Tag eagles suck

We started Saturday off with a trip to the track, I wanted to give a short run a try.  In general my IT band has been hurting less since the road trip so I wanted to see how I would feel.  For the first two or three laps the answer was not good as I felt pain in my right hip and knee.  Eventually as my body warmed up the pain faded.  We completed the 8 laps and I probably could have pushed to a 5K distance if I wanted to.  So far I haven’t had any serious blowback as far as follow up pain or soreness.

We headed out to Home Depot to grab sod and top soil needed to repair the now massive excavation the chickens have performed at various spots around the yard.  Cindy and I worked in tandem to complete the work.  The humidity in the air was noticeably less on Saturday.  The combo of cloudy skies, breezy conditions and temps in the low 80’s almost felt pleasant to work in. Cindy and I set up the inflatable Halloween cat by the front door to complete our decorations. (unless Cindy decides to decorate the coop)  We anchored the cat with opposing 35 pound dumbbells to keep it steady as much as possible.

We have had a wasp problem on the one side of the house that I mentioned last week.   I finally broke down and bought wasp spray although I don’t feel good about killing the insects, despite their aggressive intentions towards me.  The wasps had somehow survived a couple spraying sessions, one by Cindy and one by myself.  I eventually pulled the hose holder off the wall and soaked every inch of it with wasp spray, hopefully putting an end to their persistent unwelcome habitation.

Recently I saw a Lincoln commercial where it showed off the built in ground projection logo set up.  Basically you open the door and an LED projects a crystal clear image on the road.  It’s just a cool thing.  This reminded me that a couple years ago I had bought the hardware to do this for my SSR but never installed it.  I found the box in the garage and hooked one of the projectors up to my 12V DC power supply to verify it worked.  I showed Cindy the bright image it cast on the rug which she thought was cool.

I have two of them as I originally planned to install them as prescribed, in the bottom of both doors.  I have since changed direction.  I want to try to hook one up in the back of the vehicle under the rear bumper.  I am hoping to tap the back up light circuit for power.  When you unlock the truck the back up lights stay on for several seconds so I thought it would be cool to have a projector in the back. I haven’t gotten beyond the thought process stage of this.  I need to put the back of the truck on ramps so I can do some thorough investigation about mounting options.

Speaking of the SSR, I made another large payment on the loan for the truck this weekend during my bill paying session, leaving less than a thousand dollars to go before it’s paid off.  It will be nice to have my only existing vehicle payment evaporate although I still am a bit sad that for the most part the SSR is a much smaller focus of my entertainment sphere nowadays.

We did take the SSR to the movies Saturday night.  It was our first trip to the theater since before the road trip.  I bet it has been a month and a half since we went to the movies which is surely a record for us.  We went to see The Martian, both Cindy and I are big fans of sci fi/space flicks.  The movie theater was decently full, probably half the seats were occupied.

I thought the movie was great and extremely well done.  Really the only negative I can give is it’s long, if you are annoyed by lengthy movies.  Personally I don’t care if a movie is long as long as I find it entertaining and interesting (ie Lord of the Rings).  I felt like I just watched the best space themed movie since Apollo 13 by the end of it.  I give it an A+.  Cindy felt similarly.

Cindy and I had talked about doing the 20 mile DD ride on Sunday morning as a follow up to Saturday’s run.  However Cindy wasn’t feeling great and the skies looked very threatening so we bailed.  It turned out to be a good thing as it started to rain shortly thereafter.  The weather all day was very unstable with periods of sun and rain which I assume were the fringe effect from hurricane Joaquin.

After skipping the ride my day became very lazy.  We grabbed coffee and some gas for the mowers and I paid my bills, other than that I was in slug mode.  Part of the slogfest was watching the Eagles game which was so shitty for most of it that I split time watching it with playing Hearthstone on the iPad.  I really don’t enjoy watching this team play, let me break down the latest loss.

Chip Kelly seems to be a one trick pony.  His vaunted hurry up offense which seemed to frustrate defenses in his first couple years in the league now seems to be passe and easily addressed.  The only thing it seems to do consistently is tire out the Eagles defense since they spend so much time on the field.  In addition Chip’s personnel management skills are proving to be pretty damn awful.  We are seeing the end result of coring out the majority of a team and inserting a random cast of characters like it is fantasy football. The team has no character, no personality and no leaders.

