Category TV/Movies

So I heard a lot of buzz about this past Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode which I had not seen yet.  Fortunately my eyes didn’t stumble across what the shocking development was.  Last night I finally sat down to watch the episode with Sadie by my side and Nicki lounging on the floor.

Now of course I won’t give details of what happened but let me tell you, it lived up to the hype.  When it went down I am sure my mouth drop opened.  I had an inkling that something was up but I did not expect anything close to the scale of what actually goes down.  As the credits flashed up silently I sat there on the sofa, still trying to digest what just happened. Wow.  One of the most shocking moments in my tv watching history.

Today Ali and I are supposed to officially file our divorce agreement at the clerk of courts office.  Almost on queue, today’s weather is very gloomy and gray, unusual for Florida.  It’s going to be a sad moment, regardless of both of our hopes that it actually leads to happier times for both of us.  Things aren’t officially official until you get a court date to stand in front of a judge to affirm your intentions and he/she signs the order.

I’m not looking forward to the sadness these final steps are going to contain but at the same time I know it’s part of the storm that we have to navigate to get to better times ahead.

I must be stressed out, last night I was hoarding food big time. I feel like a slob today, need to get things high and tight asap.

Saturday I grabbed the dogs relatively early and brought them back for a day of home labor.  It was one of those days where it seemed like despite my consistent hard work that I was making slow headway, not a feeling I enjoy.  To make things worse it was brutally hot and humid Saturday, especially for mid-May with temps scraping 90 degrees. The highlights of the chores was replacing a defective sprinkler in the front yard and utilizing the battery powered pruning chain/pole saw Todd got me for Christmas. It made short work of the huge seed branches on the coconut palm.

On my way to drop off the girls later I made a pit stop at mom’s place to give her my garden harvest for the day.  It was also nice for the dogs to get to spend a few minutes with grandma, they always are very excited to see her.

Saturday night I got out to see the new Star Trek movie.  I have never been a hard core Trekkie but I always enjoyed both the tv series and movies.  I have seen every Star Trek movie that was released in the theater.  I had not read anything in advance about the storyline of this installment, only seeing the previews leading up to it, which looked pretty bad ass.

The movie was good, I enjoyed it.  There were a few things that went down that I mentally lol’d at because they made no sense but I won’t reveal them here to protect from being a spoiler.  I came away from the movie satisfied but not blown away.  Official rating of A-.

On Sunday morning I was on my way to the water park to do another training brick.  As I passed under the interstate I noticed something large against the left curb of the three lane wide road.  As I went by I saw it was a large turtle.  Instantly I went into my animal saver mode.  The closest place I could turn off was a turning lane about 300 yards away.

I hop out and start running towards the turtle.  At first I ran up on the raised median.  I saw the turtle had made it’s way to the center of the three lanes, a prime kill zone by some idiot not paying attention.  Luckily there was not that much traffic on the roads yet at that hour.  However as I was about 100 yards away I saw a decent amount of cars stopped at the traffic light just before the unofficial turtle crossing.  I get off the median and am now running in the center lane, against traffic.  My thought process was if someone did not see the turtle, they would at least see me.  The last thing I wanted was to witness the turtle getting obliterated as I was only a few seconds away from getting to him.

My strategy seemed to work as cars slowed and avoided both myself and the turtle.  I didn’t bother to make eye contact with any of the drivers, I am sure quite a few “wtf is he doing?” looks were shot my way.   I scooped up the misguided turtle and carried him across the road to the side next to a canal, figuring that was his intended destination.

When I picked him up he hissed, not realizing that his turtle guardian angel had arrived.  As I was making my way down the steep embankment I was rewarded for my efforts with a stream of turtle urine running down my leg.  I wasn’t sure if it was fear or another defense mechanism.  I sat him by the waters edge, told him it was ok now, and climbed back up.  That was one very lucky turtle.

For the second week in a row I did a three headed brick, a 4 mile run, a 12 plus mile bike and a 1200 yard swim.  It went better than the week before where I found myself dying at various points.  Of course I was still quite tired this time around, especially on the bike, but it was less severe than the prior session which is progress in my book.

