the over 100% inflation of rates in 30 days is due to some sort of event going on in the city this weekend. Bummer.

After work last night I was out in the bar park doing some pull up reps.  On rep 49 of a planned 50 I was struggling to get my chin up to the bar.  As I was pulling hard to get there I felt a shooting pain in my upper back to the left of my spine, sharp enough to make me drop off the bar.  The area that pulled had mild pain but evidently whatever shifted is pressing on something that is causing considerable pain in the lower right portion of my back.  Turning my head to the left doesn’t work so well now either.  Of course with my active lifestyle I have had off and on back issues my entire adult life but I think this may be the first time I aggravated it doing pull ups.

Cindy took some beautiful pictures around sunset last night of the property.  My favorite one is above.  I love how the rainbow frames the ballpark.

Last night after work I came home to a property that was thoroughly drenched with standing bodies of water all over the place.  It must have poured out at the house during the day and it was still raining lightly when I arrived.  Of course my first concern was for the chickens.  I was pretty sure I had them in a spot that normally does not submerge in conditions below hurricane level but I wasn’t positive.  When I glanced in the backyard the coop and run were out of the flood zone.

After doing my normal evening coop relocation, food/water refresh and chicken treat distribution I wanted to see if I could manage to squeeze out 20 pull ups on my very wet pull up bar.  Spoiler alert, I didn’t quite make it.

On Wednesday to satisfy Jeremy I taped and posted some of my squats and deadlifts at the gym. As I always do, I turned on monetization of the video so it can contribute to my Google AdSense empire.  Later in the day I received an email from YouTube saying monetization was disabled on the video because of a music copyright claim.  Evidently during some of the footage, “Birthday” by Katy Perry was playing in the background.  YT has automated bots that “listen” to uploaded videos for commercial music to preemptively save them from being hassled by music companies I guess.

Personally I think it’s rather stupid that a few seconds of a song being played in a video is grounds for a copyright claim but that is the YouTube world we live in.  I’m in the process of applying a different royalty free music track to the clip so the pennies can once again start accumulating when it’s viewed.  After all a video with a skinny guy awkwardly squatting and deadlifting is sure to go viral.

So for a long time I was somewhat proud that I had good vision.  When I was younger it was noteworthy because both my dad and my mom have been lifelong glasses wearers with poor vision.  My sister Torrin inherited their poor vision.  Somehow Todd and myself got a couple sets of decent eyeballs inserted into our heads. Once I rolled past 40 years of age and still had no vision issues I again felt like I was beating the odds. I heard so many people say their once good eyes took a dramatic turn for the worse after four decades on the planet.  Well  for around the last 3-4 years my luck has been running out.

I guess in a way I am still somewhat lucky as it is my distance vision that is failing instead of the near field which I use every day at work for 8+ hours a day staring at two LCD screens.  If I try to read numbers or letters that are not in my immediate vicinity it is really a struggle.  If those numbers or letters happen to be glowing LED’s it’s nearly impossible.  Last night I was looking at the LED clock on the stove from about 15 feet away, it was a green mess.  I slowly walked towards it.  Once  I got about 6 feet away and fog cleared and I was able to read the numbers clearly.

You may recall I bought some Gunnar glasses awhile back, hoping their claims of helping to reduce distance viewing issues for full time IT workers were legit.  I wore them for roughly a month and had a bad experience, my eyes were constantly being red, watering and physically aching after extended Gunnar usage.  It was bad enough that I just gave them away to Jeremy. I have no plans to really do anything about it as the problem is not affecting my functionality other than raising my “I’m old” frustration level while I am trying to read a sign down the aisle.

This weekend is my last before another trip to PA for a race timer conference.  The multiple ponds around the property right now could throw a wrench in any grass maintenance plans.  I am back on dog sitting duty starting on Sunday as well.

I had a very odd dream last night.  I was in my bathroom sitting on the porcelain throne taking care of business.  All of a sudden Dustin Hoffman walks in, naked and turns on the shower.  After being stunned for a few moments I ask him what the hell he was doing??  He had the shower on full blast and had the shower curtain 3/4 of the way open so water was shooting all over the floor.  He then asks me if I mind if he poops in the shower.  My shock mutates into disgust.  Keep in mind I am sitting on the toilet during this whole exchange.  “No! No you can not poop in my shower! What the fck is wrong with you?”  Dustin says the only way he can move his bowels is if he is standing in the shower.  Thankfully the dream ended there.

Last night was the first time the chickens were out in a thunderstorm, a pretty severe one at that.  When it started I walked out in the rain to make sure they were ok.  They were all hanging out under the main coop and seemed to be fine, despite the lightning and thunder crashing down.  The one thing that was not fine was their food dispenser which is close to the edge of the run area.  It was filled with water, turning the feed into mush.  Once the rain let up I pulled the feeder out and replaced it with a smaller feeder we have which I could keep more under the coop where it was less likely to get rained on. It also seemed like the chickens actually liked the rain, all three of them looked wet, like they must have went out to the end of the run to get rained on intentionally.  I know Tuki likes to give himself a bath in his water bowl at times so perhaps chickens actually like taking “showers” now and then?

So in addition to Craigslist, I listed my original chicken coop the other day on a Collier County online yard sale group on Facebook.  I figured the more free spots I can advertise it, the better.   So I placed the ad and in it included a link to the coop online where somebody could verify how much the thing costs new.

Before very long I had some interest but the offer submitted via a Facebook private message was super low ball, $150.  I responded back to the guy, pointing out that he was asking for a 66% discount on a brand new item that I already assembled.  I told him I would be willing to let him have it for 200.

