Its a habit

How do you know when you’ve officially made going to the gym a habit?  No, it isn't when your body wakes up at 4:39 just in time for you to watch the numbers on your clock flip to 4:40, when the alarm goes off.  It’s not when your evening routine involves laying out the next morning’s workout clothes while you are brushing your teeth.  You know it has become a habit when the people at the gym’s front desk greet you by name when you walk through the door. 

I made it especially hard for them since I don’t go by my first name, which is printed on my card ID card that they scan every time I enter the building.  After over 4 months, we are now welcomed by name when we walk through the door at 5:05 am (mon-fri).  This is nice, but it is also bad.  If one of us shows up without the other, we are questioned about where the other is.  If we take a day off, we are asked where we were yesterday.  When I took last week off because of my sore side, I was welcomed back this Monday.  The CFO hasn't been able to roll herself out of bed this week and every morning I have been asked where she is.

The CFO hosted the neighborhood Bunko game last Thursday, which meant that we were scrambling to make sure the house was extra clean for the guests.  This group of 20 ladies goes to a different house every month, so the CFO wanted to put on a good showing.  Since the game required 5 tables, we ended up moving most of the furniture out of the living room to make room for three tables.  I was not going to stick around for this hen-fest, so I rounded up some friends and we went out for dinner and then bowling. 

Before I left, I switched on the AC to cool down the house prior to the invasion.  I heard the compressor outside cycling on and off, but it was only running for a few seconds and then shutting off.  It didn't sound right, so I went out to investigate and saw that the fan wasn’t turning on with the compressor like it should.  I went back in the house, switched off the ac and told the CFO to open the windows because the AC wasn’t working.  We had a service visit on Monday and evidently a group of field mice decided the compressor unit outside would be a great place to spend the winter.  The little bastards couldn’t leave well enough alone and they chewed through 3 wires inside the unit, which cut the power to the fan.  Too bad they didn't get zapped when they did it.  I am now researching ways to keep this from happening again… oh the joys of living on the edge of a field.

Our vacuum also died during the preparation for the event, one of the ends of the spinning brush broke off, causing the brush tube to grind up a bunch of the slot where the end should have been.  The vacuum spit out more plastic bits than it was able to suck up.  I bought that one when I graduated from college, so it is almost 14 years old.  We are now in the market for a new vacuum, if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know.  The catch is that the CFO doesn’t want a ‘bagless’ unit, she doesn’t want to see all the dirt (and her hair) swirling around inside the vacuum.  This seriously limits our options, as a majority of them seem to be bagless these days.

We went out and looked for vacuums at several stores and while we were at Lowes looking at vacuums, we took a detour and walked through the plant section.  We ended up finding an oak tree that was 40% off, so we got that.  We have been needing to plant an oak because every house in the neighborhood is supposed to have one (there is a grove of oaks in our common area and they wanted oaks planted throughout the neighborhood).  We also checked out the clearance rack and the CFO spotted a couple pretty spireas that were marked down from $17 to $5.  They have pinkish red blooms on them, so she was immediately drawn to them.  There is always a hidden gem on the clearance rack!  While owning a truck would be nice, we have perfected the art of hauling trees in the accord.  Slide the pot into a trashbag  to catch any soil that falls out (I always keep a few in the spare tire), and slide the tree into the trunk pot first.  Grab some bungee cords (always kept with the trash bags) to tie the tree so it won’t slide around and pull the trunk lid down with another cord.  We don’t need no stinking truck.

I spent a good bit of time outside over the weekend, continuing my battle against the dandelions, cutting the grass and working on our fountain.  I finally got it pretty level, added water and plugged it in.  It doesn't make as much noise as I would have liked, but it is a nice addition to the garden.  We really need to decide on brick or stone for the patio, I'm tired of it being gravel!  We  "free perennial with purchase" coupons for three different local nurseries, we will be cashing those in this weekend to get plants to put around the fountain.

Rabbit, Rabbit

Last Thursday night, the CFO went to see Carrie Underwood at the coliseum here in town.  It sure is nice to be able to drive 10 minutes to see a national star perform live.  Her opening act was Hunter Hayes, a young performer who is just getting himself established in country music.  It was quite obvious, due to the high pitched screeches when he took the stage, that his target audience is young and female.  He was a little “boy band-ish” for my taste, but he is definitely a talented musician.

I found it interesting to see the big differences between this crowd and the crowd at the Kenny concert the previous week, even though they are both country stars.  Kenny’s crowd was definitely older, more evenly mixed males to female and a little bit more of a party crowd.  This concert there was heavily skewed towards the ladies, probably 6 females to every 1 male.  There were also a lot of young kids at this show that weren’t at the Kenny show.

