Fender Bender

It's been relatively quiet since Christmas. That goes for home cooking too. We've barely have had any food in the house to cook. We've been going out a lot lately. Apparently so is everyone else. Last night we decided to go out for dinner and the first three places we went to all had 50 minutes to an hour wait. What? On a Thursday night? What is wrong with you people.

I did finalyl make it to the grocery store and frankly I wished I hadn't. I ran in and did my shopping. Came out and got in my van. Looked left and right and in my rear view mirror. All was clear or so I thought and started to back out - right into the side of a pick-up truck. Somehow the driver had managed to pull in behind me after I had checked right and left and the way she had pulled behind me when I checked my rear view mirror, the cab of the truck was out of my line of sight and the bed of her pickup was below my rear window level so I couldn't see it. She was quite upset and crying. It was her husband's truck and she said he didn't want her to take it to the store, Why she did then I have no idea. The damage to both vehicles was minor, but needs to be fixed. More so on her truck then my van. This is what the rear bumper on my van is suppose to look like:

This is what the damaged side now looks like. At first I wasn't going to have it repaired. It's more cosmetic damage then anything. After talking to my insurance company though, I've decided to get it repaired. Parking lots are such a pain in the ass.

Annual Physicals

This past weekend I had two annual physicals. One for me and one for my minivan. Mine was fairly mundane, other than the prostrate exam, which is always a show and not in a good way. Except for my eyes, I seem to be in pretty good health for my age. My blood pressure is still a little higher than the Doctor would like so he tweaked my meds again adding a third medicine. This whole blood pressure thing bugs me because its more about my genetics (Thanks Dad) then a lifestyle thing. If your a male in my family, come your 40th birthday you'll have high blood pressure. It's just how it is. Other than that, nothing exciting. Of course I'm still waiting to hear the result of my blood tests. Things could change, but I tend to think not. The other annual physical was for my minivan. In Virginia, there is a requirement for an annual safety inspection on your car. The minivan didn't fare as well as I did for my physical. The front tires were too worn to be passed. Given that the van still has the original tires and it has 62,000 miles on it, I can't complain too much. Two new tires and I was out of there albeit $400 poorer.

Our Easter was fairly quiet. Ann and I attended services on Good Friday and Easter morning. Then basically relaxed the rest of the weekend. Saturday it was rainy and windy and Sunday it was cold and windy making rowing or biking out of the question. I'm itching to get on the water and the weather has not been cooperating at all. The Son joined us for Easter dinner and our annual Leg of Lamb. It was very tasty although lamb is so rich I can't eat that much.

All weekend I was having problems with my eyes. On Friday and Saturday, my eye lids were so swollen I could hardly see out of them. Saturday I actually spent most of the afternoon with a cold washcloth over my eyes. That seemed to help a lot, but being so swollen I couldn't wear my contacts, which means I couldn't see hardly at all. I certainly couldn't read anything. I took Monday off from work because I didn't think I could wear my contacts. If I can't read there isn't much reason to go to work where 99% of my job involves reading. It was driving me crazy enough on Monday that I finally put my contacts in around 11:00. I figured I would wear them for just a few hours so my eyes wouldn't get irritated. As it turns out, putting in my contacts actually made my eyes feel better and I left them in for 8 hours. I have an appointment in May with my eye Doctor, but I probably should go in in the interim and see if he can figure out why they are so swollen all the time. The worst part of it is my glasses appear to be totally useless. I can't see any better with my glasses on then with them off. I definitely need to get them looked to as well. Now let me get this posted while I can still see.

Of Cars, Rowing and Missing Keys

Ann dragged me out of bed at the ungodly hour of 6:00 AM. At least it's ungodly for a Saturday morning. She woke me up so I could get an emissions test done on The Son's car. Why didn't The Son do it? Good question. We are terrible enablers. His car is only a year old so getting through emissions was no big deal. I was second in line at the gas station so I didn't have to wail long at all. After the test was done, it was off to the DMV to renew the registration. I pulled in the drive up window line which appeared to be 7 deep and settled in. After about 20 minutes and no movement in the line, I called Ann and asked when they opened as it was now about 8:40. She checked and they had been opened the whole time I had waited in line. In fact I had seen people go in and out the front door of the building. About that time another driver pulled up next to me and motioned for me to roll down my window, which I did. He told me that the drive up window was closed. Duh. No wonder there had been no movement. As I pulled out of the line of cars, I could see that all the cars were empty. They must belong to the DMS employees trying to park as close as possible. What a waste of time. I just drove home and had Ann renew on line. Grrrr.

