Category Pets

I got a call yesterday from Ali.  She said that Nicki couldn’t get herself up. Her rear legs, which have been bothering her for a long time, just didn’t want to work.  She took Nicki to the emergency vet where they basically said it is just the progression of her arthritis.  It must have been especially painful yesterday for her.  I was hoping the vet would recommend upping Nicki’s Deramexx dosage (dog Advil) but instead they prescribed tramadol which is a pain killer.  Their logic was they didn’t want to risk the possible GI side effects of increasing the Deramexx dosage.  My logic is when your choice is the dog being able to walk or having diarhea, walking wins.

Ali’s living arrangements since we split have not been ideal for a dog with bad legs as they both have had stairs which Nicki has struggled up and down for the last few years.  The big 18″square tile in her main living area also makes it hard for Nicki to get up from the laying position because of the lack of traction.   Ali is taking steps to try to address both of these things.

She was able to get a bunch of left over carpet remnants from a local carpet store which she is using to create carpet runways on the tile which should be easier for Nicki to get up on.  She is also going to have her boyfriend carry Nicki between floors as needed to cut down on the wear and tear on her legs.  Hell I was even researching dog stair lifts yesterday.  I saw a couple DIY versions that were quite impressive.

Of course it makes my heart very heavy to see Nicki struggling like this.  I find it hard to believe this is the same dog that used to leap the sofa in a single bound as I chased her around the house.  All we can do at this point is try to make her quality of life as good as it can be.

I got some other sad pet news yesterday.  Cindy saw the woman that we gave Jaina, the huge cornish chicken, to.  She said that Jaina died from sort of disease that killed 10 or 11 of her other chickens.  I immediately felt guilt as I knew the living situation Jaina was moved into was definitely not close to the level of care or comfort we were providing.

During this week I have had to make two calls to get my costs for two entertainment services reduced, Sirius and Comcast.  I had received the ridiculous $273 bill from Sirius awhile ago and had been sitting on it, waiting until it was closer to it’s expiration date.  I got the cancellation department and gave them the normal song and dance, if I can’t pay what I did last year I am cancelling.  If for some reason they would call my bluff I would probably follow through on the cancellation since the Stern show schedule is so light nowadays it is barely worth paying the 50% discount I have been.  Well they once again agreed to my terms, the $273 bill morphed into $144 after a few minutes.

The call to Comcast did not go as well.  For years I have played the shell game with Comcast, calling up and getting put on whatever current promo packages they have which normally run for a term of anywhere of 6 months to a year.  When that term expires I call back up and repeat the process.

Well I haven’t been watching my bill that closely since I autopay it with my CC now.  My buddy at work was complaining about how high his bill was so I logged on to look at mine and saw all of my promos had run out and I was now paying roughly 150 a month for internet and tv service, time to call.

There have been tons of stories in the news about the big drop in subscriber numbers Comcast has been seeing, many of them going to streaming options instead.  My naive assumption was this would mean Comcast would be very agreeable to work with existing customers to keep their business.  On my first attempt on Wednesday I used their online agent portal, telling them I have received offers from one of their competitors, Century Link, and wanted to see what could be done to reduce the size of my bill.

Well I spent almost a half hour on the chat session during which there was a 14 minute period of no communication at all from the rep.  When they came back they said their computer locked up and had to be restarted.  They offered me no deals at all, all they offered was I reduce my features if I wanted to reduce my bill.  I explained I was not interested in losing features, I wanted to be put on a promotional deal to keep me from investigating what Century Link would do for me.  The virtual rep said I should call into one of their two “customer loyalty numbers” where they are authorized to offer long time customers special promotions.  Ok, fine.

So yesterday I call one of these numbers.  The phone menu did not sound any different than the normal Comcast phone menu and I wound up with someone on the Indian help desk.  I told him I was given this number by the online staff and explained I was looking for a reduction in my costs to prevent me from going to a competitor.  At first the heavily accented phone rep was stand offish, again going down the “if you want to pay less, you get less” road.  I got irritated as I realized this was not any sort of special retention department, just another annoying, outsourced phone bank that American companies have grown so found of.

I told the guy I was annoyed that he was just telling me the same thing the online rep did and that I would just look into cancellation of Comcast instead.  Well once the word cancellation comes out of a customers mouth they apparently are allowed to at least offer some sort of discount.  I wound up getting the $10 Showtime fee waived for the next 6 months and an additional $5 discount, hardly earth shattering but better than nothing.  The difference with this negotiation versus Sirius was I actually like the services I get from Comcast.  My internet is generally fast and reliable and I am a big fan of their X1 platform.  If push came to shove I don’t think I would cancel it.

This weekend I am helping to time a large CC meet Saturday morning followed by a nice birthday dinner for Cindy Saturday night.  Although the temperatures during the day are still high, the humidity dial has been slightly less and the constant precipitation has diminished to the point where standing water is no longer a feature on our property which is great.  I look forward to some winter weather where I can work outdoors without paying such a severe perspiration tax.

So our new chickens have now started to produce eggs the last few days.  We have gotten 4 or 5 eggs in the last couple days.  Cindy has been fascinated with the process and has been utilizing the coop security dvr to review footage to find out who laid when. Even with the footage it is tough to 100% determine who is laying since sometimes the hens will sit in the box without popping out an egg. Even though we have 4 nesting boxes, it seems the chickens prefer the box against the back wall.  Every egg but one has been found in that location.

Last night after work I met up with my timer buddy John.  He had two things for me.  First was one of his timing clocks that I am borrowing for some cross country meets I am involved with.  The second was one of his inflatable finish line arches that I bought.

John recently bought a new arch so he was looking to sell one of his old ones.  I plan to use it for my independently timed stuff although perhaps the running club would be interested in using it as a start line arch to dress up an event as well.  My plan is to rebrand the arch with Green Machine Timing signage.