Carrie’s show was entertaining, although I felt the numerous outfit changes were unnecessary.  At least the band continued to jam while she was off stage changing.  You definitely get more songs per show from a performer who doesn’t do outfit changes (ie most male performers!).  I have also come to appreciate singers who also play a musical instrument while they perform.  Other wise, I feel like they are trying to do too much running around/dancing to make up for the fact that all they are doing is singing.  Carrie falls into the latter category.

Her crew deserves a lot of credit, they definitely put a lot of effort into the lighting and effects.  Between the three big, movable LED displays and the rolling platforms that the band members were standing on, something was always moving/changing between songs. 

When we first took our seats I pointed out to Karen that there was a rig hanging from the ceiling that looked like it would carry her out over the crowd.  What we didn’t know at the time was that they would actually attach the front section of the stage to that rig.   Carrie and a majority of the band members got on the platform and it lifted them up and out over the crowd.  They performed several songs as they it slowly carried them across the length of the arena and then it rotated and took them back to the stage.  It was an impressive bit of concert engineering and pretty cool to see.  However, I was glad that we were in the stands and not sitting in a floor seat with the stage passing overhead!

 

As the previous three weekends, it rained most of Friday night and was supposed to rain all day Saturday.  We woke up Saturday morning around 7 am and I noticed that it was cloudy, but not raining.  I hustled down to the garage, gathered some tools and the vegetable plants that we  had bought and ran down to the garden to plant them.  I managed to get them all in the ground before it started to rain again.

After that, we went to the gym so that the CFO could take a class with one of her co-workers.  I did my usual Saturday cardio and leg routine and on the last set of leg presses, I was feeling good, so I decided to up the weight a bit.  Big mistake.  Evidently I dipped down too far on the third lift of the set, because I felt and heard a pop in my torso when I started pushing the weight back up.  It was definitely a strange sound/feeling, especially since I was working my legs.  Since I wasn't sure what happened, I ended the work out.  An area on my right side just below the side of my rib cage was a little sore, but I didn’t think too much of it.

After church on Sunday, my side was still a little sore, but I decided to go outside and work in the yard since it was nice outside.  Yet another mistake.  After working for four hours, I went inside and sat down, which is when my side really tightened up and started feeling real sore…  I did some research online (why go to the doctor when you have the internet?) and, evidently, this is a fairly common occurrence with leg presses if you dip down too far and I probably just pulled my intercostal muscle.  In my non-medical opinion, it is either that or I cracked a rib.  Either way, there isn’t much the doctor can do except charge me to poke around.  It looks like I just need to try to take it easy for a couple weeks and give it time to heal…   I’ll give it until next week and see how it feels.  If it still hurts badly, then I'll go to the doctor.

On Tuesday night, despite still being sore, I went back outside to cut the grass. This is peak grass growing season and I have to cut it every 4 days to keep from having to bag it.  While mowing along the east side of our house, I scared the occupants of a nest dug into the ground near my hostas. We have at least 3 young baby rabbits bedding down in the area.  They are still fairly small, smaller than my hand.  While they are cute hopping around, I’m also concerned that they are going to mow down my plants as they eat and grow.   I am not sure what to do with them, so for now I just took a couple photos of them. 

Kenny!

Friday night after work, I drove to campus and picked up the CFO for a westward trip to Peoria, about an hour away.  We enjoyed my favorite driving food, McDonalds, along the way. (I know, not healthy, but I burned 920 calories at spin class that morning, so I probably zero'd out) We parked in our usual, top secret parking space that is free and has extremely easy access to the interstate and walked over to the arena to see Kenny Chesney.  He had two opening acts, Kacey Musgraves (a country music newcomer who reminded me of Sheryl Crow) and the Eli Young band, both of which put on good opening shows.  After they were done performing,  a huge dropped curtain around the stage so they could set up for the main show.  The stage set for Kenny ended up being pretty basic, which made it seem strange that they bothered to lower a curtain during set it up, but the show itself was awesome.  As usual (this is the 3^rd time we’ve seen him), Kenny put on a great, high energy performance.  He was on the stage for over 2 hours and never took a break, he just kept throwing out hit after hit. 