This weekend I installed a SSD drive in my home computer.  Of course having the experience of doing the same thing at work helped tremendously when migrating my home system, allowing me to avoid a couple pitfalls.  I am now enjoying similar performance at home as I have been at work.  A cold boot is super fast, the longest part of the process is the initial computer POST and the network authentication time.  Anything related to hard drive access is done nearly instantaneously, it’s pretty awesome. 🙂

Sunday night I threw my latest Netflix dvd in the 360, The Dictator.  I was a big fan of Borat, I thought it was quite funny.  I thought Bruno was much more stupid than funny.  Well The Dictator was 100% stupid, well the 15 minutes of it I endured.  Yes, it was so stupid I turned the damn thing off.  I can not tell you the last time that has happened but it is a testament to how awful the movie was.  I did not laugh once during my brief time watching it and I could pretty much guarantee it was going to be a monumental waste of my time to watch anymore.

I’m not sure if it is fair to give a rating to something I only could stomach for a few minutes but I will anyway. It gets a “don’t waste a rental on this piece of shit even if it’s free” F.  What I saw was so utterly ridiculous I have no plans to watch another Sascha Baren Cohen movie, ever. It really sucked.

Yesterday I went straight from work to mom’s place.  She had dinner ready to go which was cool. Mom told me that she actually went to the beach with a friend of hers this week. Believe it or not it was the first time my mom went to the beach in two and a half years despite living no more than 5 minutes away from the coast.

You ask how this happens, especially when a person went through their pre-Florida life counting down the days until their beach vacations in Delaware.  It’s hard to explain or rationalize although I am guilty of similar behavior.  Yes I have been to the beach more than mom has but not nearly as much as I figured I would when I first moved to SW Florida.  Plus my half dozen plus skin cancer episodes have made baking on the beach a pretty stupid activity.

So anyway, mom said she had a great time at the beach, spending two or three hours there with her friend.  She said she hopes to try to get there at least once a week going forward.  I think that’s a great idea, mom can certainly work it into her schedule.

After we finished eating we headed out for Trader Joe’s.  Mom had a TJ gift card with a left over balance on it but I told her she could keep it to use another day since I was buying stuff for myself anyway, I’d just buy her stuff too.

The store was the emptiest I have ever seen it, a stark contrast from what I am used to, wall to wall of mostly retirees annoying me with every step.  Evidently Thursday evenings in May are a good time to go.

Trader Joe’s is pretty awesome.  Not only do they sell mostly natural, healthy foods, a lot of it is dirt cheap.  Many items are significantly less expensive than what I would pay walking into the local Publix supermarket.

Mom and I scored an impressive amount of food items for not all that much money.  My dinner needs are covered for a month or more, easily.  I dropped mom off at home and she thanked me for the grocery run.

My current quality tv program (reality tv doesn’t count) is Game of Thrones.  It is a fantastic show, every episode is shot like a feature film.   My main complaint about the show is there are just too many things going on. I couldn’t even begin to name all of the plots and sub-plots that are being juggled at the same time.

Maintaining that many story lines means a huge cast of characters are involved.  I could only tell you the names of a handful of characters from memory, most I would just refer to either by their physical appearance (ie. Big amazon woman, red headed whore witch, guy with eye patch that never dies)  or role in the story.  That being said here are my three most interesting characters currently in reverse order.  Please note there is a difference between “interesting” and “favorite”.

[accordion]

[pane title=”Number 3 – Little Prick Bastard King – Joffrey”]

This kid is so evil and disturbing that I can hardly wait till he is killed in an appropriately hideous manner[/pane]
[pane title=”Number 2 – The King Slayer – Jamie Lannister”]Jamie was originally portrayed as a major scumball, most famous for stabbing a king in the back and banging his sister.  However this season you are seeing another side of him that is actually admirable.[/pane]
[pane title=”Number 1 – The Imp – Tyrion Lannister”]If you would have told me the most interesting character in such an epic show would be a dwarf/midget/little person I would have rolled my eyes at you.  However Tyrion is just awesome, he’s smart, sarcastic and not afraid to get dirty despite his small stature. He is kind of a mini-Randall[/pane]

[/accordion]

The clutch response on the SSR is much improved since bleeding the system.  Once again I can get rubber in the first 3 gears.  On Wednesday I actually got the wheels spinning when I was already rolling in first gear.  Is it immature to still get a large degree of pleasure from “burn outs”?  Maybe but I can just add it onto the long list of immature things that I still cling onto, dearly.

This weekend I am hoping to get out to see Star Trek, knock out some to do’s around the house, get some exercise in, and generally be productive.  Not much different than the blueprint for most weekends.

Yesterday I found myself f’ing around again with the clutch fluid on my SSR.  When I tried to flush my clutch fluid a couple weeks ago I f’d up and managed to suck some air into the system.  Since the work the clutch pedal felt different and was releasing closer to the floor, not the way things should be with a hydraulic clutch.