I have not been impressed by Stafford, our new QB.  Yes the offensive line has been more or less horrible and the receivers have dropped some catchable balls but his accuracy is reminding me of Donovon McNabb.  I have seen him miss wide open receivers A LOT, something I did not expect.  So far I certainly don’t see his play as a step up from what Nick Foles could have done for us. It was nice to see Stafford complete a couple long balls.  I think I heard the announcer say yesterday was the first game the Eagles had a play over 20 yards.  If that is true it is a pretty damning stat considering the team used to lead the league in plays over 20 yards.

The running game continued to be awful, again in large part thanks to the shitty offensive line that Chip constructed in the offseason.  Their inability to create anything resembling a consistent running attack further cripples their ability to pass as play action fakes mean absolutely nothing.

Huge kudos to Chip for signing a kicker that obviously has a mental block, missing a short field goal and an extra point which would have changed the game outcome.  I expect Calebs stay with the team to be brief.

Even with the Eagles leading late I had a sickening feeling in my stomach they were going to collapse at the end, which they did, allowing the Redskins to mount a confidence crushing 15 play drive to score the winning touchdown.  The offense came out onto the field with roughly 25 seconds to go and promptly shit the bed, allowing two sacks before crawling off the field with their tail between their legs.

I have read some former Eagle coach comparisons for Chip Kelly, the most accurate one I saw was with Ray Rhodes who did well his first couple seasons until the wheels completely fell off.  At this point I can see this team of misfits scraping together 6 wins.  I am curious if double digit losses is enough to merit the end of Chip Kelly’s pro coaching career.  The miserable Eagles game did nothing to pick up my already gloomy mood which was enhanced by my lack of tangible productivity backed by off and on shitty weather all day long.

Despite us being well past the vaunted super moon my overall mood has not been great.  I am concerned that as I advance further into the depths of middle age that I am acquiring more of the traits I saw in my mom as she got older, beyond wrinkles.  I am lucky to have Cindy’s positive energy to slow my descent.  I just don’t feel like dealing with things a lot more often than I recall in the past.

Friday night after work I hit the grocery store on the way home, the non-Catholic town Publix.  By the time I got home, put the groceries away and fed the girls it was getting too dark to go out and get the weeding done.  It was just as well I didn’t really feel like doing it anyway. I didn’t feel like playing WoW either so instead I watched my latest Netflix dvd, Black Swan.

When I told Ali I rented the movie she was surprised since the film is a story about ballet.  Well yea it is, but it is a DARK film about ballet.  It took a little while for me to see why my buddy Don recommended the film to me but about halfway in things started kicking into gear.  If you are looking for a feel good, puts a spring in your step movie, you are looking in the wrong place.  It gets a solid B+ from me.

The movie finished up just as the Phillies game 5 was getting started.  Since the game was on TBS and I don’t have cable I had to make other arrangements.  My first attempt was using playon.tv through my 360.  I knew that there was a TBS channel on there.  Unfortunately the only thing on it were old Conan episodes.

Ok well then I figured good old atdhenet.tv would have the game for sure since they seem to broadcast almost every major live sporting event.  I was amazed the game was not there, shit.  What I wound up with was having a laptop connected to the bedroom tv with the ESPN radio stream playing and the mlb.tv play by play tracker displayed.  No it wasn’t ideal but whatever.

I was bummed that by the time I got everything up and running the Phils were already down 1-0 in the first inning.  Oh well it’s early.  Well as I laid in bed reading a magazine while I was listening/half watching I started to get extremely tired.  I just could not stay awake.  I fell asleep in maybe the 5th inning with the score still the same.

Well when I woke up Saturday morning the laptop was still turned on with the game tracker displayed.  When I saw that the score never changed my heart sunk.  Wow, what a disappointment.  This was arguably the best Phillies team ever on paper and at least during the regular season, on the field, amassing the most wins in franchise history.  To go out in the first round of the playoffs is a major under achievement to say the least.