I am thinking I may be able to use a combo of vinyl signs with velcro to accomplish this goal but I will assign Cindy the majority of the responsibility with the project since she likes this sort of stuff.  Hopefully when it is finished it will look something like the image on the right.

Yesterday and last night we got another round of absolute drenching with very powerful storms.  I am absolutely over precipitation at this point.

Last night was the annual fantasy football draft party.  I got home a little before 4PM and got to work rearranging the house.  Cindy had picked up various items for the party during the day and had started getting stuff ready.  There is a pretty extensive furniture shuffle that goes on for the event.  The sofa and love seat go against the wall and the big dining room table gets moved in front of the tv along with some other smaller stuff getting relocated.  I also had to get the computer set up for the remote owners to connect in via Skype.

The draft was supposed to start at 7.  Of course it didn’t start on time, it rarely does.  Most of the guys showed up around 6:45 but Taylor, the guy that was bringing the draft board didn’t get there until 7:15 or so. A lot of the guys commented on the new faux wood ceramic tile floor, complimenting the way it looked.  It certainly holds up better to 15 sets of feet than the old carpet did.

Cindy did a great job of having a nice food spread out.  We had three coolers with ice in them available to keep beer cold and all three went completely unused.  All the people that brought beer did so in their own personal coolers so there was no need for our auxiliary storage.  My personal stash of Miller Lites was in the fridge.

Every year, the draft party seems to be my most gluttonous eating experience and once again that was the case.  The combination of alcohol and a room full of fantasy football owners seems to bring out my inner pig.  I was eating almost non-stop the entire 3 hours the party was going on, it was like I was a tractor trailer going down a steep appetite hill with no brakes.  I dined on the veggie platter, spanikopita, pizza bites, chips, brownies, cookies, and more in a steady rotation.   The six or seven Miller Lites I drank made me just not care.

I was not very happy with the team I drafted.  I made some mistakes and drafted a number of players whose name I never heard of before, putting them on my roster just based on their placement on my player rankings list.  I was quite surprised when at the end of the night the draft rating tool said I had the 4th or 5th best draft of 12 teams.  It sure didn’t feel that way.

The draft didn’t finish up until almost 11, about a half hour later than normal.  Cindy and I still did our best to get 90% of the house back in order before retiring to bed.  I was utterly exhausted from drinking combined with the food coma. That feeling persisted through till today.  I awoke feeling pretty miserable and wishing I could just blow off work.  I just feel toxic.  My body is not accustomed to taking in that much fat, sugar, salt and alcohol in such a short period of time.  I am hoping to beat it out of me with a good cardio session at lunch.

Cindy said this morning the hawk, presumably the same one that we have chased away before multiple times was back.  It was on the ground near the pond literally a couple feet away from Katie, one of the barred rock chickens.  Katie was actually curious about the hawk and not scared.  The hawk seemed equally curious and not aggressive.  This hawk also is not very concerned with human beings, not flying off until Cindy got pretty close to it.

We really don’t know what to make of this bird.  Of course hawks are natural predators of chickens however they don’t attack chickens by chasing them around on the ground.  Typically a hawk will dive bomb it’s prey at high speed with the resulting impact either stunning or killing the animal it is attacking.  Cindy and I don’t want to lose a chicken to any predator so we will keep chasing this bird away although I have a distant hope that maybe this is one of those weird things in nature where natural enemies become friends.

The yard around the chicken coop has at least a half dozen different spots the chickens can use for cover if need be.  Hopefully they are smart enough to utilize them.

If you are curious what my FF draft looked like here it is:

So after work on Friday I made the mistake of stopping at Costco.  It was a mistake because I forgot to consider that people were worked up into a frenzy about tropical storm Erika.  The mere mention of a remote possibility of it becoming a hurricane is all it takes to set off mild panic.  The aisles of the store were crammed with people preparing for end of days.  It seemed like almost every cart in the store had a case or two of bottle water jammed in it.  As is always the case for me, I don’t react well to mob mentality.  Sure be prepared if there is a serious reason for concern but what the fck, we get severe thunderstorms weekly that deliver as much if not more punch than the storm was predicted to have.  It turned out to deliver even less than that as Erika fell apart Saturday morning.

The state of Florida jumped right onto the overreaction bandwagon with Rick Scott declaring a state of emergency far in advance of there being one.  His declaration meant other government agencies had to fall in line and overreact in kind.  State agencies were given orders to do stuff like shutdown, unplug, and cover equipment with plastic.  It was all just a big production over a very small threat.  Since Florida hasn’t had a hurricane make landfall in 10 years it seems like some EMS agencies are just chomping at the bit to put their emergency action plans in place, regardless of their actual need.

Saturday morning Cindy and I headed to the track to run.  We wound up running slightly over 5K in distance, the first time I have run that far in at least 6 months, maybe more.  I felt ok during the run besides being drenched from what felt like 100% humidity.  The rest of the weekend I had an off and on limp but I didn’t expect to emerge from the run pain free.  As long as it fades in a day or two that is the best I can expect nowadays.

We picked up the dogs after the run on our way to do a couple errands.   At Home Depot I picked up some hardware to work on the door to the chicken run.  Since it was built it has twisted somewhat, making it difficult to open and close. My idea was to drive an anchor point into opposing corners and then use vinyl coated steel cable with a tensioner in the middle. My thought was this would resist the twisting forces.

Well it seemed like all it wound up doing was actually make the door even more difficult to close.  I decided to take a new approach, grabbing my large wood chisel and a hammer.  I used it to shave down the 2×6 along the bottom frame of the door until it was able to swing open and closed without friction.  It took a lot of trial and error and I had to keep chasing away curious chickens that thought wood shavings were treats.

Over the weekend I also tried to further address water problems and the coop.  The seam between the chicken run and shed still has been allowing a lot of water to seep through.  The water runs down the side of the shed and then drips onto the chicken door landing, splashing water inside as well.  Yesterday I used an entire tube of caulking to fill that seam as much as possible.  Hopefully I have finally got the issue handled.