So the way to fix this is to bleed the system.  With a stock SSR this would be very difficult since the bleeder valve is INSIDE the transmission.  Luckily, when I had the Corvette C6 clutch installed I opted to have a remote bleeder valve installed which is basically a tube that extends below the truck, making draining/flushing/bleeding the system easy.

So after two or three cycles of purging the system the clutch pedal once again felt “normal”.  In the future I should be able to avoid the bleeding process since I now understand what to do and not do when it comes to changing the clutch fluid.

Like I mentioned yesterday, it is very rare for me to talk much about TV on here.  Imagine how rare it is to talk about it on two consecutive days?  I am a big fan of all of Gordon Ramsey shows.  Last night I was watching Kitchen Nightmares, a show where Gordon is asked to go into a restaurant that is struggling and turn it around.

Typically each episode follows a similar blueprint.  Gordon shows up, tries the food, says it all sucks, and then he screams and yells at the owners until they eventually realize that his way is the right way.  Some owners roll right over and follow Gordon’s direction willingly, some are very stubborn and only relent after a lot of objections.  However in the end, Gordon always wins out although after he leaves there have been a number of places that went back to their old ways to some degree.

Well this was the first time Gordon gave up and walked away.  He was called into some place in Arizona called Amy’s Baking Company.  The place is owned by a husband and wife whom are just ridiculously awful.  My throat started drying out from my mouth being open in amazement so often during the episode.  The wife looked looney bin crazy and had an incredibly strong overreaction even to the most minute amount of criticism. The husband was a belligerent asshole whom regularly chastised customers verbally if they complained about the shitty food.

Well as the episode progressed I had no idea how Gordon was going to pull the nose up on this restaurant.  Every suggestion he made was met with rolling eyes, cold stares and bitchy attitude from Amy.  The husband, whom actually came off as the more rational/sane one of the couple did his fair share of ranting, at one point telling Gordon he shouldn’t fck with him, as he was a “gangster”, amazing.

Well after a long sit down at a table where Gordon abandoned his normal, in your face tough love style, instead utilizing a calm and logical demeanor to try to get through to these loons, he still got nowhere.  Crazy Amy just could not tolerate being told a single thing she was doing was not right.  Gordon threw up his hands and said “I’m done”.

This was the first time in roughly 100 episodes of the show that Gordon walked away from a Kitchen Nightmare.  You have to wonder why people like this would even ask for help if they are so unwilling to listen, even to someone with world class credentials like Gordon Ramsey.  If you have Hulu, On Demand etc.. I recommend you check this episode out.  It is a perfect blueprint of the type of people you should aspire NOT to be.

I talk very little about tv I watch anymore, especially reality tv.  I don’t watch nearly as much tv as I once did although I could certainly get by with watching even less.  One mainstay for me has always been Survivor.

There was a point in time where I thought I would make a good candidate for the show.  I don’t know that is the case anymore, especially with my recent shift to no meat outside of fish and my aversion to killing anything.

So anyway, I found this season, Fans vs Favorites very entertaining.  This time around they brought back a bunch of Survivor veterans to play a bunch of first timers.  I was very happy to see one of these veterans was a guy with the last name of Cochran.

I found Cochran very interesting the first time he played, the biggest reason of which was he had a striking resemblance to Jeremy.  Not only is there a body and face resemblance, aspects of his personality and thought processes make me think I am watching Jeremy’s long lost brother.

When I first mentioned this to Jeremy he took at as a mild insult.  At first glance Cochran might just look like a geeky nerd but further observation reveals he is intelligent, well spoken and has a dry but very funny sense of humor.  His one on one interviews where he talks about what is going on with other contestants and the game itself are some of the best I have ever seen on the show.  Hell the guy just graduated from Harvard Law School.

So anyway, I was quite happy to see he not only won Survivor, he crushed the other two finalists, getting every single vote on the jury.  Yes plowing through 3 hours of Tivo’d Survivor content ate up a good portion of my night (still managed to do a BB Challenge attempt earlier), but I still enjoyed it, even though this was the 13th season.

It is interesting how they handled the finale this year, they have always tried to tweak  it.  In the prior finales they had the jury on stage for the vote tally but then afterward they brought all of the contestants out on stage for Q&A.  For a long time Jeff Probst had at least one question for each survivor player so nobody was overlooked. Then they started to no longer try to talk to everyone, leaving certain players, especially the ones that were eliminated early just sitting there smiling awkwardly the entire show.