This afternoon i attended a kick off meeting for a new Masters Regatta that we hope to start up this summer. Its been tentatively been named the Occ0quan Masters Sprints. Its to be held in July on the Occoquan and hosted by the Occoquan Boat Club. It should be interesting working on the inside to see how it all comes together.

After the meeting I went to an open house hosted by one of my teammates and her husband. It was nice. Good food and good company. Nice to see those I haven't seen since our season ended last month. As I was preparing to leave, I searched my pockets for my car keys. Nothing. I went outside to see if I had dropped them on the ground getting out of the car. I opened my cell phone and used the lighted display like a flashlight. Nothing. I looked on the driver's seat and there they were. Only trouble was the car was locked. I called Ann to come bring a spare set of keys to unlock it. She was none to happy about it even though the drive was only about two miles. A stream of obscenities emerged from her mouth. Geez, you would have thought I had woken her up at 2:00 in the morning and asked her to drive 30 miles to pick me up. If she had stuck with our original plan for her to accompany me to the Open House, I'm sure it wouldn't have happened. She is turning into quite the hermit.

It's Alive and I Wish I was Too

When we last left things, I was to take care of getting our car battery replaced. Besides giving your car a jump start, AAA will actually come to your car and replace the battery for you. This seem to be the easiest option, as opposed say to going out and buying a battery myself or jump starting the car again in order to get it to a repair shop. The service representative showed up fairly quickly and I told him what I wanted (a new battery). Rather then just replace it, he checked it out first and his meter showed the battery was fine. Turns out there was some corrosion on the positive battery terminal that once cleaned up allowed the car to start right up. He did mention that the terminals that attached to the battery really should be replaced sooner than later, but he would clean them and it should work fine for a while. As he was cleaning the negative terminal, lo and behold, the terminal broke off. He was a lot more calm about it then I would have been, but he said he would go buy the terminals and install them. It took him a while to locate local auto parts place (I'm not sure where he was located, but obviously not the immediate area), he returned and installed the new terminals. Cost - no charge. He said since he broke the terminals there would be no charge. Sweet.

Since Thursday I had been feeling like I was coming down with something flu like. My shoulders and neck were feeling achy and stiff and I was getting chills and headaches periodically. As we got into Saturday, I was feeling pretty shitty after rowing practice. I started popping Tylenol, which helped me get through the day. By Saturday evening though, I was feeling pretty bad and went to bed around 8:00. I couldn't fall asleep. I tossed and turned all night long. I even got up around 2:00 and watched some TV hoping it would make me sleepy. I eventually fell asleep around 5:00 and slept for a few hours before I had to get up to go race. After the races (more on that later), I came home feeling even worse adding dehydration to my list of woes. I again turned in early on Sunday to again sleep for about an hour and then was up all night long. Ann finally took pity on me and went and got me some OTC medicine to help me sleep. Needless to say there was no way I could face the prospect of work on no sleep so I called in sick. Something I almost never do. As it turns out, the guy in the cubicle next to me was also out sick so maybe we picked up the same thing. Whatever, it sucks. I'm feeling better, but only about 80%. Hopefully things will continue to improve.

Saturdays in the fall are usually reserved for college football. However there were no games on at noon or 1:00 on TV that interested me so I decided it was time to bottle the English Pale Ale that has been brewing down in out laundry room. One of the more surprising aspects that I've discovered about home brewing is the amount of cleaning involved. Everything has to be cleaned and sanitized. Since I was about to bottle, it meant cleaning 50 or so empty bottles, bottle caps, bottling bucket, tubing, etc. It sort of sucks some of the fun out of it. Below is a picture taken about halfway through cleaning the bottles. I just bought a drying tree to let the bottles dry out.

And Volia! The finished product. Just over two cases. It will take another 2 weeks or so before it's ready to be enjoyed. It has to carbonate in the bottles. I've had some doubts how this batch will turn out given the slow start it had with the yeast. I did taste a bit of it while bottling and it tasted fine (if not carbonated yet) so hopefully it's not a wasted effort.