During the afternoon Saturday I also completed the rebuild of my pool cleaner.  I installed the new bumper assembly and gear box.  Having ripped it apart several times recently and using my power drill made the work go very quickly.  I was quite happy when I put it in the pool for a test run and it immediately took off, hauling ass around the bottom of the pool like it was brand new.

Saturday night we again stayed home and watched Run All Night, another Liam Neeson action flick.  Cindy didn’t expect much of the film but it was quite good.  Liam and action films have proven to be a pretty solid combo.  I’d give this one an A- rating without batting an eye.

On Sunday I woke up feeling very blah.  I felt unmotivated, lazy, and just down on the world.  I felt like I have such a busy week ahead of me that I should be doing stuff to prepare but had no desire to do so.  The wet swamp outside did little to help alleviate my cloudy mood.  Instead of doing productive work I played some games of Hearthstone for awhile to soothe my mind.  As the hours passed I started to feel a little better, aided by a cup of DD coffee.

I couldn’t mope that long because I needed to get busy on making my famous chocolate cake.  A friend of ours and her kids were coming over Sunday evening so we wanted to give them a treat.  Cindy Periscoped a good portion of the cake prep process.  The end result was what may have been the best version of the cake I ever pumped out.  Both the frosting and the cake itself were dead on.

The rains once again came mid-afternoon making any outdoor activities with the kids impossible.  Instead when they showed up they were entertained by the dogs, Tuki, and the latest Transformers movie that was streaming on Netflix.  Cindy prepared a very tasty meal to compliment the chocolate cake which everyone gave kudos to. It was nice to have them out to the house, hopefully next time the weather is more accommodating.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a super packed week.  I host the fantasy football draft party tomorrow night, have a race to time on Saturday, and oh by the way, a two week western road trip to prepare for.  Yay.

So yesterday was a big day for Cindy.  It was test day for her ACE personal trainer certification exam.  This was the culmination of a journey she started about 6 months ago.  She has been reading and studying from day one but the past month or so she was studying her ass off and taking endless rounds of practice tests.    She was very nervous about the exam, worried that despite her hard work she would not pass.  I felt anxious for her because I knew she would devastated if she did not pass.  Well a little after 1PM I got the text message from her that she did indeed pass the exam and was now an ACE certified trainer.  I talked to her on the phone.  She was actually crying which I think was just the culmination of stress and happiness for reaching her goal.   I told her I was very proud of her.

When she first talked of getting this certification I honestly did not think it would be quite as difficult as it turned out to be.  You are required to have a pretty in depth knowledge of physiology, exercise, client analysis and much more.  It was much more comprehensive than I expected.

The certification will help open a number of doors for Cindy.  She already has several promising leads which will allow her to embark on her new career.  To celebrate her accomplishment we went out to dinner at Carrabbas last night.  We enjoyed the non-season light crowds and were able to sit down without waiting, a near impossibility from the months of October to March.  We had a nice meal.  Cindy certainly deserved it.  I could tell she felt so relieved to have the looming test off her shoulders.  I swear during the last week she was studying/testing 8 hours a day.

So almost on cue, after I proclaimed I had been smoke smell free for going on two weeks on Wednesday, the smell returned yesterday.  I can smell it today as well to some degree.  Maybe if I just stop thinking and talking about it it can fade away.  My Uncle Randy messaged me about my Aunt Sis, who was mom’s aunt.  Aunt Sis was very much a believer in reincarnation, ghosts, and that sort of stuff.  He told me the day Aunt Sis died he had a black bird that was watching him and he had an odd sense it was her.  My grandfather also was a believer in reincarnation. I remember one time my mom telling me when I was very young I talked in depth about living a previous life which I have no recollection of.

If you read my blog you know that as an adult I have a very logical view of the world.  I don’t subscribe to religious beliefs nor do I think there is much waiting for anyone when they die besides an eternal nap.  However I also am not the type to be afraid to reevaluate my thoughts when new evidence is presented to me.  I just haven’t had that happen concretely to this point although there have been many moments of coincidence and deja vu throughout my life that don’t have any explanation that would compute logically.

For the first time in a long time Florida is potentially in the cross hairs for a hurricane.  As of now Erika is projected to hit the east coast of the state and swing right up the middle.  I have been a Florida resident long enough and seen enough tropical storm forecasts to know that there is still a lot of opportunity for the forecast track to change.

However regardless of it’s final destination it is very likely that regardless we would see significant rain and wind at the homestead.  The rain especially is unwelcome since our property is still sopping wet.

This is our last full weekend before the road trip which is scheduled to kick off two Sundays from now.  I need to start developing checklists so all that needs to get done is handled before we leave.  It doesn’t help that there is a race to time next Saturday to complicate matters.  Of course my biggest concern with the trip is the welfare of the chickens.  Our chicken sitters are stopping by over the weekend to make sure everything is clear.

Yesterday was my final day off of my extended five day weekend.  In the morning I did my four day blog recap followed by a coffee/Rural King run to get a few things.  I wanted to get some sort of workout in so Cindy agreed to go in the back yard to do some head to head challenges. It was brutally hot and humid with very threatening skies nearby.

We did a several challenges outside including a couple Century circuits and one arm dead hangs before the rain drops started to fall.  We then moved inside for a wall handstand challenge.  I won all of the events except the wall handstand hold.  The Century circuits were very tight, Cindy loves to compete.

Of course we video taped all of it, we all of it except the first Century because I was a dumb ass and forgot to reinsert the SD card into the camera.

You can get a good sense of the silly aura when we workout together from this brief Cindy montage.

So the skies absolutely opened up, dropping several inches of rain on the property in a short period of time.  It instantly transformed what was dry land to instant swamp.  During the worst of it the entire front yard in front of the house mound was under water.  The chickens don’t seem to mind getting wet.  Quite often we will see them running around the yard despite steady rain coming down.