This season they totally marginalized the non-jury cast.  They remained in the audience the entire time and were basically just spectators.  It was kind of weird.  I understand the reason behind the decision.  As is the finale show always felt rushed, 48 minutes just isn’t enough time to talk to 16 cast members and jam in all the other extraneous stuff.

I did have to question if it was a good use of time of the producers to bring in Boston Rob to give Phillip some dumb book or interview the original Survivor cast member, Rudy (85 years old now) just so he could use the word “queer” three times when referring to Richard Hatch.  Even dumber was the pre-recorded clip of Hatch sitting naked on a beach chair addressing Rudy and his homophobia.  (I thought he was still in jail for tax evasion)

So even with some of the finale dumbness, I thought this season was great and I will be once again on board for season 14.

Unfortunately watching all of that Survivor meant I only could get through 30 minutes of this weeks Game of Thrones before heavy eyelids forced me into submission.

So I picked up the dogs in Ali’s Volt and brought them back to the house last night.  I only had driven it once before.  The car is just so damn cool.  The cockpit is surrounded with information everywhere with enough buttons and video screens to keep any geek entertained.  Once I get the the SSR paid off I could definitely see something like a Volt being in my automotive future. Techno wizardry aside, it is also awesome to be able to drive 40 miles + without burning an ounce of gasoline.

I decided to try to get the Volt in the garage next to the SSR so it wouldn’t get blasted by dirty sprinkler water.  I no longer have the garage optimized for two vehicles but I was able to squeeze both Chevy’s in there with a few inches to spare.

I was worried that the Volt charging harness might pop the GFCI circuit in the garage, but it gave it’s “I’m happily charging” chirp after plugging it in.

I finally was able to watch this week’s Walking Dead last night although I did so by loading the Xfinity web site on my computer.  It was an aggravating experience.  The streaming performance was awful with constant pausing.  Even after I changed the settings to stream at the lowest resolution, which looks pretty shitty, I would still have some pausing of the stream.  Ironically, when I was forced to sit through the commercial breaks, which were in full resolution, they streamed just fine.

I supposedly have the “Blast” internet service which boasts speeds up to 50 mps.  To have this sort of shitty performance streaming content from their native network is inexcusable.

Well poor streaming aside, this weeks episode was just fantastic.  The show is written, shot and produced in a way precious few shows can match.  I am rarely one to encourage jumping on a bandwagon but if you have not gotten hooked into Walking Dead yet, fire up your Netflix account and get started.  It is that good.

Last night I went out on the lanai and propped open the one screen door to the yard.  Both of the girls looked at me in a slightly confused way.  I told them “go ahead, you can go outside and come back in when you want to”.  Nicki was the first one to head out and proceeded to find a comfy section of grass and take a nap.  Sadie joined her a little later.

The book I am reading, Merle’s Door, is all about a man and his life with his beloved dog, Merle. One of the themes of the book is how interesting it was to see how Merle interacted with the world, a world where he had very few physical barriers since the author lived in a remote area of Colorado.

I have always trusted the dogs to be more autonomous than Alison has as she is always first thinking of the horror if something DID go wrong.  Both of the girls hung out in the yard for quite awhile.  Once the sun went down and it started to cool off, they both returned inside and joined me, content.

This morning I drove into work on pure electric and was able to find a nearby outlet in the parking garage for me to “refuel” while I worked.  With as much as I drive,  at least 1500 miles a month, I am spending $400-$500 a month just on gas.  With a Volt I would probably knock that number down by 75%

This Easter weekend appears to be just another two days off for me.  Mom has absolutely no interest in doing any sort celebration, not that we ever did anything beyond just getting together for a family meal and exchanging cards and stuff.  Instead I will just be stopping by with the dogs to say hi sometime Sunday afternoon.

Mom has created a mental scenario that on the days that she works, the rest of her day gets sucked into a black hole, nothing else can take place.  It’s almost like she has a severe allergic reaction to doing anything outside of her self defined routine, even if that thing is seeing me.

So last night I big part of my plans was to finally catch this weeks Walking Dead episode that I heard so many people raving about.  I fired up the Xfinity app on my Xbox and looked at the episode list.  The most recent episode was last weeks.  Hmm that can’t be right.  I closed the app and relaunched it, hoping it would force some sort of refresh.

Once again, this weeks episode was not there.  WTF??  Every week the episode is normally available by Tuesday evening, why would it not there by Wednesday…  Hopefully it pops up tonight.  I filled the void playing further through the Walking Dead game.