The guy responds back that he can buy the coop brand new for $266 from Amazon with free shipping.  I knew this was not the case but I asked him to send a link showing this to me.  The link he sends is of a totally different and much smaller coop, wtf, is he blind?  I then send him the link to the correct coop on Amazon, along with the $455 price tag.  That was the end of our PM exchange, I assumed he was just trying to throw the bullshit number out as a negotiation tool.I had an even more ridiculous number of $100 thrown at me which I ignored.

So later last night I see this same guy posted on the public thread for my ad AGAIN that my coop only cost $266 brand new, despite my clearly illustrating to him earlier that it was not.  Obviously this guy was now just being a troll.  I again corrected him, publicly this time.  I found the episode quite annoying.  I have a couple potential leads on the coop but as of now it still is taking up a parking space in the garage next to the SSR.

DISCLAIMER: Video game paragraph for those of you that have an allergic reaction to gaming talk. Last night I finished the single player portion of the Diablo expansion, Reaper of Souls, taking down Malfael after 5 or 6 attempts.  I used a very unrefined and random strategy to survive the fight which takes close to 10 minutes to complete.  Basically I ran around the room away from him (playing my monk) whenever he was doing stuff that looked painful (most of the time).  I would only engage him for a few seconds at a time and I tried to only do so when I was close to some health pots to keep me alive.  When he went down it was cool and opened up additional game modes that I can use to raise the level of my monk and all of my other characters quickly.

Cindy joined me for a short cooperative Diablo session later.  She likes playing but all of the mouse clicking the game requires is tough on her hands which are beat up from too many years working for the post office.  She is part of my two person Diablo clan, named Team Z.  Ok game talk over.

My buddy Lou sent me a video of him demolishing logs with a new 17 pound mega maul that I sent up to him.  Lou busted up his sledgehammer a couple weeks ago splitting firewood.  I told him he should get a maul, which is a combo of a sledgehammer and an axe.  He agreed but before he could buy one himself I had already ordered the biggest, heaviest and meanest one I could find on Amazon for him. The thing is all steel and looks like it could split almost anything.  I regularly tap Lou’s videos for inspiration, a mega maul was only a small token of my appreciation.  If you want to see him exploding some logs with it, click below.

On my way home from work Friday I took a detour up to exit 131 on I-75.  I was stopping by to see my accountants, a husband/wife team that had a second home down here for 5 or 6 years but still lived primarily in Douglassville in dreary PA.  They are hopefully going to be able to relocate to Florida full time soon.  They have been doing my taxes for years and years.  I met them when I was still working for Entre Computers/Ameridata and was sent out to their home office on a service call.  We always got along well from day one and have maintained a very friendly relationship over the years.

The reason I was heading up there was to pick up an old computer of theirs which was not booting.  Thye were hoping I could at least get some important files off the old box and move them to a new PC they just bought.  They live in a huge beautiful house in one of the many large communities that dot the SW Florida area like freckles.  I had not seen Tom or Sue in a long time, not since I left Pennsylvania for good back in 2000, meaning 14 years had flown by.

I was wondering how it would be reentering the space of someone that hadn’t seen each other for nearly a decade and a half.  The answer was, just fine.  Sue was really amazed, she said I didn’t look any different then when she last saw me.   Of course I know there are lots of small differences in how I look now versus 14 years ago but it was nice to know that as a whole, the wheels haven’t totally fallen off.

I sat down and talked to them for quite awhile, before I knew it I had spent an hour chatting.  Cindy was making dinner so I told them I needed to get going.  I grabbed the two computers and told them I would see what sort of progress I could make on them this week.

On Saturday morning Cindy was outside helping me knock out a number of outdoor to do’s before Randall and his girlfriend were scheduled to show up mid-afternoon.  After handling those chores and doing a quick run to Lowe’s I had to put on my baker’s hat.  Monday was Lily’s birthday and we thought making my kick ass chocolate birthday cake would be a nice surprise.  I have made the cake enough now that it is pretty easy.  Cindy for once actually picked up a few pointers in the cake prep from me, especially when it comes to the icing preparation which is the most important part of the while thing.   Randall and Lily pulled up shortly after I finished mixing the icing and was letting it cool.

This was the first time I met Lily, whom Randall had been dating for several months.  Like Randall she is an avid biker and works only a couple miles away from where he does.  It didn’t take long to get a good vibe about her.

We gave her the brief tour of the property and then just hung out for a little bit.  Cindy and Randall still had to pick up their race packets for Sunday’s triathlon so we figured we would combine that trip with going out to dinner for efficiency sake.  While we are at packet pick up Randall and Cindy spent some time at two of the on site tables, one guy was giving a free neural analysis and the other guy was like a sports rehab guy that was giving free rock tape applications.

Rock tape or stuff like it was first seen in the summer olympics several years ago.  Supposedly, by taping certain areas of your body you can have gains in power, endurance while helping to avoid injury.

I watched the guy apply the tape over Randall’s left knee,  when he was done in sort of looked like an open patella knee brace.  Personally I am quite skeptical if this sort of product offers anything beyond a placebo affect but I can verify that I see it in use more and more often.  The stuff seems to really adhere strongly to the skin.  I would imagine after removing it a few times you may start shaving whatever area you are regularly applying it to.

After heading out we decided to do dinner at Carraba’s despite it being around 6PM on a Saturday night, a day and time that you would NEVER entertain stepping foot into the place during season unless you liked 2 hour waits.  Our gamble paid off, only sitting through a pretty brief 20 or 25 minute wait before our seating buzzer flashed red.

While we were enjoying our drinks at the bar, I took notice that even though we were well within the happy hour time period which goes until 7PM, we weren’t being served 2 for 1 draft beers, a long standing Carrabas tradition.  I figured it was just the latest in a long line of changes Carrabas has made in the last 10 years that have lessened my enjoyment of the place.