I didn’t waste much time Saturday before I dug into the housework.  Doing everything in the house myself demands even more time than normal so I responded by picking up the pace.  I was scurrying about both inside and outside the house doing various chores in rapid fire order.  I wanted to have my afternoon mostly free so I could work on the Camry.

I decided that I wanted to shoot a video of the Camry brake pad procedure.  Leading up to the replacement I had watched a couple other videos that outlined replacing the pads/discs on the Camry but none of them dealt with the hybrid model.  From what I could tell in my research, the procedure shouldn’t be dramatically different but I wasn’t quite sure.

Early in the process the skies opened up, getting me slightly damp as I worked.  Once again, much as it was with the Tacoma, I didn’t see any visual problem with the old pads.  They were nowhere close to the wear markers yet.  Well I had everything apart so I was going to put the new pads in regardless.  This however made me think that the rear disc pads might be the source of the noise I was hearing.

I was a bit disappointed in the replacement pads I bought over the internet.  All that was in the box were just the pads.  From what I understand, most Camry brake pads will include the replacement metal clips that are used to hold the pads in the bracket.  These pads did not so I had to reuse the old clips instead, not a huge deal but annoying based on what I paid for the pads.

There is a funny moment in the video where I point out that you should make sure to take notice of how the clips are installed before you pull them off.  What is funny is I didn’t take my own advice and as a result spent 10 minutes trying to jam the pads back in place because I had one set of clips reversed.  What a dummy.

Other than that little snafu the rest of the procedure went fine.  Like I said, I think I will be repeating it on the rear brakes in the near future.  If you would like to see the one and only Camry Hybrid brake pad replacement video (as far as I know), you can see it here, or scroll down. 🙂

After I was done with the brakes I loaded up the girls in the van for a quick ride back to Publix.  I wanted to grab myself a frozen pizza for dinner and some car wax for the Camry.

Now typically I am a good old fashioned Turtle Wax guy, you know the stuff in a round green tub that you apply with the included circular sponge applicator.  You rub the stuff on, wait till it hazes over and then you rub it off.

They had Turtle Wax there but they also had an Armor All product called Butter Wax.  On the packaging it touted how this product was much easier to apply since you don’t have to wait for it to dry, basically wipe it and then wipe it off.  It was also more expensive than Turtle Wax, hmmm maybe it is actually better.  I grabbed it off the shelf.

So when I got home I gave the Camry a good bath first.  After drying it off I used some Scratch-X on a couple paint scratches that needed to be attended to for a long time.  Then it was time for the butter wax.

Well from the first squirt I was not impressed.  First the product looks like slimy snot.  I dripped some on the roof and started rubbing it in.  With normal wax, it has some degree of polishing capability, meaning if there are surface blemishes in the paint you can get them out with some elbow grease.  Well butter wax didn’t appear to have any polishing functionality at all.  You could rub until your elbow dislocates, it isn’t going to get the remnants of that bird shit off your clear coat.

I was immediately regretting my decision to abandon Turtle Wax but I didn’t feel like going back to the store to buy it. Instead I angrily applied the slimy butter wax on the Camry. The car looked ok when I was done but I am sure any protective properties it offers will be very short lived. After I was done I threw the almost full bottle right in the trash.

So I woke up Sunday morning and immediately had thoughts of Ali being in the starting corral for the Chicago Marathon.  She had called me Saturday night and was obviously very anxiety ridden.  I had signed up for text messaging updates of her race so I would know how it was going.

When I first got up it was raining lightly.  I thought the rain might cancel the DD bike ride I had in mind. The rain stopped so I decided to give it a go even though the roads were still quite wet.

I pulled down another good time for the first 10 miles of the ride, cracking the 20 mph pace average for the second time is as many weeks.  It was tougher than last week because of the wet roads and higher humidity.

The ride back was in a word brutal.  I had a constant head wind that was miserable.  I didn’t get out of the 17’s and there were various times where keeping my pace over 15 mph was exhausting.  Despite my rapidly depleting energy reserves, about halfway back I came up with the idea of turning the ride into a tribute for Ali and Michelle’s marathon, I would ride 26.2 miles.

When I got close to our house I turned around and headed west again to get the extra distance.  The last 8 or 9 miles the discomfort in my legs was eclipsed by the discomfort in my rear end, I was getting up off the seat on a regular basis.