Speaking of the chickens, I forgot to mention we did out first wing clipping of the four young birds.  They are all smaller and better flyers than the six blacks and Lucy.  This was motivated by my seeing two of them by the front office window, they had flown over the four foot fence.  Cindy and I were both nervous about trimming the wings but if you do it correctly the birds don’t feel a thing.

I figured I better gather the fragments of my memory before they are lost.  Friday was my first day of my impromptu 5 day staycation.  Cindy and I started it with a DD bike ride. It was the first time I was taking my freshly modified Trek 2.1 on the road.  Earlier in the week I added a stem extension and aero bars to enhance my riding position comfort.  Despite being a much better/lighter bike, the Trek has spent most of the last two years hanging upside down in my storage shed because it just was uncomfortable to ride.  Instead my 300 dollar Dawes bike was getting all of the road time. My alterations to the Trek had the effect I was hoping for.  It felt good on the road and the higher quality and lower weight of the bike felt noticeable. The 20 mile ride went by without incident.

After we got home I headed outside to get the weeding done while Cindy attended to the chickens and some other things.  After a quick dip in the pool we were ready to head out to Costco.  We wound up getting over $200 in groceries there which is some sort of record.  Hopefully we will be well stocked for awhile.  The grocery slice of my monthly expenditure pie chart in Quicken has been getting quite large lately.

Friday my new megaphone that I ordered for Green Machine Timing showed up.  It’s smaller than the others I have for the running club, only 40 watts max power, but that is part of it’s appeal, it’s easier to carry around.  However the biggest plus for me was it uses a rechargeable lithium battery pack that is encased inside of a built in charger.  The bigger megaphones use 8 C batteries that are a pain in the ass to maintain.  Plus the housing for the batteries is very imprecise so when you have the lid closed you may not get any sound until you jiggle things around.  It’s annoying.  I no longer will have that issue. Cindy and I used it to film a funny Periscope video that she posted on FB.

Friday night was a normal pizza night.  It felt great knowing I had another four days off remaining.

On Saturday morning Cindy and I were up early to go volunteer at the kids triathlon the local triathlete group puts on.   Cindy and my primary responsibility was in the bike transition area where we helped the kids ranging in age from 7-13 stage their bikes and help them as needed during transition.  I also brought my GoPro with to film the event.  I was frustrated that I missed a lot of the little kids with a malfunction early that I got figured out later on.  You can see the kids in action here.  By the time the event was over at 9:30 it felt sweltering hot.

During the afternoon the it became quite rainy and stayed that way for most of the day.  Cindy and I kept ourselves entertained indoors.  There were no movies that came out this week that interested us enough to spend movie theater money for.  Instead we just kept things simple and enjoyed a nice meal while watching my latest Netflix rental, Tracers.  The film was basically one long parkour video but I found it entertaining enough to give an average B rating to the flick.

Sunday we did our second DD ride in three days, something I don’t think I ever did before.  It also meant that in 8 days I rode a total of 70 miles, again new territory for me.  Cindy actually cracked the century mark for those same 8 days since she did an additional 30 mile ride during the week with a friend of hers.  I strapped the GoPro on to my right handlebar for the ride.  It gives an interesting perspective/visual when combined with a soundtrack and ample captioning to fight off the boredom.

After another pool bath we were back in the car to go pick up Nicki and Sadie.  After grabbing them we made a couple stops on the way home.  Sunday afternoon Cindy was quite busy cooking.  She recorded her efforts for her YouTube channel.  I did a lot of video editing, gaming (now have 7 level 100 WoW characters) and paid my bills.

One of the things I wanted to address was the failure email I got from my DD perks account saying the automatic reload of my coffee card failed.  When I logged into my account I saw that the credit card I had associated had the wrong expiration date.  Ok, no problem, I will go in and edit the credit card information.  Well after 10 minutes of futzing around I realized that there is absolutely no way to change the CC info.  Ok, I guess I will just delete the credit card and reenter it with the correct info.  Nope, it won’t let you do that either.  The ONLY way you fix this is with a phone call to them which I made on Monday.  The call required 20-25 minutes of wait time to speak to a person.  After explaining the issue the phone rep says it will take TWO DAYS to clear the card from the system.  I asked her in disbelief “Are you serious?”.  She said it is a limitation of their current set up for credit cards and they are looking to change things in the future.  It seems so odd because in many ways Dunkin Donuts seems very modern and tech savy in their business practices.  To have such a ridiculously inefficient set up to manage credit cards seems very odd.

Monday morning Cindy and I took Nicki (and Sadie) to the vet.  I made an appointment for Nicki to have some large masses on her belly looked at further.  She has had them for awhile but they seem to be really growing and I wanted to get an updated opinion from the vet about them to see if he thought anything needed to be done at this point.  This was the same vet that did the eyelid surgery that drastically helped Nicki’s vision.

He agreed the lumps were getting pretty big but said that labs are prone to growing fatty masses as they age.  The general advice is if they are not causing the dog pain or discomfort the best course of action is to just let them be as the risk of surgery on an old dog could outweigh the benefit of removal.  I mentioned how Nicki’s bark has been sounding progressively weaker.  He said it is likely due to another old lab trait where the tissue that covers the larynx (forget medical term), becomes partially paralyzed.  The end result is difficulty in breathing.  (Nicki also pants all the time)

The vet did aspirate one of the masses to send it out for testing to be sure. (a $200 gotcha) However we basically just confirmed that Nicki is old and is having old dog issues.  I wish I could wave a wand and make it go away.  While we were there both dogs got their nails trimmed which was very needed.

When we got home I got a bug in my head to pressure wash the pool deck and cage.  I HATE this house maintenance chore but a glance at the pure green scuzz on some sections of the cage combined with my extra time off made it seem like I would be an idiot for not doing it now.  The end result was several hours shoulder/forearm burning labor as I directed the 3000 psi wand overhead with sometimes as much as an 9 foot extension hanging off of it.  It is miserable.  Doing it during the crushing heat of the afternoon added to the misery.