I asked the bartender if they stopped the 2 for 1 deal.  He said that instead of doing 2 for 1, they now just charge half price on draft beers during happy hour.  Randall paid for the bar bill so I didn’t run the numbers to verify this.  I can tell you that the glasses they serve you draft beer in are at least a third smaller than they used to be.  The tall but very small diameter glasses are just the latest subtle change to pad the bottom line. The menu at Carrabas seemed to change a lot, they added a ton of new things.  It looked like they almost doubled the amount of entree choices.  I guess that is at least one thing to nudge the needle back in a positive direction.

We didn’t stay up very late on Saturday night due to the triathlon the next morning.  I got the van loaded up with as much as I could Saturday night so we could just jump in and roll by 4:45 am the next morning.  The van had Randall’s bike and accessories and the running club’s PA system, speaker stand and bull horn to be used at the race.

The 4:15 alarm was not welcomed but I did somehow wake up on my own a minute or two before it actually went off.  I had my customary Pop Tart breakfast and then followed up with my customary bathroom to trip to make sure the tank is empty.  This is one of the parts of being a race participant that I really dislike.  I fear the idea of being in the middle of a race and having some sort of bathroom emergency pop up.  I ALWAYS make sure to get things nailed down before leaving the house.  Sure, once I get on site I will need to take a leak once or twice but I absolutely do NOT want to have to deal with anything else once I walk out the door of my house.

Well despite attending to this need at home, shortly after getting on site I felt this need reenter my body.  I was not happy.  I can only attribute this to the additional anxiety of participating in my first event in over a year, even though my role only required a little over 10 minutes of total work.  Thankfully this race is based out of a hotel so I didn’t have to resort to port-o-potties but I still was very unhappy that my digestive system was giving me additional overhead to deal with.

As I was a couple miles from the hotel I had something else flash into my head that gave me additional distress.  Even though I remembered to bring the portable PA system and speaker stand which was to be used to start the race, I forgot to grab the Ziploc bag I have in one of the crates which includes the accessories for the set up, most importantly the microphone.  Without a mic the system was a paperweight.

I did not immediately panic, I though that I could utilize the mic from the large PA system that the club uses for the award ceremonies.  Shortly after getting on site I went down to the beach to grab the mic, hoping to be able to cover up my lack of planning.  When I got down there I saw the speakers and main box for the system but no cables used to connect it all together, rendering this system useless as well.

I immediately contacted the race director and several people in the club that dropped the PA system off for use.  The initial info I got was the cables and mic were left with the system in the conference room where early packet pick up was held.  I fast walked up to the hotel and walked around the area looking under tables to see if the red and black bag containing the cables was left behind.  The search came up empty.  I was starting to get very worried.  Imagine if we had no cables for either PA system, shit.

I made another call to the race director and described what the bag looked like.  A light bulb went on.  She said she had the bag, it was in her hotel room.  Evidently it was given to her because nobody knew what was inside of it.  Whew, crisis averted.  I met up with her and grabbed the bag, taking it down to the finish line.  I dumped the stuff on the table, interested in grabbing the mic to run it up to the start line.  As soon as I did the hope fo covering up my mistake vanished.  The connector the mic for the big sound system is not compatible with what my portable rig uses, damn it!  That meant for the start of the waves we were going to have to use the less powerful bull horn I brought along.  I was pissed at myself for not bringing all the stuff I needed.

So all that was left was to wait for the race to start.  Relay teams were in wave 2, starting two minutes after the first wave.  Cindy was nervous as she always is before every race.  She was worried she would let us down if she didn’t run fast enough.  I assured her no matter what time she ran it didn’t matter, we weren’t there to establish any world records.  After she took off running I returned the worthless portable PA system to the van before heading to the transition area to meet up with Randall.

They have very specific rules when it comes to handing off the timing device between team members during each transition.  There is a box on the ground defined by tape where the next leg of the team must stand.  The chip hand off has to happen inside that box.  We spotted Cindy come running into the area right around the 25 minute mark (24:35 official time).  She was exhausted, almost to the point of delirium.  Randall unstrapped the timing strap from her leg, slapped it on his and then grabbed his bike and was off.  Both Cindy and I expected Randall to make short work of the less than 10 mile bike course which he did, averaging close to 21 mph for the ride.

I had positioned myself in the chip hand off area a few minutes ahead of Randall’s return.  I had stripped down to my tri suit bottoms, had my ear plugs in, sneakers on and my goggles up on my forehead.  I elected to wear sneakers to make my roughly 1/4 mile run to the beach faster since it goes over a large section of hard surfaces and road.  After getting to the beach I could quickly strip the sneakers and head into the water.

Randall came steaming back into the transition area, threw his bike on the rack and came over to me so I could grab the chip.  I affixed the strap to my right leg and was off and running.  Since I got to skip the first two events I had an unfair advantage over the other participants I was passing on the way to the beach.  I was moving pretty quickly for me, enough that I was breathing heavy when I finally hit the sand.  After quickly removing my sneakers and pulling my goggles down I was into the water.

Even though the water wasn’t very deep for quite awhile, I didn’t waste much time before getting horizontal and swimming since you can always swim through water faster than you can trudge through it.  I modified my normally very deep stroke depth so I wasn’t hitting the bottom.  It didn’t take long till my first bump in the road came up.  My left goggle evidently did not have a good seal and filled up with salt water, enveloping my eye in a constant stinging misery.  I determined that although it was uncomfortable, it wasn’t worth my stopping and losing time to correct it.  I kept stroking.