 

  Even though our seats were off to the side, almost directly in line with the front of the stage, we could still see everything and there were speakers and a video screen aimed right at us.     I maybe repeating myself, but nothing beats a well put together live musical performance, especially when it is LOUD and you can feel the bass kick in your chest.  Each time we leave a show and get back in the car to drive home, I turn on the stereo and think, “I really should get back in touch with my high school/college days and put a subwoofer in this car.”

The Flag for Kenny's current tour.  I thought it was cool and wanted to buy one to hang in the garage, the CFO vetoed the idea (she's no fun)

 

We also found out that Kenny is about to launch his on Rum line, his “Blue Chair Bay” rum will be available in May.  Evidently they had a tailgating trailer set up that was giving out samples, but it must have been on the other side of the venue because we didn’t see it.  I knew that rocker Sammy Hagar had his Cabo Wabo Tequila and Rum, but evidently there are a lot of celebrities throwing their weight behind these products.  It is kind of interesting to see celebs are shifting from trendy fragrances and clothing lines to booze.

We rolled out of bed Saturday morning at 8:15 and headed to the gym.  I weighed in and I am officially below 170 lbs for the first time in probably 2 years… albeit only by 4 tenths of a pound.  169.6 is still under 170, as long as you don’t round up!  After exercising, the CFO started lobbying for driving to the outlet malls and a day of shopping.  (Blah!)  Seeing sunny skies and temps in the 50’s, I pushed back and said that she could go shopping, but I was going to spend the afternoon in the yard.  She was not happy with the response but didn’t put up too much of a fight.  I offered her several outdoor tasks so she could join me outside, (pulling dandelions, cleaning the stones that are going to be used in the fountain, etc.) but she opted to stay inside and do who knows what.  I spent about 5 hours outside, even though it was a little windy and enjoyed every minute of it.  I am so tired of being inside after staying indoors all winter.

Sunday was supposed to be similar weather wise, with a “slight” chance of showers.  Unfortunately, we awoke to rain and it continued to rain until about 3pm.  To the CFO’s delight, we did go roam around the mall for a while after church, so she got a little bit of shopping in.  I was determined to get some additional work done outside, so once it stopped raining, I braved the now soggy soil and went ahead and mixed in two and a half wheel barrow loads of compost (from my compost pile!) into the raised garden beds.  Considering the fact that I used the "so-so" quality soil from the yard to fill the raised beds (from when I dug out the dry creek bed), a couple years of adding compost is starting to making a noticeable difference in the soil.  The fact that I was able to generate all of the compost myself from yard and kitchen waste is even more rewarding.  We all know that I like "FREE."

The daffodils are blooming in my native grass areas.

I was also able to run the power supply wire for the fountain and have it securely attached to the underside of the deck.  Out of sight, out of mind.  I am hoping to get the fountain installed and running this weekend, however it is starting to look like the weather is going to be working against me, AGAIN!  I’m still holding out hope that the forecast will change; you can’t trust it more than a day out anyway.  For two weeks in a row, Monday and Tuesday have been the prettiest days of the week.  That is not how it is supposed to be.

They have built a foundation on the vacant lot adjacent to us... not sure when the house will be done.

Fresh cut flowers from the yard = Husband of the Year? (but not good enough to justify a  flag for the garage...)

To be, or not to be... Cheap.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my good friends would probably use the words thrifty, economical or just plain cheap when describing me.  I’m often teased for ordering water to drink at restaurants (2 bucks for a sprite, are you kidding me?!), that's just me looking for a way to save a buck.  I tend to try doing a lot of things myself instead of paying someone to do them, even if I don’t exactly know what I’m doing.  I'll figure it out, or at least I think I will.  This has the added benefit of increasing my knowledge base, even if a lot of the info crammed into my brain probably won’t ever be useful again. 

For example, I’ve disassembled a laptop in order to replace a $15 driver for the display, I’ve torn a floor lamp apart in order to replace a $10 dimmer switch, and the list goes on and on.  I believe that food can only get so good, and my willingness to pay for meals at restaurants tops out at about the $15-17/plate price point at the very high end.  Beyond that, I’m wondering why we didn’t just go to buffalo wild wings instead.  I hate paying a lot for clothes and will baulk as the prices go up… pants or a shirt over 20 bucks?!  No thanks; I’ll wait until they go on end of the season clearance. 

That being said, there are some things that I’m willing to pay full price for.  Art, vacations and “toys” immediately come to mind.  While our art collection is small, we have been willing to pay for things that we like when we stumble upon them.  As you’ve also read here, we also like to take at least one nice trip per year, after that, I go cheap and try to make vacations out of work trips (see, I can’t help myself).  I also like nice toys (my camera, tools, etc. come to mind), however I typically search for a good deal before pulling the trigger.