Yesterday the new, bigger and louder megaphone I ordered for the running club showed up.    You can see the size difference as well.  The new unit is HEAVY, heavy enough that if you plan to hold it up at head level to talk you better be doing shoulder presses on a regular basis.

In addition to being louder than the other megaphone it has an auxiliary input and the ability to run off of DC power.

Ali leaves for an Easter trip to PA today meaning I have two black and furry additions to the house for a few days.  Ali is letting me use her Volt while she is gone so I can minimize my gas costs for a few days.  The only catch is she wants me to wash it for her, fair trade.

I now have seen a few episodes of Catfish, the show about people and virtual relationships.  So far there has been one very consistent theme,  the person that refuses to meet the other has always been a fat mess without fail.  It seems like Facebook has been the primary delivery system for all of this deception.  I am glad I haven’t utilized FB for date prospecting.  I have had enough issues with truth stretching using more conventional cyber dating tools.

Last night I tried to embark again on my normal healthy routine, doing some work in the bar park .

I followed up with a healthy dinner starting with a salad which included red lettuce and kale from the garden.  Desert was a bowl of almond milk thickened up with chia seeds.  I added blueberries and shelled hemp seed for more taste and nutritional punch.

My main entree was broccoli, lots and lots of broccoli.

I haven’t talked at all about a show on my Tivo season pass list that I just wrapped up last night, Last Resort, on ABC.  It was a really well done show.  The premise is a US nuclear sub is told to fire a nuke at Pakistan but it is told to do so through suspicious channels.  They refuse the order and all sorts of hell breaks loose.  If you can find the show on Hulu I would definitely recommend it. I plowed through the final 3 episodes last night despite the clock getting quite late, compelling stuff.

This was one of those weird times where the 4 days off actually felt longer for some odd reason.

On Wednesday night I went to bed very early, I was probably out cold by 9:30.  The reason for this was my alarm clock was set at a ridiculously early 3 AM for the Thanksgiving Race I was timing.  I had more responsibilities than normal for this event so I wanted to make sure I was there as early as possible.  I’d much rather have it done with time to spare than scrambling.

Well imagine my surprise when I woke up on my own at 1:36am.  I knew there was no way I would fall back to sleep as I instantly had race related details running through my head. So after checking my email, eating breakfast and announcing my awakening on FB, I finished loading up the truck and headed down towards the race site.

As I approached I actually came upon Matt the race director setting up some signs at about 3:15 am.  He had a bunch of stuff to set up on the course and I was tasked with setting up the registration area.  He followed me to the race location and directed me to the tents and tables he had stashed the night before.  I threw them in the back of the Tacoma, slammed a 5 hour energy and got busy.

I had given a decent amount of thought regarding how to set up the registration area to alleviate the congestion problem we have had in the past.  I set up two tents, facing the lot with 8 foot signs attached to each, one designated for the untimed runners/walkers and one for the chip timed participants.

It was sort of peaceful setting everything up by myself since I knew in a short time the area would be overflowing with humanity. By the time Ali showed up I had the registration area pretty much ready to go. I also set up the PA system at the start line as well as staging the finish line equipment.

The combination of the layout and Ali and others work on creating race packets ahead of time for chipped runners helped expedite the registration area greatly.  Despite almost 2500 total participants, the lines never got out of hand.

So race start time was approaching.  Around 7:15 Ali stepped away from the computer table saying she wanted to take a few pictures.  That left me to man the table to make any last minute changes.  After helping a couple people I knew I needed to get to the start line but Ali was nowhere in sight.  I grabbed the bullhorn and made an announcement for her to come to the desk but still, no Ali.

Well finally I could not wait any longer and I started over to the start line.  As I did I finally see Ali whom ironically appeared to be at the start line being asked where I was.  I was obviously annoyed as I ran past Ali to the start, she said I didn’t have to wait for her.  I was under the impression she was only going to be gone for a minute instead of nearly 10 so obviously there was a miscommunication.

So I run towards the start line and had some club members unroll the timing mats while I got the box up.  Evidently Matt was freaking out because he didn’t know how to work the PA system to make announcements and no one else in the area did either.  I turned up the volume dial on the mic and we had sound, magic!

So I immediately could tell Matt was in freak out mode which is never good.  He starts giving me a countdown to the start of the race, regardless of my readiness or not. He starts playing the Star Spangled Banner on his trumpet which was a like musical timer.  I am scrambling to make sure I had the timing box cleared and synched.  I manage to get it done a few seconds after the song finishes and Matt is now desperate to start the race, like there was a guillotine above his head.