I really hate swimming in open water, I hate swimming in open water with a bunch of people even more.  Throughout the swim I was dealing with bumping into people, people bumping into me and getting cut off several times.  I never really felt comfortable during the swim.  My pace was steady but not fast by any means.  Entering the water after running at a brisk pace seemed to put me at an oxygen deficit that I never really recovered from.  Plus swimming in a lap pool where you are pushing off the opposing wall every 30 seconds or so does not prepare you for open water swimming where it’s one long slog with nothing to push off of.  The 1/4 mile C in the gulf water felt like double that in a pool.

Coming back in I tried to swim as much as I could before emerging from the water to jog in the final few yards.  As soon as I stood up I felt disoriented and unbalanced, almost falling to my right side.  I caught myself and trudged up the beach and across the blue timing finish mats, sucking major wind.  I felt like I worked harder than I should have to considering I was only in the water for less than 10 minutes. Randall, Cindy and Lily all cheered my arrival from the water and joined me in collecting our race finisher medals.  I didn’t talk much until my breathing had slowed down after chugging about a half bottle of water.

I glanced at the race clock seeing it was 1:06 something when I finished, meaning our finish time was somewhere less than 1:05 because of our delayed wave start.  1:05 was the goal Randall, Cindy and I threw out there loosely before the race so to beat that was cool.  After emerging from the water I wanted to quickly exit the throng of people gathered around the finish chute, talking to herds of people is something I just don’t do well.  Cindy and I grabbed our stuff from transition while Randall and Lily snagged some food.  We returned and set up a blanket on the lawn to hang out.

In the more open setting I exchanged race stories with many of my friends from our local athletic community.  I almost felt dishonest claiming myself as a real race participant having only done the short swim.  The results for this race have always been slow to be posted, this year was the worst example of that to date.  It took forever for team results to start being posted and when they finally were it was only the cumulative time that was posted.  We managed to place 4th in the the mixed gender team division, meaning we actually received an award, which were being handed out to the top 5 in each category.  However even though we knew our finish place, the awards ceremony did not start until much, much later.  By this time it was hot and humid as hell, the main courtyard had no shade.  We retreated to a perimeter area to wait under some palm trees.

Evidently there were some scoring errors/omissions that were rather big, affecting the awards.  Being a timer myself I have had my feet to the fire like this so I did sympathize, however that sympathy eventually ran out when I just got sick and tired of waiting.  When the awards did finally start, they went at a pace that was too slow considering how many needed to be handed out.  To put the icing on the cake the team divisions awards were the last to be handed out.

The three of us went up to receive our awards, something I don’t know that any of us expected to receive before the day started.  The awards and the finisher medals that were handed out were not very impressive at all, especially considering the entry fee cost for the event.  Everyone, no matter 1st place or 5th got an identical frame with what looked to be a two sided post card in the center of it that just has the race name and logo.  There was nothing to designate it’s significance.  The finisher medal was tiny and noticeably smaller/cheaper than the events prior years medals.  As someone who is involved with putting on races, these sort of shortcuts stand out like a sore thumb to me.  Since this is a for profit race, these are clear moves to pad the bottom line.

Because of the turtle slow results/awards we did not get off site until shortly before noon, pretty insane for a race that started at 7:30 AM.  We piled in the van, glad to get out of the sun.  The Dunkin Donuts coffee we picked up on the way home felt good going down and helped soothe my inner rumblings about waiting around for 3 hours.

When we got back to the house everyone was anxious to hop in the shower before eating lunch to wash off the sweat, sand, and in my case, salt water off of them.  Cindy made us all a nice lunch that we enjoyed while catching one of the endless home improvement shows on HGTV.  After eating it didn’t take long for the early wake up call to mix in with the digesting food to bring on some extreme drowsiness.  Cindy and I retired for a nap, Randall and Lily followed suit.  We all didn’t emerge from the bedrooms until after 5pm.

I began looking online for the full event results to be posted.  They were nowhere to be found.  Even the cumulative times that we saw on site were not posted.  Again, my race timing background and efforts to make times available online nearly instantly make this sort of delay really annoying.  The results didn’t become available until early this morning.  If you want to see our team results you can look here.

Last night we all just relaxed except Cindy who was slaving in the kitchen making shrimp risotto.  We enjoyed it while watching my latest Netflix rental, Wolf of Wall Street.  I had heard a lot of things about this movie ahead of time, mostly bad.  The negative commentary however was focused on the sex, nudity, and the incredible amount of times the F word is used in the film.  I actually went into the movie thinking I wouldn’t come away with an overall positive view of the film.  Well I was very wrong.

Yes the movie had a ton of graphic sex scenes and adult language but for whatever reason it all seemed totally appropriate.  Supposedly the film is based on a true life story.  I have to assume a ton of artistic license was taken, I can hardly believe that any human being could live a life of excess to this degree.  If it is more or less true all I can say is wow.  I thought the acting in the movie was nothing short of brilliant.  Even though it was VERY long,  I had no issues with it.  If anything it could have kept on going. It was just the type of film that kept your attention non-stop.  If you are a bible thumping,  nudity hating, thin lipped prude, don’t even think about renting this movie for a second, you may go straight to hell.  Everyone else, A rating, see it.

After the movie I watched the end of the 3rd period of the Blackhawks – LA Kings game.  Lily is from Chicago and a big sports fan.  I retired to bed when the game was 4/4 at the end of regulation.  Unfortunately for her the Kings won the game in OT, advancing to the Stanley Cup finals.

I was up and out this morning before Randall and Lily got up.  Cindy is still off today so they are hanging out a bit until heading back eastward.  It was nice meeting Randall’s new girl, we loosely threw around plans for them to return for us to do some type of team arrangement for the Marco Island triathlon in the fall.

I have a busy week ahead which will be wrapped up with my picking up the dogs for another extended visit while Ali is in Costa Rica.