I wasn’t happy that at a few spots on the pool deck which we carefully prepped and double coated with pool deck stain lifted off under pressure.  It was in areas where the deck is especially smooth.  Maybe it needs to be roughed up a bit before we touch it up.  Anyway, the pool area looked tremendously better by the time I was done.  Hopefully it will be the holidays before I have to think about it again.

After I took the dogs back to Ali’s place Cindy and I chilled most of the night catching up on a backlog of dvr’d content.  For my final day of my staycation I have no major plans other than some type of workout and whatever other minor things come to mind.  We already had excitement this morning, the unwelcomed type.  There was a hawk no more than 25 feet away from the pond area the chickens were hanging under.  It was sitting in the palm tree.  It was oddly unafraid of me.  I was able to walk right up to the tree with my bb gun in hand without it moving.  I yelled at it to get lost but he only retreated a short distance away.  I then used my weapon to fire a few warning shots and again they were ineffective.  I kept walking and firing until the hawk was a 100 yards off in a tree behind the back fence line.

Yes it makes both Cindy and I nervous to have hawks scouting out the chickens.  The good thing is the property has a bunch of hiding spots for our birds and all of them are healthy, decent sized and fast.  Hopefully this and our continued warning shots makes the hawks realize there are easier targets elsewhere.

So as I mentioned yesterday the big perch that the chickens sleep on was due for a retooling last night.  As soon as I got home I headed out to the coop to get started.  Cindy had already done some work during the day on it, flipping the perch on it’s side and removing sections of wood that we would reuse in it’s new orientation.

Having a large triangle for the birds definitely looked like a better option since they seem to all insist on being as high as possible.  We started tacking on additional perching accessories as well as a series of lower rungs to allow the chickens to hop up to the top floor.  As in most of our projects we sort of just played it by ear but by the time we were done it looks like we had a pretty good set up.

When dusk settled in we watched on the surveillance cam and saw all the birds had gotten into place and looked much less crowded which is what we hoped for.  The only snafu was Peaches, the chicken that hopped onto screening near the roof the other night, once again jumped onto the shelf area where all the electronics are.  Cindy scolded her as she put her back on the perch.  We hung some additional screen to block shelf access.  Unfortunately it also blocks the vision of the security dvr camera so there will be some further rearrangement necessary. After putting Peaches back in place the birds settled down and seemed to have a pleasant and less crowded night of rest. Today Cindy will be putting some final tweaks on the redesigned perch, including painting any unfinished wood and reconfiguring the area around it to maximize poop cleaning efficiency.

Yesterday I made a vet appointment for Nicki for next week.  She has had some masses on her belly for quite awhile.  A couple vets have looked at them in the past and their diagnosis was they were benign and if they aren’t causing Nicki any pain or problems it is best to leave them alone considering her age of 13 years.  Well the masses seem to keep getting larger and to me it seems like there are more side effects of them.  Nicki’s bark now is barely a whisper, it seems like she can’t get enough air in her lungs.  Also when she is laying down in an upright position she almost always is panting, again seeming to me like it is because lack of air.  My non-expert theory is these masses have gotten to the size where they are obstructing Nicki’s lungs from expanding.

So anyway, it has been nearly a year since a vet took a look at the masses.  I want to have her looked at again and express my concerns.  Based on what the vet says and the risk/reward formula in options for reducing or removing the masses we will decide what is the best path to follow.  If something can be done without putting Nicki at significant risk it makes sense to explore it.  My dad’s dog had a similar mass that was removed a year or so ago and it went well.  Maggie is a couple years younger however.

It’s hard to believe but I am a few days away from my 15th year anniversary at my job, meaning I also just crossed the 15 year Florida resident milestone.  To imagine a decade and a half has already passed seems impossible but a simple glance at a calendar confirms it’s validity.  I have never regretted my choice to relocate 1200 miles south of my Reading, PA roots.  Although life in Florida has not quite panned out the way I imagined it would be prior to the move, overall it has been a clear step up in my quality of life.  With that being said, I don’t know that Florida will be my final destination.  My cross country road trips have opened up my eyes to other areas of the country that may be a better fit down the road.  Any of those possibilities have a common thread, a scarcity of people.

I got out of work a little early on Friday, I put the time to good use.  After stopping at Sam’s to get a few bulk items I was still home before 5.  I immediately changed clothes and headed outside to get a jump start on the weekend chores.  I got all of the weeding done as Cindy was still finishing up mowing on the tractor. It gave me a nice mental head start on the weekend.

For the past week or two we have had a couple baby turtle doves living by the side of the house on the ground, they are a little larger than a parakeet.  At first when we saw them we assumed they fell out of a nest from the oak tree and were stuck on the ground. That theory changed when saw them sitting on top of a fence cross support and later saw them fly pretty capably short distances.  They seem pretty docile.  As long as I walk quietly I can pass them with only a couple feet leeway.

At one point over the weekend I saw the two baby birds on the ground flapping around, it almost looked like they were fighting.  As I got closer I noticed there was a third bird, an adult turtle dove who I assume is the mom.  The babies were just very excited and I assume mom was feeding them, explaining how they have survived on the ground. It was cute.

First thing Saturday morning Cindy and I worked on deworming the chickens.  Instead of trying to catch each one and shoot liquid down their throats we decided to inject the dewormer into blueberries which the chickens love.  For most of the birds it was pretty simple as they gobbled up the blueberry after which we set them loose in the yard.  Kristen and Pumpkin were the most challenging but eventually they downed the medicated berry as well.

After de-worming we picked up the dogs during a DD coffee run.  I hadn’t seen them in two weeks.  We kept them the rest of the weekend until I dropped them off this morning.