This all brings me to the birthday gift that the CFO gave me that I have yet to pick out, a new gas powered string trimmer (a.k.a. a weed eater).  My dilemma is this:  There are a lot of inexpensive models available at  the typical big box retailers.  However, if/when they break, the college student behind the customer service counter at Lowe’s isn’t going to be able to help me get it running again.  They just don't service what they sell, as if their products never break.

If you are willing to spend 30-50% more, you can purchase one at specialty outdoor power tool shop that has a repair staff with the ability to service the unit when something happens to it.  They also only sell one of the top brands, so the level of product quality appeals to me. I’ve been shopping for almost two months now and I still can’t decide which way I want to go.  I keep leaning towards the nicer option, but those never go on sale and that keeps bugging me.  The store is less than a mile from work and I have gone in there several times, spending time talking to the sales people and playing with the product, but eventually get un-nerved by the price and I walk out empty handed. 

So, why haven’t I bought a nice one yet?  The price and the Sunday paper are the biggest reasons.  I flip through it every weekend and see multiple major home improvement store ads that lure me back to them with the low prices that appeal to my cheap side.  But then I go to one of those stores and their products look and feel cheap (surprised?).   I then go back to the specialty shop, only to look at the price and instinctively do the math between that price versus the cheap one that was in the Sunday sales flier.  Even though I know that I want the nice one, I can't convince myself to pull the trigger. 

I'm glad the CFO gave me the opportunity to select the trimmer that I want, but part of me wishes that she had just bought one...  The yard is greening up and there are some weeds that need to be whacked… I’ve got to make a decision!  Since I just wrote about this, then obviously, there isn’t much else going on around here… We’ve got a concert coming up this weekend, so hopefully I’ll have more to write about then. 

A quiet week

It has been really quiet around our house over the last week, not that I'm complaining.  We went to a friend's house for dinner on Friday and got our dose of noisy kids while we were there.  Their kids are actually pretty well behaved, but kids are inherently loud.  I always like it when we walk into our house after leaving someone's noisy house...  Ahhh, quiet.  It is so nice.

We did a little exploring on Saturday morning, heading down to Funk's Grove to get some Illinois Maple Sirup.  (Yes, with an 'I' instead of a 'Y') My dad is from Vermont and he passed down his love of maple syrup and maple sugar candy down to me.  We picked up a bottle of Sirup for ourselves and one for dad.  We were all set to have waffles Sunday morning, only to realize that we didn't have any waffle mix.  Cue the game show loss music.  I guess I could have found a recipe to make them from scratch, but that thought didn't really cross my mind until I started typing this.  Oh well, we'll try again this weekend.

We also went to the gym on a Saturday for the first time since I was sick. The CFO had been limiting me to just mon-fri as part of her "ease back into it" orders. Our gym has 2 locations and Saturday is the only day we go to this location, which has a scale outside of the locker rooms. The location we typically go to doesn't have a scale outside of the locker rooms and I'm not a huge fan of gym locker rooms... Being sick didn't seem to hurt me too much, I'm down from last time I weighed in. When I stepped onto the scale, the digital display went up to 168.8 and stopped, which made me feel really good about my progress... and then it decided to add another 1.2 pounds and jumped up to 170.0. The stupid electronic scale is messing with my head! I tried to out smart it by getting on it a second time, but it said 170.0 that time too.

We're still on the, "don't change the diet, just burn more calories" approach and it seems to be working for me... 8 down and another 10 or so pounds to go.

I spent some time on Sunday out in the yard and in the garage.  My parts for the miata's coolant issue were supposed to be delivered on Saturday by USPS, but the didn't arrive until Tuesday.  That just reinforced my opinion that Saturday service isn't necessary.  Heck, other than a few car magazines and letters from the CFO's grandmother, all we get in the mail is junk and bills.  I'd be happy with Mon-Wed-Fri or Tues-Thurs-Sat service.  Unfortunately, my opinion doesn't really matter and they will continue to run the postal service into the ground instead.

I worked on the fountain and it is basically ready to go, once the weather warms up at night.  I dug the hole for the liner and we picked up some stone that the CFO thought would look good with the pot.  Now all I need to do is to run power out to a location near the hole.  The fountain is going next to our patio (currently still just a sunken gravel square that is waiting for either brick or stone) and I am going to run the power to a nearby support pole for the deck.  There is already an electrical outlet  on the side of the house by the deck, so I'm planning on splicing into it.  I've never been a huge fan of doing electrical work, but this should (hopefully) go smoothly.