Daughter#1 is in Quebec this week with the fiance as he gets "trained" on a new line of office furniture. Her agenda makes it look like one fun trip and I hear Quebec is a beautiful place and probably more so in the fall. I'm jealous.

I'll skip my races on Sunday for now as this post is long enough and I'll do it tomorrow.

Dead Car

The Son called us on Sunday to "let us know" that his washing machine was making a strange noise. He called back later to tell us that it had completely crapped out on him and the washer was still filled with water along with his very wet clothes. So I got tasked with the job of going to his place on Wednesday to wait for the repair man. The one plus was ours was his first call of the day so I didn't have to wait all day. The repair man came in, turned on the washing machine, listened to the racket and declared it was a defective drain pump and did we want to order the part since they don't carry it in stock? We did and I paid for the visit and he was gone. Total time in the condo - about 7 minutes. Damn. After locking up and leaving, I got in my car and turned the key...and nothing. I tried again and again and again...nothing...nada. Dead battery with no warning at all. Stranded. I called AAA and they gave me a jump and the car started right up and drove fine. Once at home, I hooked the battery up to a charger we have. I charged it for several hours. Later I had to run to the store to get things for dinner. I unhooked the charger, got in the car, turned the key and...nothing. Dead as a doornail. Stranded once again. So my job on Friday, my day off, is to get a new battery for the car. Cars are such fun, except when they're not.

Now I Can See...No Wait

Up until I was about 40, I had nearly perfect vision. But my father's side of the family has this curse. When you turn 40 your eye sight goes to hell and your blood pressure soars. Of course the blood pressure could be related to my kids so who knows. Anyway, I've been wearing glasses for quite some time now. I almost can't remember a time when I didn't. I wore hard contact lenses for a while back in the day, but my eyes didn't tear enough to keep them moist and I would have to take them out after about four hours. I also tried soft contact lenses, but I couldn't see clearly enough with them. I have acute astigmatism, which makes fitting me with contacts difficult and laser eye surgery impossible, at least for now. During my last eye exam, my Doctor asked me again about trying contacts. I was interested because I find glasses annoying. You lose track of them, they get dirty, they slide down your nose when you sweat, etc. In general they're a pain. The Doctor wanted to try a new type of contact on me. I was agreeable and he popped them in my eyes. These were just dummy lenses, but when he gave me some lenses to put in front of them, the effect was amazing. I could see. I could see 20/20 again. Not only that, but the lenses felt comfortable in my eyes. The contacts themselves are hybrids. They have a gas permeable hard lens in the middle with a soft outer ring. I decided to give them a chance and ordered them. They are not cheap. This past Wednesday, I finally was able to go pick up my new contact lenses. I had to be able to put them in and take them out twice before they would let me take them home. I manged that with only a minor bit of struggling and off I went. My world was so much clearer and sharper then with my glasses. I loved them. I could actually read road signs again when I drove. Our tv looked like HD. This was great right up to the time I had to read something. With my glasses reading was never a problem even though seeing distance was. You can laugh at bifocals, but they work. With the new contacts I couldn't read squat. Everything was out of focus. The Doctor had told me I would need reading glasses, but I figured not me. Well yes me. So off to Target to get some. They're not too bad as reading glasses go, but really haven't I just exchanged one set of glasses for another? Its nice to see things over 2 feet away as they were meant to be seen, but I read a lot. My job requires a lot of reading and includes a lot of 10 pt font, which is tiny. I imagine I'll be wearing these reading glasses as much as I wore my other glasses, which is not what I wanted. Plus I'll be constantly taking the reading glasses on and off. This whole contact lens thing has turned in to very much the mixed bag.


This weekend was a Friday off weekend, which I love. Friday a got in an early row. The water was finally free of debris and I didn't have to spend half my time looking behind me for logs in the water. The water was flat and the temperature warm but not hot and muggy. I rowed up well past Ryan's Dam and got in a total of 11 miles. When I got back to the dock, my hip flexors were so sore and tight, I could barely walk. That has never happened to me before so I'm not sure what was going on. For the next few hours I walked around like an 90 year old man just shuffling along.