Last night was a busy one, I had a number of to do’s on the list.  I had to get the third new running club laptop set up now that I replaced the defective hard drive.  I also had to take the tv off the wall in the master bedroom so I could route another HDMI cable to be utilized by the new X1 box.  I was temporarily using the blu-ray hdmi cable to get by.   I had Cindy hold the tv upright on top of the dresser while I did the in-wall cable routing.

We handled other normal Thursday night chores like cleaning Tuki’s cage, laundry and watering the houseplants in short order.  Cindy also did her nightly blackberry harvest.  She has been harvesting every day to try to avoid what you see pictured, bird damage.

In the past I would only harvest berries during my once a week yard maintenance sweep.  The end result was many, many more berries wound up going to the birds than my freezer.  With Cindy harvesting daily we have collected 20-30 per day and have amassed quite a big bag full of them at this point.  The bush is showing no signs of slowing down either.  It seems the more we harvest the more it keeps producing.

The pain in my abdomen is still hanging around.  Last night I was doing some pressure tests to see where the pain is actually emanating from.  It seems to be above the belly button.  I am still hoping I am just experiencing an abdominal strain and not something more annoying like a hernia.

So I have gone through almost an entire work week with my new standing desk.  I have been utilizing the free Varidesk app to get me off my ass for 15 minutes every hour.  If you do the math it winds up being a total of 2 hours of standing time per day.  I have not had any issues doing computer tasks while standing, the position is surprisingly comfortable, at least for 15 minute segments.

The other aid I bought a few weeks to help my pc-centric job, the Gunnar glasses have not met the same sort of success.  For 2-3 weeks I was wearing them and my eyes felt definitively worse for it.  It almost felt like I was forcing my eyes to use readers even though they don’t require them.  After having bloodshot, tearing, painful eyes during those couple weeks I have gone Gunnar free.  Oh well.

This weekend I am helping Ali move to her new house (hopefully) for part of the day Saturday.  There has been some feet dragging at the mortgage company that may cause a problem.  Unfortunately Ali has already secured the truck and hands to help with the move so Saturday we will be moving furniture, however it may only be from her old place into the back of a straight body truck.

I have the parts I need to do a brake/rotor replacement on the Tacoma but that more than likely will be put off until some later time.  I’d like to get some endurance training in but I think the only things I could safely take on with my ab issue is biking or maybe swimming.

Last night I had a dream that LittleBeastM (real name Metin) showed up unannounced at my house.  LBM lives in the Netherlands and is famous in the calisthenics community for his hard core dedication to fitness, strength and healthy eating.   I remember first seeing videos of him doing all sorts of crazy hand balancing on the foot railing of his bed and thinking it was amazing.  He has an impressive mix of strength, balance and power.  He does a lot of movements that are normally reserved for the smaller, thinner, lighter calisthenic guys.

So not only did he show up at my door, he showed up with some large heavy rock.  The rock was utilized in the epic workout session we had in the backyard bar park.

This is the second time I had a dream about Metin showing up at my place, weird.

I have been a Tivo customer for a long time, since I had a DirecTV receiver with integrated Tivo back in 2000/2001.  Tivo was a revolutionary product when it came out, allowing customers to no longer be chained to their televisions based on a programming schedule.  Instead I could watch a show whenever it was convenient to me. On top of that watch it in 2/3 of the time since I can fast forward past commercials in a few seconds. The way Tivo would learn your viewing habits and make recommendations for other shows based on them was pretty cool as well. Being able to pause live tv was sweet.

The Tivo interface was always intuitive and user friendly, far ahead of the boxes that cable companies offered which were slow, clunky and ugly.  Over the years Tivo added features to keep up with the times, again being a ground breaker in many areas like allowing you to schedule recordings remotely from the web and be able to take recorded content from the Tivo and play it back on other devices.

I was very satisfied with my Tivo service for a long time.  At one point I had one in the main room and the bedroom.  Well over the last few years that satisfaction has been waning.  The decline started when I ejected Comcast out of my house for cable TV and switched to my OTA HD antenna for live tv.  Doing so cut down the amount of programming available to feed my Tivo dramatically.  Most of the time my box was sitting around less than 10% full.

The shift to streaming delivery of video was another big change that lessened the Tivo’s value to me.  I wound up using the Xbox 360 as much if not more than my Tivo to watch stuff.  Tivo did have it’s own set of apps to watch various online streaming content like Netflix, Amazon Video, etc… but I think they kind of suck.  The apps were slow and annoying.  I found the experience on the Xbox 360 apps to be much better. These factors plus the greatly improved Xfinity X1 hardware and software made paying $15 a month for Tivo service not make sense anymore.

They don’t let you cancel your service online, it requires a call so their “retention experts” can try to change your mind.  During the 15 minute call to Tivo I politely rejected various offers.  The guy even suggested that I should consider buying the lifetime subscription for the Tivo I am getting rid of to increase it’s resale value.  They put you on hold for like 5 minutes so they can “finalize” the cancellation.  Cut me a break, cancelling is probably one or two mouse click on their end.  Save the drama for your mama.

The call finally ended.  I have officially broken up with Tivo.

Last night I took the girls back to Ali’s place after another fun four day visit.  It’s always a bit sad for all parties involved since the girls seem to enjoy being at the house so much.

So last night as Cindy and I were watching Paranoia (B+ rating), I started to feel sharp pain in my abs.  My first thought was the pain was from my stomach.  I asked Cindy if there were any different spices in the food she made.  She said it was all stuff she has used before.  I wasn’t sure what was going on but it was pretty painful.  At the gym I had done some heavy deadlifts, after work I did a circuit that had me straining to get some push up reps out but I don’t recall any specific ab pain during either session.