 

The fountain being tested in the garage using a plastic bin as a test basin

Back in the yard!

The CFO came home on Friday with a stack of student projects to grade, so her nose was buried in those for a majority of the weekend, leaving me with some free time.  I finally passed her arbitrary health assessment and was deemed well enough to do some yard work on Sunday.  I’m not sure what she was basing it on, but I’m not coughing as much and have more energy, so I guess that was enough.  I was dying to get outside on Sunday because it was in the sixties and sunny.  Fan-freakin-tastic.

 I finished moving the pile of mulch that I started working on a month ago before I got sick.  I am sure my neighbors were wondering why I had left a third of the pile in the driveway for the last few weeks.  I was happy to see that we’ve got tulips and daffodils coming up, spring is springing.  Unfortunately, a bunch of dandelions are also popping up in the mulch area, I am going to have to get out the round up and start killing off the bad stuff.

I pulled the cover off the Miata and got the oil changed for the New Year.  I cranked it and let it idle for a while and then I saw coolant pooling on top of the radiator.  After some examination, I saw that I have a small leak where one of the radiator hoses attaches to the radiator.  At least I spotted it while the car was idling in the driveway, but now I need to order a replacement hose.  I also continued my fountain mock up, here is a progress photo of me testing the pump's flow.

 

Since the new couch arrived, I’ve been trying to sell the old one on craigslist.  In case you didn't know, it is a huge pain in the @$$ it is to sell furniture online.  Next time, I will save myself a lot of time and borrow a truck and haul it to a donation site for good will or someplace like that. 

The old one is in good condition, so we decided on a price that we thought was a reasonable and I posted it online.  Evidently our idea of reasonable was not the same as others, as I have turned down several offers for $50.  If I was just going to sell it for $50, I’d be better off donating it (like I said above) and write off a more reasonable value come tax time.  I also received a bunch of spam emails and several emails that resulted in long, back and forth email conversations that ended up going nowhere.  One of which ended when, about 8 emails into the conversation, the potential buyer asked what the dimensions of the sofa were.  The dimensions were a deal killer because it wouldn’t fit through the door of her trailer. Knowing that her door was narrow, you’d think that would be one of her first questions, not 8 emails later.  It’s just a waste of my time.

There was one lady that I had talked to off and on for over a week who wanted the sofa, but then some crisis came up that she had to spend the money on.  Tuesday evening she emailed me saying that she had come into some money and wanted to buy the couch.  She came over the next day, super excited about it.  She plopped down on it for literally two seconds before standing back up to hand me the cash for our asking price.  No haggling.  Done.  It was raining outside so we asked if she really wanted to take it that day.  She had her son and his truck plus a tarp, so she was ready to go.  He and I carried it out into the rain and into his truck, threw the tarp over it and off they went.  I’m sure the CFO was a little sad to see it go, as it was one of her first big furniture purchases.  

Happy Easter

We had a nice Easter weekend, other than both of our NCAA brackets going bust.  Neither one of us managed to pick a single final 4 team, very disappointing.  However, I was a little more relieved when I read that only 9 people out of the 3 million who submitted brackets to the yahoo pick'em picked the final 4 teams correctly.  9 out of 3 million!

We went out on Saturday morning to the “Spring Bloom” art show, but we didn’t buy anything, nothing for us and no gifts for friends/family.  We also ran errands and went out for a nice lunch.  We rented the movie zero dark thirty, the one about the search for Osama Bin Laden.  I thought it was well done, but wonder how accurate it really was.  There were some interrogation scenes which caused her to cover her eyes, but she managed to stay awake through the whole movie.

On Sunday, we went to church and then had some friends over for lunch.  I fired up the grill for the first time this year; I really miss the fact that we could grill year round in Georgia.  Here, the grilling season really only goes from April until October, after that, the gas grill has a hard time fighting the sub-freezing temperatures.

The couch that we ordered a while back was delivered on Thursday; it has definitely brightened up the living room.  Now we are working on trying to agree on fabrics to recover two old chairs that came from my grandmother’s house.  She wants pink, I would prefer anything other than pink.  Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so opinionated, it would be so much easier to just let her do whatever she wants when it comes to this stuff… however, since the furniture came from my grandmother’s house, I want to be involved.  It took us 2 years to find a couch that we both liked, who knows how long decisions on this reupholstering project will take! 

The camera didn't really catch the color well, so here is a photo of the fabric sample that we picked it from.  It definitely shows the color better:

It is definitely bright and has an interesting texture to it.