Saturday was the official start of my rowing club's season. The kids are finally done rowing for the spring so we have access to their equipment. We had 13 guys show for the first practice so we took out an 8+ plus a Quad. I was the bow seat in the Quad. Our set was back and forth, but despite that we managed decent boat speed for a first practice and managed to stay in front of the 8+ for most of the practice. After our practice, most of us hung around to help with the adult rowing camp we sponsor. It's a two week, six times out on the water camp for beginners. We send out 4 novices in an 8+ with 4 experienced rowers. Having experienced rowers along to help with setting the boat (keeping the boat level), allows them to learn much more quickly. I got to be the stroke one of the 8+s and off we went for our 2 hour lesson. That 2 hours plus the 2 hour regular practice right before the camp session plus the 11 mile row the day before left me one tired puppy. I would have loved to come home showered and taken a long nap, but nay. Thunder storms were coming and my gutters were so clogged I had seeds starting to sprout in them. It took me over and hour and a half to clean them out. It's a pain in the ass job, but I didn't mind it in the past, but this whole getting up on the roof is getting to me these days. I'm really getting worried about losing my footing and going over the edge. I need to find someone else to come do them. I'm too old for this crap any more. Saturday night we had a club party. A way for everyone to get reacquainted. It was also a chance for the Board to go over things for the coming season with the members. As the Treasurer, I had to go over how we did for last year (we finished in the black) and what went into developing the budget for 2008 and from that how we calculated membership fees. It went pretty well I thought. The party was a lot of fun and we had some good food (pot luck) and drink. The party was held at one of the rowers houses. It's fairly new, really gorgeous and on the water. Everyone was suitable impressed.

Sunday I went for a bike ride by myself. Ann was in a bit of a funky mood and decided she didn't want to go. I thought the trail was a lot less crowded than usual given how nice a day it was. I made it out to Leesburg in 47 minutes and back in 40 minutes. I probably can do better but my legs just felt tired after all the rowing the previous two days. I'm sure the partying didn't help matters either. As I was resting in Leesburg before heading back to the van, Ann called to tell me that the battery in our other car was dead. I hadn't been having any problems with it or any indication that the battery was about to go. I hope maybe I didn't shut the door all the way and the battery had just run down. I put it on our battery charger for about 6 hours and it started right up. I'm hoping that problem doesn't reoccur. I was also looking forward to watching the Nationals play this afternoon, but they fell behind 5-0 in the first few innings so I turned it off. Maybe they'll do better when they return home. Another weekend in the books. I'm so not looking forward to returning to work.

Internet Problems

For the past month or so our Internet connectivity has been somewhat spotty. We have a wireless network here at home compliments of Comcast. We've had it for several years now as it was the only way to save our sanity with everyone wanting to be on the Internet at the same time. Through replacing our computers from time to time and the kids all getting computers as they headed off to college, we have quite the collection of new and old computers connected up. Also, The Son, using his Computer Science degree, has also helped getting the various printers connected up as well. All was running well enough until about a month ago we started having problems with our gateway linking up with the Internet. Over the past month we've had three technicians come to the house to diagnose the problem. All pretty much agreed that the problem was the signal coming in from the street. It wasn't as strong as it should be. The first two also thought that we had too many splitters on our system between the box at the back of our house to our various TVs and gateway. Paperwork was put in to fix the box out on the street, but nothing got any better. Finally this past Tuesday the third Tech arrived. He sort poo poo the whole splitter argument and said the problem was definitely the signal coming from the street. A call was made and confirmation received that paperwork was in the system, but no one had gotten around to looking at the box out on the street. More calls were made and a Comcast truck showed up in short order and voila, a working reliable signal is now reaching our house. It took them all of about 15 minutes to fix whatever was wrong. It's all about priorities I guess. It never affected our TV signal though, which was kind of weird.

Wednesday turned out to be a perfect spring day with temperatures in the 70s. Since I work from home that day, I rushed over to Sandy Run during my lunch hour for a quick row. As I suspected the boathouse was locked up. Most people tend to row before or after work, so I unlocked it and dragged out a rack that holds 5 singles. I grabbed a boat and headed out. Usually when I row I don't have any time constraints and I can row as long as I like, but since I was on my lunch hour, I couldn't be out all that long. So I did a 6 mile row. Given time to drive to and from, get the boat out and row took me about 2 hours. I added an hour at the tail end of my work day to make up the time. Next time I'll try just 4 miles and see how that works. It was a great day to be out on the water though. There was a some debris on the corners of the lake, which is common after heavy rains, but I manged not to hit anything. Even better when I got back to the dock, someone was waiting and offered to take my boat out so I didn't have to wash it and put it away. Score!