I tell him the box is up and ready and he starts the race.  Well in the mad rush to start I neglect to check my atomic watch for the official start time and to hit the button on my stop watch to start the time.  Matt immediately starts in on me saying this can’t happen, he NEEDS me there on time….

I was REALLY angry.  I told he had to chill out and that rushing the start caused problems (for the second year in a row).  He should only start his pre-race deal once I gave him thumbs up.  I have never had a race out of the hundred or more that I have timed where the race director is interested in starting a race before I was ready.

This isn’t even taking into consideration all the other aspects of the race that I was handling beyond the actual timing.  He was ultra-focused just that the race didn’t start 3 seconds late instead of the much more important concept of the race starting accurately.  I didn’t have time to go Hulk Smash mode on him.

I was planning to use two of the timing mats I used at the start for the finish which in retrospect was problematic.  With a race this big there were a number of late stragglers so I wanted to leave the mats down a bit to catch them.  Then when it came time to pull them up we had to get the herd of fun runners to get out of the way.

I had two of our guys lug two mats to the finish area.  I fast walked by the registration area carrying the start line laptop.  I yelled to Ali that I needed the main laptop taken to the finish line.  I was still fuming from the start line fisaco and told Ali the reason I was held up was because I was waiting for her to return.  She didn’t agree and I knew it was of little consequence now anyway.  I just had to fix it.

So I get to the finish line and start a mad scramble.  I dig into the start line times file to try to get a decent estimate of what the race start time is.  As I am doing that Ali delivers the laptop to the table, and walks away, obviously pissed at me.  I look at the laptop and see it is the wrong one. FCK!  So now things are getting really desperate.  I leap up from my bucket that doubled as a chair and sprint back towards the registration area.  I see Ali along the way and tell her she brought me the wrong laptop.  I snag the correct one and run back to the finish line at an even faster pace.

I slap the computer on the table and quickly make the connections.  I set the time on the timing box, clear the history and get the finish line mats up with about 45 seconds to spare before the lead runner came across, around 21 minutes after the race start.  Man, that was way too close for comfort.

As runners started to stream across the mats I just sat there with my head in my hands in disbelief that for the second year in a row, timing this race was a Chinese fire drill, despite all my efforts to make sure it wasn’t.   I felt bad about getting short with Ali, which I later apologized for.  In the end the race got timed and we had actual chip start times so it was an improvement over last year although the actual race start time was fuzzy, which I am not happy about. The start line fiasco will not happen again, one way or another.

By the time the race was over my 5 hour energy was wearing off, I felt beat.  After breaking down everything I loaded up the truck and headed home, very glad the monster event was over.

When I got home I had to quickly get the results processed before getting ready to head right back out.  I  caught absolutely NONE of the Macy’s parade.  I think it may be the first time as an adult that I have not seen any of the parade, that was kind of a bummer.  Mom had agreed to host Thanksgiving Dinner, we invited Ali as well.

I met Ali at her place and the dogs and I piled in her Volt for some gas free transport.  Mom had prepared a nice meal including Tofurky, something I know mom isn’t thrilled about but I really have come to enjoy. As much as I like the tofurky, the star of the meal is this pineapple casserole type thing that mom makes, it is so good.

We didn’t stay that long at mom’s.  Both mom and Ali were attending secondary Thanksgiving celebrations, I was closing out my Turkey Day at home.

At first I was sure I would pass out when I got home.  The big meal combined with the 1:30 am wake up is a deadly combination.  However somehow once I got done putting the race equipment away I got a second wind.  I actually cleaned and weeded during the afternoon.  I did collapse in bed shortly after 9PM, what a day.

So Black Friday arrived.  I had loose plans to maybe dip my toe into the shopping madness although nowadays much of the hoopla starts Thanksgiving evening so I would already be late to the game.  I headed out in the truck around 7:15 or so with my primary goal being grocery shopping.

On the way to Trader Joes I stopped at the Super Wal-mart, I figured there was not better place to observe Black Friday madness.  Well it wasn’t so mad.  Yea there were more shoppers than normal but it was far from chaotic.  I bought some softener salt, a few houseplants, and my first self Xmas gift, an inexpensive Daisy BB Rifle along with 600 BB’s.

The prior week the idea got into my head that it would be kind of fun shooting empty Diet Coke cans off fence posts.  They had a sale going on these lower end 650 FPS guns so I jumped in.  I plan to wrap it up and put it under the tree (oh I DID set that up too) Merry Christmas to me.  I’ll try to act surprised when I open my self-gifts.