Sleeping last night did not go well.  The pain in my abs woke me up several times.  Laying in certain positions was impossible.  When the alarm went off I had to struggle to get out of bed, certain angles would make me just wince.  I immediately took two Advil which took the edge off the pain enough that I could function.  The fact that Advil helped pretty much confirms that I just strained something in there.

Saturday morning I drug myself out of bed to go do the club bagel run.  The bagel run is a run of varying distances, anywhere from 3 miles up to 13, the duration is up to you.  Afterwards everyone meets at the running store and enjoys some free bagels, juice and coffee.   Cindy and I only ran 5 miles as I am trying to increase my run distance slowly to avoid knee pain complications.

For the second half of the run we were joined by an older guy named Eric that I never saw before.  It turns out Eric had only been in the Naples area for a week and was trying it on for size as he is looking for a place to relocate to from New York.  Eric has had quite an interesting life which started off in Albania and found him living all over the country including Alaska, California and Manhattan.  He also was a tremendous endurance athlete in his younger days.  He ran something like 27 marathons with a personal best of 2:56, that is VERY fast.  He also did the Kona Ironman, geez.

Here I was thinking my 5 mile run at a 9 minute mile pace was actually half decent, lol.

On my way home from the run I had an unplanned stop at Ali’s.  I had been talking to her about buying her office furniture she wanted to unload since she plans to get new stuff when she moves into her new place.  The furniture is nothing fancy but at least I knew it fit the corner at the house well since that is where it resided for many years.  Well I wound up picking the furniture up.

To get the stuff out of Ali’s condo was a bit of a chore.  I had to disassemble the L shaped desk most of the way to be able to get it down the steps and into the bed of the Tacoma.   In addition to the desk I grabbed one of the two file cabinets and a small bookshelf.  To give Ali a place to work we moved ANOTHER small desk to be used temporarily for her computer equipment.  Yes the process was on the tedious side.

When I got home I wasted little time getting busy.  I first removed the used ottoman I had bought with hope of Nicki using it as a resting spot.  She never showed any interest in it whatsoever so I carried it out to the road and plopped it down for someone to take. I then used my furniture sliders to relocate the treadmill to the master bedroom and tucked it next to the far wall where Cindy can use it while having the TV on for a distraction.

I then brought in the desk parts and reassembled them.  The desk was quite a few years old and never felt all that sturdy as is often the case with much furniture you put together.  I decided I wanted to try to stiffen things up.  I did so by utilizing countersunk 2 inch deck screws at various spots.  They worked as I hoped, there is no more wobble or squeaking, the desk feels much better.

I also had a lawn tractor project to knock out, installing my new sunshade.  I saw it as an opportunity for my first ever tractor maintenance video.  The install was very straight forward and simple but I never want to miss up an opportunity to monetize a video for ad dollars.

The new shade is nice.  After I finished installing it I quickly mowed the front mound of the house to test it out.  Even though the sun was out and shining brightly I felt quite comfortable with my head and neck being completely in the shade.   It should make those August mowing sessions more bearable and less UV intensive, something my skin cancer filled history appreciates.

Saturday night was when Cindy and I went to go see the new 300 movie.  I was quite excited to go for the reasons I outlined in the blog last week.  I also was apprehensive since I think every single Zack Snyder movie after 300 was disappointing.  I didn’t want the new 300 to suffer the same fate.  We met up at the theater with our friend Alfred.

Well I am happy to report the movie was good.  Now if you didn’t like the first 300, you won’t like the second.  This isn’t Gone with the Wind, this is blood soaked, smash your face violence where the bad guys (and girls) get what is coming to them. At one point Cindy told me I was hurting her hand from squeezing it too hard during some of the battle scenes, it’s just epic action. I had no idea that for the most part the movie timeline takes place along the original 300 story.  For some reason I thought the new movie was sometime in the future.  They did a good job tying the two together.

Of course for this to be a true 300 movie it had to not only have CGI enhanced violence, it also had to have sex and nudity.  The way the sex was delivered was unexpected.  All three of us exchanged confused looks when it went down.  When you see the movie I am sure you will understand our confusion.

So anyway I thought the movie was good, close in delivering the same straight to the vein testosterone injection as the original 300.  No it won’t incite any deep thoughts or  warm and fuzzy feelings.  Instead you will feel like going out in the parking lot and wrestling an alligator.  I give Rise of an Empire a shiny A, deal with it. Cindy liked it too.

After the movie the three of us hung out at the nearby Fridays for a bit and drank a couple beers.  I hadn’t seen Alfred in a little while so it was good to catch up.

On Sunday I originally had some loose ideas about doing bike/swim brick.  However the clock change forward after a late night, early morning fog and a lack of motivation derailed those plans.  Instead I spent a good portion of the day just being lazy.

Sure I did a few things like help Cindy pull some more stuff out of her apartment, set the Roombas loose on the pool deck, and a few other items but for the most part I just fked off.  I played a lot of WoW and enjoyed doing so, it’s weird how all of a sudden I am liking it again.  Cindy and I also finally got to try out the portable ping pong net I bought her for Xmas.

We utilized the dining room table and it worked out well.  It was a little more narrow and shorter than a regulation ping pong table but it was close enough that neither of us really noticed.  I left the table cloth on the table just to minimize the possibility of ball damage. Doing so took a little bounce out of the ball but not much.

It turns out the dining room is a nice spot to play some ping pong.  We played three very close games and except for a couple times, had no issues with anything getting in the way. The portable net system is really good quality.  Cindy is quite a capable ping pong player, I struggled to beat her all three games and each game was only decided by two points.

I had fun partaking in my lazy Sunday but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like a bit of a slob for doing so.