Thursday at work was a designated clean up day. A day to get long overdue filing done and generally throw away those old files you haven't looked at in two years. Management went all out for us providing us with both breakfast and lunch. For breakfast it was homemade waffles. Two of the bosses manned waffle irons keeping us full. They also had donuts and some fruit. For lunch they ordered up over 30 pizzas of various types. It seemed like all I did all day was eat. I hardly wanted dinner. Not that I skipped it or anything. I'll need some extra rowing or biking this weekend.

In Virginia we have a requirement to get our cars inspected once a year. This month our minivan was due for its inspection. I was worried it might fail as the van now has over 50,000 miles on it, but still has the original tires. They still have some tread, but it's not like they're brand new. My worries proved unfounded and the van passed so it's good for another year. Yea!

Race Starts, Crime and Yellow Jackets

Someone flipped a switch here in Virginia and we went from the high 90s with humidity to match to what feels like a fall day - bright blue sky, no clouds and very little humidity. Hopefully this will stay with us for a few days.

Practice on Tuesday concentrated on getting us ready for our first race, which is a week from Saturday. We did a lot of race starts and built on that adding first a start and high ten (ten strokes at a very high rate), to a start sequence with a high 20, a start sequence with a high 20 and a settle 10 (slowing the stroke rate to race pace) and finally to a race start with a high 20 and settling with total time of 2 minutes. if anything the practice showed we still have work to do. Complicating matters was that we were a rower short in the 8+. We had taken out and 8+ plus a 4+, but we had only 11 rowers. We borrowed a novice guy to fill out the 8+. Now this guy is pretty athletic and he'll be a very good rower, but not yet. To throw him in a boat doing race starts and high 20s wasn't fair to him. He's only been rowing for a month and he's never been asked to row in the high 30s. The first couple of starts were a disaster to the point where he had to sit out a few. Eventually we worked him back in and he started to get it so kudos to him. I suspect today's practice will be much of the same, but with slightly longer pieces, but in Quads and a 4+ rather than an 8+. I've been told that I'll be in an 8+ and a Quad for next week's race. From what I can tell I'll stroke our 8+ "B" boat and row bow in our "B" Quad. I predict DFLs for both boats, but maybe I'll be surprised.

Like most suburban families, we have two cars. A newish minivan and a much older Chrysler Concorde. I use the Concorde as our commuter car such as our commute is down to our local commuter parking lot. We haven't had but one problem all these years parking the car there. Someone broke a passenger window and proceeded to steal our radio. The police and insurance were very nice about it all and we got it replaced. When I got in the car on Tuesday I reach in the glove box for the removable faceplate. Not there. I looked under the seats. Not there either. Looked in the trunk. Not there. Hmmm, strange. I didn't have time to look further and drove on to meet the vanpool. After practice I looked again. Nothing. Ann looked when i got home and she found nothing. It appears that someone has made off with the radio faceplate rendering the radio and CD player useless. Why anyone would do this since having the faceplate does them no good is beyond me, but then such petty crimes usually are. Certainly we are partially to blame for leaving the car unlocked (apparently) and leaving the faceplate on rather than removing it, which I always do. Our routine was somewhat messed up returning home on Monday so I forgot to d both. You never know how much you always listen to the radio/CD in the car until you don't have it anymore. What a pain to have to replace it.

One of the recurring problems we seem to have with the house is hornet nests. Every year they seem to build one either under our deck or under one of the roof overhangs. One year we had one bigger than beach ball before our neighbor pointed it out to us. This year we found one before it got too big - somewhere between a softball and bowling ball. It was in a place that my ladder wouldn't reach and frankly I don't like messing with stinging insects. I wasn't thrilled with the company we used last time as they didn't seem to want to do the job and then it took them two days to do it. One day to spray and the next to come take down the nest. This year Ann did some Internet checking and came up with the Beekeepers. They're located in Frederick, MD, which is a hike from out house, but they said they did northern Virginia so she set up an appointment for yesterday. They were great. Came when they said they would, removed the nest in no time, guaranteed their work, offered to come back if the insects did (turned out to be a yellow jacket nest). I highly recommend them.

Time to enjoy some birthday cake for two of my co-workers. I love Thursday's (burp).