I then headed to Trader Joe’s, Sam’s and Publix, in that order.  At Sam’s I did some perusing of their Xmas deals but nothing thrilled me.  If I needed a TV, this would definitely be the time to get one.

Ali planned to work on Friday so I picked up the girls on the way home so they could hang with me.

Despite my prior edict that there would be no or very minimal Xmas decorating this year I got the urge to to do just the opposite.  I hung lights outside and even set up the Xmas tree.

Now I went far less subdued than years past, only lighting up the two front palm trees and running the rest of the LED lights along the fence line.  Inside, besides putting up the tree, all I did was hang my monster stocking as well as Tuki’s, get out the snowflake dish towels, the black lab holiday area rug and the pine tree smelling candle.

It’s hard for me to explain why exactly I decided to do some decoration, other than not doing anything felt sort of like giving up, and I don’t like the feel of giving up, ever.

Later Friday afternoon I loaded the girls up to head to Home Depot for garden replenishment supplies.  Ali had agreed to come out and help me with the project on Saturday.  I loaded up a flat bed with many bags of garden soil and compost.  Before doing so I had grabbed a reciprocating saw blade and laid it on the flat bed.

Well when I checked out it was hidden from view and I had forgotten about it.  As I unloaded the dirt at the van I saw the blade laying there and realized I had just shoplifted the item successfully, unknowingly.  I could have easily just say “F it.  I spend a small fortune at Home Depot annually, what harm does not paying for a $12 saw blade do?” However my conscience took over, I marched back into the store and paid for the blade at the self checkout register.

The weird thing was when I left the first time, the security system at the door did not trigger.  I assume the large metal flatbed absorbed the EMF field that typically triggers the RFID security tag.  When I walked back in with just the blade in hand it blared loudly.  However since I was walking in instead of out, no one cared.

Black Friday I also got around to installing my new LED back up lamps in the SSR.  What should have been a ridiculously easy procedure became problematic when the passenger side bulb did not want to release conventionally.  I wound up extracting it using brute force.

So Ali came out to the house late Saturday morning.  I had all the bags of dirt piled by the garden ready to go.   Her primary role was to pitch fork the empty beds and do most of the planting/seeding.  I followed her forking with the rototiller, turning the soil over.  Then I dumped the new soil into the beds and tilled them again.  Finally I grabbed the hand rake and tamped down the soil lightly.

This winter’s crops are more kale, red lettuce, carrots, beets, peppers, tomatoes, sweet onions and two broccoli varieties.

After the garden work we worked on the unpleasant job of going through the Xmas ornaments.  I had the Rubbermaid containers piled on the lanai for us to go through.  We carried them inside and started the miserable task.

I knew it was going to be hard for both of us to do this.  Ali got particularly emotional when it came to our shared destination memory ornaments.  It got to the point where I asked her if I should just do it myself.  I told her I would just keep all of those shared ornaments to make it simpler which she was fine with.

We also used it as an opportunity to donate some unwanted decorations and throw out some we just didn’t need/want.  I told Ali I was fine with keeping anything really tacky or ugly, I kind of like a sense of humor in my Xmas tree.

The way it wound up, we took 80% of the Xmas stuff to Ali’s place, which was fine with me.  I filled the back of her Volt with containers and loaded the girls up in the party van to take them back.

Ali invited me to stay Saturday night to eat dinner and watch Wanderlust, something she had wanted to see.  We watched the movie while eating a Trader Joe’s meal I donated.  Although this isn’t the kind of movie I would seek out on my own, it was quite funny.  It had many comical and awkward moments, some of which I covered my face just because I felt embarrassed for the character on screen.  You would like the movie as long as you aren’t too uptight about penises being front and center.  B+

Sunday I had a very open schedule.  Anything I wanted to get done had already been done.  Ali again was working so I picked up the dogs after a coffee pit stop.  We had a very laid back day except for maybe a half hour period where I decided to set a new personal pull up best.

30 pull up reps is a HUGE milestone, especially for an old guy like me, but I will talk about this more on Dufisthenics.

Ali didn’t come out to pick up the dogs until after 8.  The dogs and I had a very chill day which included a two hour mid-afternoon nap.  I had felt tired ever since Thursday,  not all that surprising.

There was no disappointing Eagles game to clog up my Sunday.  Instead I get to pollute my Monday evening watching what is likely to be another poor outing.

I am not very happy that I spent much of my weekend walking around with a slight limp since I am doing the Tough Mudder in a few days.  I believe I injured myself doing the all out laptop sprint with no warm up on Thanksgiving.  It hurt it some more yesterday when an excited Sadie stepped on my flip flop while my right foot was still in it.  I turned but my foot didn’t move, sending a jolt of pain through the joint.