I really enjoyed my long three day weekend following the fun road trip into frozen western PA.  I tended to most of what needed to get done on Friday, leaving the other two days of the weekend to do what I wanted to do instead of what I had to do.

One of the things I got done Friday was picking up a new box spring for the king size gel infused foam mattress I bought off Woot last week.  The bed is for the guest room, replacing the too small for two people queen bed, that was graciously donated to me by Jeremy after I separated.

The foam bed came shrink wrapped and rolled up like a burrito.  It also appeared to be vacuum sealed with all of the air sucked out of it.  The bed came shipped to me in a huge, heavy duty drawstring bag that may be repurposed for other use in the future.

I lugged the bed on top of the box spring and started cutting away.  Once I punctured the plastic seal it was pretty cool how the bed “inflated”, sounding like one long inhale.  In a couple minutes the mattress had fully regained it’s original shape, looking like a regular mattress.

I had to give the mattress a quick test run.  The foam felt firm but soft at the same time as it conformed to my body shape.  I think future house guests will be quite happy with the bedding upgrade.

I also was very fortunate to have the old queen bed set out of the house before 5PM.  My neighbor that will check in on Tuki and the dogs when I am away, knew someone that was looking for a bed.  They came and grabbed it late afternoon.

The one thing that was not quite so enjoyable about the weekend was the temperature.  It seems pretty strange to be complaining about it being too hot after shivering in 1.5 degrees less than a week earlier.  But hey, it’s too fricking hot for February.  My thermometer read 86 degrees on Saturday afternoon.  The temps included high humidity as well adding to the irritation.

On Saturday morning Cindy and I got up early to go run at the local track once again.  It was VERY foggy.  As we ran circles the moisture on our face/bodies was equal parts fog and sweat.  We put in 3 miles at a slower pace than a couple weeks prior but it just felt good to get out there and move.

Cindy worked on Saturday.  I had a few things to get done around the house but it was all very minor.  I headed out to Home Depot to grab some vegetables for the garden, hoping to replenish it from the cold weather damage.  I loaded up on a big variety of crops, grabbing spinach, tomatoes, eggplant, broccoli, peas, and banana peppers.  When I got home I prepped the raised beds, pulling out the two sections of bolted lettuce and turning over/raking a number of other empty beds.

Of the pre-existing crops, my kale is doing the best, I have 7 or 8 healthy plants.  My swiss chard, which was getting devoured by insects is making a comeback presumably from my treating it with insecticidal soap.

By the time early afternoon rolled around I had everything I wanted done, done.  I decided to take the opportunity to totally relax the rest of the afternoon.  I played a couple hours of WoW and then dug further into Inferno, the Dan Brown book I started reading in PA. It was very nice to just relax.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to see the new RoboCop movie.  I looked at no reviews of the film ahead of time but figured it had the potential to be a clunker just like so many movie franchise reboots are.  I was pleasantly surprised.  I really liked the movie, I think it actually was neck and neck with the original Robocop in my book.  I give it a solid A-, we both thought it was good stuff.

We started Sunday morning once again with exercise.  I had forgotten that the waterpark reopened this past weekend.  I figured the near summer-like conditions would lend themselves to getting some swim time in.  We decided to pair it up with a bike ride to make a training brick, something I haven’t done since the waterpark closed for the season last September.

The ride was short compared to the 20 and 30 mile routes we have done in recent months but it was tough none the less.  Cindy was really having a hard time with her breathing due to the VERY heavy pollen count in the air right now.  She had a tough time keeping pace which for her is very unusual, normally it is me sucking wind to keep up with her.

Her breathing was too bad to try to swim however she hung out while I put in two very tough 400 yard segments in the pool.  The first 400 actually felt worst than the second.  The first time back in the pool after a long lay off always feels that way so it wasn’t unexpected.  I emerged from the water feeling like my first 2014 training brick had whacked me in the head like a real brick.  I was really pooped.

After the park we had a nice lunch at Panera before heading into Target to get a new comforter.  The comforter that has been on my bed actually is the one that used to be in the guest room and is more of a match for the colors in there.  I was buying a new one for the master bedroom. We wound up finding a decent set on clearance, the $30 price tag made it very appealing.

The rest of my Sunday was pretty laid back and enjoyable, just as the rest of the weekend had been.

The Winter Olympics are over, bummer.  I watched a decent amount of coverage but not a ton.  I didn’t catch one second of curling which is disappointing.  Unfortunately it is normally only televised on NBC’s cable channels.

Since I finished watching Sopranos I hooked into a new HBO show, True Detectives.  It caught my eye when it was being promoted because it had two actors that you normally only see on the big screen nowadays, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.   Cindy and I got through the first three episodes yesterday.

It’s a good show with a very dark tone to it.  Woody and Matt’s characters are both very interesting and well written.  I find McConaughey’s character fascinating.  Some of the lines he uses to describe his overall negative but honest viewpoint of the human race and religion are brilliantly stated.  I wish I had thought of them.  If you have access to HBO you should be watching this show.

Inferno also is based around a very negative premise, how world overpopulation is the TRUE source of so many things tagged as worldwide calamities like ozone depletion, global warming, water/food shortages, pollution, and animal extinction.  All of these problems are actually symptoms stemming from the incredible population growth of human beings in the last 200 years.

Any logical individual should be able to see a chart like this and realize something has to give. Despite this, the majority of the world gives no thought to the the meteoric rise of population and the inevitable end results if it continues unabated, the collapse of civilization as we know it. As long as we can get our McDonald’s food and Iphones the world must be ok.  The discussion of the function of human denial in the book is one I find myself shaking my head in agreement with quite often.  The big picture often is just too scary/overwhelming to look at so instead we just look away.