There was more coop tweaking on Saturday.  When we were cleaning the coop we noticed the floor near the automatic chicken door was quite wet.  I have had a problem with some water seeping down the wall of the shed where it meets up with the chicken run but I didn’t think it was that much.  When I built the run I filled in the small gap between the roof of the run and the side of the shed with a piece of plywood.  When I took a look at the wood it looked like it had developed a slight warp that resulted in a slightly downward tilt, directing any rainwater that fell on it against the shed wall.

I took my one leftover spare corrugated white plastic roof panel and cut it down so it would fit on top the area where the plywood resides.  I installed the piece at an angle sloping away from the shed to keep as much water away from the shed wall as possible.  I have to wait until the next good thunderstorm to see if my efforts were fruitful.

I also did some extensive yard maintenance on Saturday hopping on the tractor to mow down the back of the property.  Since we were in one of the dry spots during wet season I figured I better mow while the mowing was good.   Mowing the back is a slow process due to the height of the grass.  Certain spots require you to either go very slow or to back up over a second time to get the high stalked stuff. The canopy on the tractor makes the task so much better on a hot August day.  After I was finished mowing I still had some gas in my motivation gas tank.  I grabbed the weed whacker and started hacking away at the thick high grass that filled the ditch towards the back of the fenced in portion of the yard.  Getting through the stuff required max throttle and a gradual chopping strategy where you knock down the grass/weeds with multiple passes.  When it was all done the backyard matched the front of the property for one of the few times each year.

On Saturday night Cindy and I made our near weekly trip to the movie theater to see Fantastic Four. Both Cindy and I had read the bad reviews of the film ahead of time but we normally prefer to make our own judgements.  Once again we had issues with other theater patrons.  There were two presumably teenage girls that were about 3-4 seats down in the row behind us that had near continuous conversation going on.  It started doing the previews.  Cindy and I assumed they would have the common sense to shut up once the movie began.  Of course we were mistaken.  They got a couple looks from me and a lot more from Cindy, including a “Psshhht!” which did not appear to do anything.

When I weighed the options of getting up and making a scene versus simply moving to another section of the mostly empty theater the latter choice made more sense.  A couple young girls are not going to respond well to requests for common courtesy, a trait the majority of modern day youth are devoid of.  We relocated to the top left corner of the theater with nobody within spitting distance and had a much better experience.

I have had a long streak of having favorable reviews of every Marvel movie I have seen.  Even lesser known titles like Ant Man and Guardians of the Galaxy exceeded my expectations.  Well this latest Fantastic Four broke that streak.

To be honest the first 75% of the movie was ok, it kept my interest and portrayed an interesting background of how the FF 4 obtained their powers, something I did not know.  However once Dr. Doom emerged as the feature villain of the film things totally flew off the track.  The story all of a sudden got incredibly stupid, simplistic, and unimaginative.   It was like the writers walked off the film at this point and were replaced by 5th graders.  Dr Doom has unimaginable power, literally being able to just look at somebody and make them melt, or open cosmic black holes, yet somehow he winds up in a conventional hand to hand battle with Mr Fantastic, played by an actor no one cared about.  The ending of the film was just incredibly moronic.  It took what was possibly a B+ flick straight down into B- or even C+ territory, it was that dumb.

The movie also was animation feature film short, barely 90 minutes long.  Again it felt like they lopped out huge chunks of film towards the end and just threw whatever was left against the wall.  Hell it was so bad that even Stan Lee did not have an appearance in the movie.  Like true Marvel suckers we stayed till the end of the credits, hoping to at least catch something of interest.  Our reward for waiting was a blank screen and a closed curtain.  The movie certainly is not worth of spending movie theater dollars to see.  Sure rent it on Netflix but don’t expect to be impressed.

Sunday morning Cindy, who just got clearance to bike last week after her toe surgery, and I planned to get out on the road for a bike ride.  We were joined by Kerri whose son is going to be our chicken sitter during the road trip.  She lives close by and has just started road biking.  We decided to ride out to Ave Maria since it was on the way to Kerri’s place.

Prior to Sunday the longest ride Kerri did was about 3 miles, going all the way out to Ave Maria was about 25 miles for her and 30 miles for us so she was making a dramatic increase in mileage.  Kerri however is a good endurance athlete with several marathons under her belt.

I lead most of the ride keeping a pace that was around 16 mph on average, trying to account for the extra distance and Kerri’s lack of riding experience.  On the way back I picked up the speed a bit doing 17-18mph for a good portion of the distance and Kerri was able to hang.  By the time we got back to the entrance to her development both Cindy and I were pooped.  Neither of us had rode 30 miles in quite a long time.  The last 3 miles to the house were not enjoyable between a sore rear end and tired legs.

We still are having issues with chicken sleeping arrangements.  Saturday night we had to remove Peaches from the top of a barrier screen Cindy mounted in front of the electronics.  Every night all 11 birds try to jam on to the top perch area, despite there being three totally empty perches below.  As the birds continue to grow there is less and less space up top.  Cindy and I are considering yet another modification where we turn the big perch structure we made on it’s side so there is a large triangle of perching space all at the same height.  There are some design changes and proof of concept that need to be worked out but hopefully we can make it work.

I got my DJI quadcopter out for the first time in months to shoot some aerial video of the property.  Right after taking off for my first flight I saw something very odd on the horizon.  It was low, bright to the point where I could see it even behind clouds and appeared to be moving very slowly. I tried to position the copter so it was pointing in the direction of the object but on the video I can’t see what my eyes tracked.  My logical assumption is what I saw was a plane with a reflective exterior that was catching the high sun at just the right angle to reflect in my direction on the ground.  The copters higher vantage point may have erased that angle which is why I couldn’t see it when played back.

I burned through all three battery packs shooting my property from different perspectives.  I think the video turned out decent after a lot of cutting and trimming.  You do get a good aerial view of the new coop and chicken run from an overhead perspective.