Of course it matters very little if my knee is healed or not by race day.  I will grind it out and deal with consequences later.

When NBC announced the show Revolution I was kind of looking forward to it.  The premise sounded interesting to me, sometime in the near future the world somehow loses electricity (they haven’t revealed why yet).  As a result of the loss of power the planet is plunged back to a feudal times type of existence.

Well instead of being a quality addition to my tv rotation, Revolution has turned into this years Terra Nova.  It basically sucks.   The fact that a show with lots of hype and a big budget sucks is not a new event, it happens quite often.  However in this particular case I am a bit surprised because of the names that are associated with the series like JJ Abrahms and Jon Faverau.

Revolution is weak on so many levels.  The writing is awful with predictable scenarios and outcomes everywhere you look.  I literally laugh out loud at times at just how ridiculous some of the round holes they try to jam square pegs into.

I find the young girl that is the female lead the most annoying of all. It’s not her fault, it’s more the fault of the bad writing that has her all over the road in terms of whom she really is.

Also annoying is the idiotic, random insertion of things into the show that are there strictly because of it’s later time slot.  For example the use of the word “dick”.  He’s a dick, don’t be a dick. I think they even used the word “crap” at one point. Gasp! How shocking.

Then last night they have a total soft porn scene with the annoying young female. For some reason they decide the best way to illustrate her tortured memories is when she is taking a bath. They were millimeters away from nip slip city and did have full side boobage at the end of the scene.  I mean obviously I fully support naked women whole heartedly but in the context of the show it was just idiotic and an obvious attempt to titillate, perhaps because that was all they have to offer.

As another example of the show’s suckage, let me outline a scene from this weeks show.  Yea I guess it is a spoiler but if you are still watching this show, you deserve to be spoiled.

So two of the good people were being held in a compound by about 30 bad ones, headed up by an extra nasty leader of course.   The leader gave each of the good people a gun and said they had to shoot each other.  Whomever shot first would live.  This was the leaders idea of a fun time.

Well the two good people were a dumpy fat guy and a hot latin woman.  The fat guy says he isnt going to shoot the hot woman (duh) so in an act of valor he points the gun to his chest, pulls the trigger and drops.

Evil leader guy comes over, all excited of course.  Well all of a sudden, fat dude opens his eyes and uses the gun to shoot the evil leader dead.  Fat guy had a metal whiskey flask in his pocket that stopped the bullet.

So now for some reason the 30 other armed men in the compound don’t immediately shoot the two good people.  Instead fat guy basically says “listen, all we want to do is just leave, ok?”  They cut to some guy that goes into deep thought and then says “ok get your stuff and get the hell out of here”  I mean wtf is that?

The show sucks.  All I want to know is why the damn power got turned off which is supposedly going to be revealed in the next episode.  Once that happens, I’m out.

Man as we approach the election the ridiculous FB posts regarding it are multiplying like rabbits.  I literally feel a little bit embarrassed for some of the people that post them. Many of the items are just so ignorant and low brow it makes me sad.  I just want it all to be over.

So my buddy Troy loves to poke fun at my extreme concern for animals. I basically hate killing things.  Really the only beings I don’t mind inflicting mass murder upon are fire ants which I am convinced came here straight from the depths of hell.

So anyway here is my latest story. This morning as I was in the bathroom getting ready I saw a small bug in the sink.  It actually looked to be a baby cockroach.  I just wasn’t feeling all that sympathetic so I took a cup of water to wash it down the drain since that is where it probably came from.  I tried to make sure it was well down the drain system by following up with running the faucet for a few seconds.

Well a few seconds after I turned the faucet off I see the bug slowly climb out of the drain, obviously a little disoriented from the near drowning.  Well now I felt bad.  I grab a tissue and scoop it up.  As I am walking towards the front of the house the baby roach climbed off the tissue and onto the middle of my forearm and stayed there.

I popped open the garage door and with one quick exhale blew the bug onto the yard where he will have a fighting chance to survive.

If you asked me to logically explain why I would feel compassion for a baby roach I don’t think I could.  But I do know it does maybe explain some of my thoughts on other subjects that are up for debate in society.

I have no doubt if that bug was in Mitt’s gold plated sink he would have immediately called in the butler to smash it.

This weekend Ali leaves for PA so I take full time possession of the dogs for close to a week.  No highlights planned, just the normal slog plus hopefully a 10 miler Saturday morning.