I stopped my watch at exactly 26.2 miles.  Man I was glad to get off the damn bike.  After the ride I jumped in the pool and was surprised at how cold it was.  Evidently the night of rain dropped the water temp quite a few degrees.

So I started getting updates on the marathon.  I signed up to track both Ali and Michelle.  I saw at the 10k split Michelle was about a minute in front of Ali which surprised me.  I thought they would be running together to help push each other.

Ali finished up the race just under the 5 hour mark at 4:59:07.  I knew she was hoping for a better time but I found out later her time was retarded by a couple “events” that probably chewed up close to 15 minutes of clock time. Michelle clocked in at 4:37 and change, a great time for her.

Ali called me shortly after she finished.  I told her I was proud of her for accomplishing her goal.  She sounded relieved it was all over.  I talked to her again later when she was out of the noisy finish area and heard more details of the day.  I am sure I will hear much more when I pick her up from the airport later today.

Before the Eagles game I took the girls on one of their favorite rides, to Pet Supermarket.  Trying to handle two dogs on leashes while attempting to load up a couple cases of dog food and pay for them is a bit of a challenge.  Normally both dogs are pulling me somewhere trying to inhale the endless smells the store offers.

So this was the second MUST WIN game in a row for the Eagles.  Since they lost last week’s must win game I guess this was a REALLY must win game.  Well, they lost.

This team is just so frustrating to watch.  You can see the talent is there despite their inability to function as a team most of the time.  The offense drove the ball up and down the field all day but again sputtered in the red zone settling for a field goal one time and turning the ball over on a couple other occasions.  You hardly ever see the Eagles punt, they drive the field and then fail.

The one place you really don’t see the talent is on defense.  The defense was again woeful, allowing the Bills to jump out to a huge lead, having no answer for the short passing and running that was getting crammed down their throat.  Ironically in the second half the D actually made some stops by abandoning the swiss cheese wide 9 alignment.

Mike Vick had big numbers on the ground and in the air but he also had 4 interceptions, two of which were the result of tipped balls or receivers getting the ball ripped out of their hands like bitches (yes you Avant)  Even with Vick’s big stats the turnovers are a killer.  He also potentially took 3 points of the board by not using his head on the last play of the first half.

The Eagles had 8 seconds left and no time outs.  They were between the 20 and 30 yard line of the Bills, easily in field goal range.  They had time for one quick shot to the end zone and nothing else.  Well Vick takes the snap and dances around in the pocket for a long time, waiting for someone to come open.  By the time he finally threw the ball away time had expired.  It was a total brain dead play and very reflective of exactly what is wrong with the team.  They just play dumb.

Of course there was nothing dumber than the play at the end of the game.  After losing a golden opportunity to tie the game up on Jason Avant’s second strip fumble of the game, the Birds still had a shot to get the ball back one more time.  The Bills had the ball midfield, 4th and less than a yard to go.

The Bills lined up like they were actually going to go for it.  Although if they did get the first down, the game was over, there is no coach that would actually go for it because if you fail, the other team only has half a field to go to score.  The intent was to try to pull the defense off sides, one of the oldest tricks in the book.

All the Eagles had to do was just stand there and wait for the Bills to take the delay of game penalty.  Well they failed at that. Juqua Parker came across on the hard count like a f’ing idiot, 5 yard penalty, game over.  If anything it was an appropriate way for the game to end, putting a nice pretty bow on exactly why this team is 1-4, they find ways to lose.

The only thing positive is with each consecutive loss the expectation level for this team full of high paid underachievers keeps going down.  It’s become comedic.

Juan Castillo sucks, plain and simple.  He is too much of a cheerleader and not enough of a tactician.  Put on a skirt and here are your pom poms buddy. Of course my desire for the end of the Fat Man era is well documented.

It turns out Netflix DOES have someone with a brain there.

Today is my 13 year wedding anniversary.  Wow, doing anything for 13 years just sounds crazy although at my present age it seems to be happening on several fronts.  13 isn’t the kind of number that calls for a crazy celebration.  Instead I figure we will go out on a date this weekend to somewhere nice.