Over the weekend I was watching several videos of what the first few hours of recruit basic training is like.  The drill instructors screaming repeatedly inches from the recruits face was disturbing for me and I wasn’t even there.  I don’t know for sure how I would react if I ever decided to enlist in the military but I presume it would not be good.  Sure you have to know going in what your role is going to be and that treating you like dirt is how they break you down to reshape you as a soldier.  I just wondered how many of those kids were thinking “What the fck did I get myself into…”

Sunday night Cindy and watched my current Netflix rental, McFarland, a movie about an unlikely cross country team coached by an unlikely coach in a very Hispanic town in California.  Even if you know nothing about cross country running I am confident you will find the film touching and inspirational.  It’s a solid A in my book.

So we are a few days away from the one year anniversary of my mom’s passing away.  To me, the 10th is really the day that mom left us as she was found unresponsive behind the wheel of her car only to be revived too late to save her brain.  The idea of mom feeling the heart attack coming on not being able to do anything about it is something that frustrates me and brings heavy feelings of sadness  and remorse.  I feel like somehow I should have been able to so something to prevent it, somehow.

This past weekend has been one of the most dreary and waterlogged as I can remember in quite a long time.  It basically has been raining to some degree since Friday.  The end result is our property has once again turned into lake front.  There are standing bodies of water all over the place.

On Saturday morning I wanted to get the weeding done and I didn’t care if it was raining.  When I stepped outside it was a light, tolerable rain however the intensity went up and down the entire time I was out there.  At a few points it was an outright downpour.  I was already soaked all the way to my underwear so I didn’t even bother trying to escape the deluge.  After weeding I had my first of three clothing changes during the day due to wetness.

While I was weeding I pulled this huge mutant grapefruit that was in the orchard.  It had split open.  After slicing it with the machete I saw the fattest rind ever.  Unfortunately the fruit did not look appetizing at all so after it’s photo op the monster grapefruit was tossed in the compost bin.

After drying off Cindy and I went out for what is a pretty normal weekend shopping circuit of Dunkin Donuts, Home Depot and Rural King with a Pinch A Penny stop for good measure.  We grabbed five more 50 pound bags of sand for the chicken run.  In total I bet we have dumped a couple thousand pounds of sand in there.  The goal is to eventually have a few inches of sand in the entire 8′ x 12′ run to make clean up easier as well as raising the elevation slightly, something that became an apparent need this weekend.

On Saturday I introduced Cindy to the world of Periscope, an app I only recently discovered myself courtesy of Bubba talking about it on the radio.  Periscope is a way to basically instantly get yourself broadcasting video live.  There are already have been many ways to do this for several years ( I used JustinTv to broadcast live 5 years ago) but somehow they way Persiscope handles it just feels slicker and easy.  When you like what you are seeing a viewer taps his screen and it generates a heart which is the Periscope equivalent of LIKE.  It’s twitter integration and seamless notification system allows you to grow an audience pretty easily.

It is also like Snapchat in a way, something I never used.  You have an option to make the video stream only available live and even if you do archive it, it is still only alive for 24 hours on the Periscope servers until it goes away.  I guess it adds a sense of urgency to viewership. If you want to see the content you better watch it now. The only broadcast I still have alive is some WoW footage.  Better watch it soon, it goes away in 3 hours. 🙂

So Cindy and I took turns shooting silly Persicope videos at various points during the day, the longest of which was sitting in the car before we went into the movie.  It’s a weird thing how a bunch of random people would instantly jump into your broadcast.  A handful of them would use the chat function but the vast majority are silent voyeurs. What they were hoping to find is beyond me.

So after a tasty meal at Olive Garden Cindy and I went to see Southpaw, a boxing movie with Jake Gylennhall.  The lobby of the theater seemed pretty empty so I was looking forward to an equally empty theater.  This was opening weekend for the film, for most big name movies Coconut Point will have a 7:00 and 7:30 showing.  Southpaw only had a 7:20 showing which meant it was not getting big film positioning.  The theater it was showing in was one of the mid-sized rooms instead of the big ones we are used to. This theater had the love seat layout which is nice but actually a little less comfortable than the seating in the bigger theaters.

Well slowly the theater started to fill up with a steady stream of patrons filing in during the previews.  I bet the theater was 75% full, normally unheard of during the summer.  Of course the more people that are in your nearby vicinity the more likely you are to have an annoying asshole in range.  This time it was a hispanic woman that had no understanding of talking quietly during a movie.  Every time she spoke it was at full volume.  It didn’t take long until she drew stinkeye glances from Cindy who said she was ready to yell “Callete su boca!”  If our only option to see movies was in theaters that were this level of population I would stop going to the movies as much as we do.  The more human beings, the less fun, is my general rule of thumb.

So the movie itself was good.  Jake got himself into incredible shape for the film.  It had a real Rocky flavor to it which in my book is a good thing.  Sure it was predictable but that isn’t such a bad thing with this kind of film.  Jake seems to be a lot like his deceased co-star of Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger, in that he really tries to transform himself into the character he is portraying.  He did an equally good job of turning himself into a mega-creepy dude in Nightcrawler. Anyway, I would give Southpaw an A-, just try to watch it out of range of the annoying people.

When we checked on the chickens via the security dvr we saw that all of them were in place except Peaches, who decided to fly up to one of the shelves and sit in a box.  Despite having the chickens integrated for quite a few weeks, more often than not Cindy still has to go out there at bedtime and rearrange chickens which has to stop.  Basically what happens is Lucy decides she is not happy with having the younger chickens close to her and starts to peck at them.  Instead of retreating to any of the three lower perch bars the chicks instead have often used the side shelves or nesting boxes as a sleeping spot which we don’t want.  For clean up efficiency we need them all to stay on the perches.

We tried to address the problem somewhat by adding two half perches a few inches below the top perch so the birds could all be together without having to squish onto one bar.  Cindy also added additional screen hanging from the roof to block access to the top shelves.  Last night seemed to be the best sleeping outcome yet.  Not only did we not have to place the birds, Lucy actually allowed Stephie to cuddle up next to her, a first.