Saturday morning I followed through with my plan to reboot my running program.  Cindy and I did a little over 3 miles at the nearby track.  Running on the track can deliver a pretty high dosage of boredom as you circle the same 400 meters again and again but it is also nice to know exactly how far you have gone and how far you have yet to go without a GPS.

I had to derail Cindy from her usual talk heavy tendencies as the run went on.  Since I hadn’t run since New Year’s Day I wasn’t feeling all that great.  When I don’t feel all that great I try to insulate my mind from my body by letting it drift to whatever subject it lands on.  Responding to someone else’s conversation breaks that process.  The good thing is Cindy knows that and if I give her the NTZ (no talk zone) indicator, she is pretty good at just letting me be.

My GPS and Cindy’s had a pretty large disagreement on how far and how fast we ran.  My Garmin said we logged something like 3.29 miles at an 8:33 pace.  Cindy’s said we did something like 3.17 at a 9:00 pace.  I liked my numbers better.  Either way I felt well exerted and as a bonus left the track without a limp.  My right knee felt ok.

When I got back to the house I headed outside to tend to outdoor chores.  Despite the extensive efforts that were put into the protecting the garden during recent cold spells the tomatoes have officially bit the dust.  I ripped out the two dead plants.

I had everything finished up by noon clearing the way for my next automotive project, bypassing the transmission cooler on my Tacoma.

You may wonder why I was bypassing my perfectly good factory trans cooler?  Well recently a guy commented on one of my other Tacoma videos, thanking me for the guidance it gave him on his repair.  He also clued me in to another common failure of Tacomas around the age of mine, trans cooler ruptures.  Evidently the factory transmission  cooler, which is enclosed within the radiator has a history of failing.  If that happens, antifreeze is pumped into the transmission which will kill it shortly thereafter.  Well the last thing I need to is to replace the transmission on my 15 year old truck so I figured installing a $40 trans cooler was a good insurance policy.

I won’t go into vast detail on the trials and tribulations of the replacement (there were many) as they are outlined in the video.  The end result was I got the cooler installed albeit using methods that are less than ideal in my book.  I will be keeping an eye on the front end of the truck to make sure I don’t see any trans fluid puddles going forward.  So far, so good.

On Saturday night we watched Don Jon, a movie about a guy that is majorly addicted to porn.  The movie was entertaining enough but I can’t really tell you much about the plot, I am not sure if there really was much of one. It was a solid Netflix rental but if you are a sexual prude, steer clear. It gets a firm (no pun intended) B.

Sunday morning was utilized mostly to get more maintenance done, both the automotive and landscape variety.  Cindy’s Miata was due for an oil change.  She helped me do the work and actually enjoyed participating.  After that I recharged her AC system as it was not blowing cold air anymore, despite the large chunk of money Cindy spent getting the compressor replaced last year.

Adding coolant to the system got it blowing cold again.  I am hoping whatever is leaking is doing so in small quantity so I can just recharge it every couple of months of instead of throwing more repair money into the Miata which is already firmly in the “throwing good money after bad” category when it comes to repair costs.

After car maintenance was completed we headed to the backyard for landscape work.  The areca palms outer fronds had all turned brown from the cold temps.  I wanted to give them a nice haircut, they were overgrown anyway.  I threw the hedge trimming attachment on my weed whacker and went nuts, leaving piles of decapitated palm fronds in my wake.

Cindy was on clean up duty, picking up the fronds and throwing them in the yard cart I had attached to the tractor, dumping them in the trench in the rear of the yard.  Having her help made the task go MUCH faster than it would have flying solo.

Most of Sunday afternoon was low key.  Sometime mid-afternoon a thought hit me as I glanced at the calendar while doing my bills.  I noticed that next Monday was President’s Day, a day off for me.  I recalled that Cindy said she had off Friday and Saturday as well.  I wondered if somehow I could turn this into a short notice road trip to PA to visit my dad and step mom?

In March I have work and race commitments that would make a trip impossible.  If I wanted to do it in 2014 it would have to be now.  When I mentioned the idea to Cindy she was all for it, she was excited about the prospect of seeing and playing in snow in person, something she never has had a chance to do, ever.  Of course this was all preliminary, I had to get a number of things lined up, first of all checking with Dad if he is ok with a short notice visit.

Dad was surprised by my proposal but happy to hear it.  After verifying with my step mom, since she is the one who winds up doing most work associated with having company, he said he was cool with us coming up.

Next up I floated the idea to Ali. Ideally I would have liked to take both dogs along for the visit, despite the fecal disaster I encountered last year from Nicki.  Ali was not agreeable to my taking Nicki again for fear of a relapse of that very poopy scenario so Sadie will be making the trek solo.  However once we get to my dad’s place she will have my dad’s three dogs to keep her company.  She will have a TON of fun.

Today I got the green light from work to take the time off so the trip is officially a go.

All of a sudden I now I have a massive list of things to get handled before the early Friday morning departure.  I have a lot of mental checklists to mark off.  Of course a lot of those marks are party van related.  Everytime I push off for another road trip in the van it is always a leap of faith to some degree since it is an 18 year old vehicle.  However each time I have called it into action it has gotten me to and from my numerous destinations with only a few small bumps in the road.

This winter in PA has been brutal, cold and long.  The temps at my dad’s place have been non-stop frigid almost every day since Christmas. We will be lucky to see a couple days that get above freezing. It will be quite the eye opener for Cindy since she gets cold when temps dip into the 60’s. Seeing the new sheep and llama additions to my dad and stepmom’s animal menagerie should be fun as well.

I got a call from my accountant yesterday letting me know he was done with my taxes already.  I am hoping the refund I am getting will be enough to cover getting the pool enclosure re-screened, something that is probably a year or two overdue.  There are a number of panels on the top of the cage that are torn along the spline.