So Sunday morning I had hopes of getting out to do a bike ride since it was not raining when I woke up.  However a quick glance at the precipitation radar indicated we were just in a small break of the wet misery so we bagged it.  It started to pour shortly thereafter.

Like I mentioned, the  steady and at times torrential rain has drenched the yard.  One unfortunate casualty has been the ground underneath the coop deck, an area the chickens normally hang out in frequently.  It became pretty disgusting since obviously the chickens shit under there and we are unable to clean it conventionally.  It had a disgusting sewage like appearance.  The main chicken run was wet but much cleaner due to the additional sand that is dumped in there along with our normal daily poop pick up it remains relatively clean.  Unfortunately there is really nothing we can do about the ground under the deck until the water recedes.

We have had a couple freak out moments with our neighborhood hawks.  The other night Cindy went sprinting out the door when a hawk was on the ground only a few feet from the open chicken run door, being much too brave for our comfort.  Cindy has been firing warning shots with her CO2 BB pistol I bought her to keep the hawk away when she sees it.  At Rural King we went a step further and bought a fake hawk and owl.  You place and move them periodically around the yard as a visual deterrent.

The owl seems more effective as it has a bobble head that spins with the slightest breeze, making it seem more realistic.  We filled them both with sand to make them heavy and resistant to the strong wind gusts that often blow through the property.  I sat the owl right on top of the chicken run. It is annoying to have a constant paranoia about the chicken’s safety when they are free ranging but short of having them live in a bubble it’s just a risk you have to accept.

So the miserable weather on Sunday resulted in me having one of the laziest days in recent history.  I played hours of WoW and enjoyed myself doing so. You may recall me talking about the requirements to unlock flying in the game with the latest expansion.  When I first saw them I knew it would be a lot of work/time to accomplish these requirements, I had no idea just how much.

For the last few weeks anytime I have had in the game has almost exclusively been utilized in accomplishing this goal on one character, which in turn unlocks flying for all of my other characters.  It just seems like it took too much time.  To just do the portion in the new content that was released recently you have a minimum of close to 3 weeks to accrue what is needed to fly.  If you had to do the other achievements in the older areas, like I did, that gets tacked on top.  It was an annoying, extremely repetitive grind that sucked most of the fun out of playing.  I am very glad that it is behind me.

The only real “work” I did on Sunday was to pay my bills, a very minimal chore.  Late in the afternoon we decided to finally film an eating challenge I proposed awhile back, consuming ghost pepper powder.

Unless you have been living in a cave you have seen/heard of ghost peppers.  They are one of hottest peppers on the planet, registering a blistering 2,000,000 on the scoville heat index. For reference, jalapeno peppers are rated at 2,500 to 10,000 heat units.  The powder version of ghost peppers supposedly is more concentrated. Well anyway YouTube is jammed full of ghost pepper eating videos and there is a good reason for it, people like watching other people suffer.  If you eat a ghost pepper you WILL suffer, there is no way around it.

Cindy was very nervous leading up to the challenge.  I was not nervous until the last few seconds.  At that moment I had a feeling similar to prior to jumping in the Arctic Enema at the Tough Mudder.  I knew there was immense discomfort to follow.

We decided to use the dining room table for the video, hoping it would offer the best lighting.  I don’t think that spot has ever been used for filming anything else.  Cindy measured the powder and put a 1/4 teaspoon in each of our conventional spoons.  We started the cameras rolling (Cindy simulcast it on Periscope) and after a 3,2,1 countdown cleaned the spoons of the powder.

We used different techniques when it came to cleaning the spoon.  I used a method similar to if I was eating cereal or a spoonful of peanut butter.  The end result was the powder adhering to mostly my upper teeth, gums, and inside of my upper lip.  In contrast Cindy turned her spoon upside down and deposited all of the powder on her tongue.

The first sensation is the taste of the powder which was not pleasant.  However soon all taste is obliterated as the heat from the ghost peppers starts to set in.  It took very little time until I was reaching for my large glass of water, even though it did not really help.  I almost immediately started hiccuping as the burn really set in.  The watery eyes and running nose followed closely.  The discomfort actually ramps up as time goes on and lingers.  It turned into more of a stinging sensation, almost like I had hornets in my mouth.  At one point I felt somewhat nauseous and was nervous since we had no vomit containers nearby.

Cindy of course was struggling as well.  She slammed a glass of almond milk, followed by water, followed by peanut butter and yogurt.  I only used water and peanut butter to help relieve the pain.  None of it was all that effective.  Basically you just have to ride out the burn.  After about 10 minutes or so things started to die down.  It was a stunt that I wanted to accomplish and now that we have, I have no desire to revisit the ultra-hot pepper genre ever again.

Sunday night we watched 50 Shades of Grey, the movie based on the book that turned so many women into sex craving maniacs.  I was recently separated when the book was  making waves.  I recall many first dates where the woman mention they read the book which I did not know was a good or bad thing.  I heard several accounts of the book turning women into sex starved maniacs, it turned them on that much.

So the movie had a lot of hype behind it obviously when it was released which I obviously did not share.  I only rented it on Netflix because Cindy was interested in seeing it since she started the book but never finished it.  Well if the movie’s main goal was to produce mainstream soft porn it certainly hit the mark.  There was more nudity and sex in the film than any feature film I ever saw before.   However at my age it takes more than sex scenes to keep my interest.  The man in the film had all of these hang ups whose symptoms were his bizarre sexual rituals.  I think the movie needed some more focus on why that was instead of end result of his weirdness.  Overall, even with all of the skin on skin I can’t rate the film more than a B, perhaps a sign of my advancement into the kingdom of old fartdom.

I have short 3 day week ahead of me.  Cindy is having some foot surgery on Thursday so I am burning a couple vaca days to be her transport/caregiver. I have a few to use up by mid-August.