Ospreys Everywhere


Last night Penny had a church meeting on Hurlburt Field to attend. On the drive in we got a good look at the new Air Force OV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft as it flew over and landed. http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/osprey/

.It is certainly a strange looking bird.


This morning in the kayak we came across a nest of its namesake.

Later we saw another Osprey perched on a branch feasting on a mullet. (You can't see it well with the camera's poor resolution, but what looks like a stick under the bird, if you can make out the bird, is the tail of the fish.)

These birds are not strange looking.

Down Day / Up Day


On the 28th day Paul rested. The sod folks called and said they are not going to cut the sod ‘till next week with delivery now on next Wednesday. So my aching hands and wrists will have more time to recuperate. I can go back to crib making for a while and maybe get the garden started.


I did see the doctor today for a normal visit. It was all good news. I’ve actually lost some weight after seeing a steady progression up for the past 15 years(or so). I used my back and shoulders as my excuse for letting myself go and it was a legitimate reason. In the back of my mind I wondered if I would start getting fitter if the legitimate excuses went away. So far the answer is yes! I’ve lost 12 pounds in the last 6 months and Penny says she can see the difference in how I look. That means I made it through the perilous holiday season and Penny’s wonderful cooking without detrimental effects.


The fact that I am retired makes it much easier to get necessary exercise in and the discipline required to do the physical therapy and also training for the 15 K walk all played together favorably. Penny and I have gone to eating 1 big meal a day – usually lunch – and eating a relatively light meal in the evening. My only medical issue now is my lower back which, while painful isn’t bad enough to keep me from doing things. I go in Friday for a CT scan to see if I’ve got bone spurs or a recurrence of the herniated disk in that area.


I’m fighting my family history of weight gain, bad knees, weak hearts, diabetes and cancer. Today at least I fell as if I’ve at least won one battle in that fight with my weight, cholesterol, pulse and blood pressure all down from my last visit to the doctor.

Technology Update

His Master's Voice

Her Master's Printer

Molehills from Mountains.


You know the old saying about how do you eat an elephant – one bite at a time. I was beginning to feel as if that pile of dirt would never disappear. A full truckload of sand is a lot! Today I finished spreading it around the yard, one shovel full at a time.

Here is before:

Here is after:

The sod is scheduled to arrive Thursday – so I have a relative down day tomorrow. There is still some sand to spread in the back yard. I’ll probably get some crib work in.


I’ve go a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning – regular visit – so I will take it easy in the AM. It’s not a good idea to get all sweaty doing yard work just before going to the doctor.

I can use a day of rest before working on the sod.

A Day for the Birds


We kayaked again today. No dolphins today just hazy sun and lots of birds.
The rising sun looked more like the moon reflecting on the water.

Next we drifted by an Osprey sitting in his morning roost. We found that the critters don’t find the kayak too scary. We got right under the osprey before he decided to leave.

Then over the trees comes a formation of birds that turned out to be pelicans. Penny said my mother would be thrilled to see so many pelicans.

Then we passed a couple of cormorants drying their wings.

Of course there were a host of sea gulls as we paddled up the bayou that parallels Mooney road.

Penny and I are getting better with coordinating our paddling. Now we just have to get our coordination together putting the kayak on the roof of the CRV.

Paddling With the Dolphins


Penny and I used our tandem kayak for the first time in over a year this morning. I took a break from the yard work and we took advantage of a beautiful morning to try our skills at tandem paddling and see if our marriage would survive it.


We loaded the kayak on the CRV and were off by 7AM. We have to work some on our loading/unloading procedure. The kayak is unwieldy and tends to go where it wants to. We went in the water at what we call the little beach, about 2 miles or so from where we live. When we arrived at the beach there was a man with a 1-man skull that he had just launched doing his morning row.

As we pushed off from shore we found that 3 dolphin had just entered the bayou and were working their way up toward Camp Pinchot. We paddled out and tried to keep up with them all the way to the end of the bayou.

At one point we had 2 dolphin on one side of us and another behind us. We could hear them breathing and also heard some of that alien sounding dolphin-speak. I told Penny that if we rowed real fast they might ride our bow-wake. She didn’t like the idea.

It was a beautiful morning as you can see by the pictures. I brought along the little Polaroid digital camera that we got for free from Circuit City at Christmas time. I didn’t get any good shot of the dolphin. They seemed to know when I was paddling or had the camera turned off. They also liked to come up right where Penny blocked my view. It’s as if they were taunting me. We paddled some, rested some and paddled some more. We were in the water about an hour and followed the dolphin up and back. Interestingly my left shoulder tired faster than my right. The shoulders worked OK though. By the end of the hour we were both ready to go home and take a warm bath. It was a fun morning.

Now that I know my shoulders are good I’m looking forward to some sessions in my “new” kayak. Maybe I’ll experience some kayak moments of Zen like daughter Karen.

Traveling Family


Everybody is on the road today. Karen and Tim are in Boston (on their “Babymoon”, it’s like a honeymoon but it is your last trip together without kids), Christy and Christian are in North Carolina and sister Kathy is in Wisconsin! Penny and I must have missed a memo somewhere along the line. We are at home.


I spent the day bagging more grass - Only 11 bags today. That job is done and I’m spreading sand now. That’s the last step before new sod goes in.


I’m listening to one book a day when I’m doing the lawn. I need to hit the library and reload and hopefully find some more interesting books. Clive Cussler and John Saul just don’t cut it.


I’ve read that advertisers were going to be more aggressive in making their products TiVo-proof. There was a blatant example of this last night on CSI New York. The CSI tech made a big production of loading his flashlight batteries in the field. One shot was a full screen view of 4 Duracell batteries all placed so you could read the Duracell (in fact all 4 batteries were in the same relative position, nice and symmetrical). So even if you zapped the Duracell commercial later in the show you still had this unavoidable product placement in your face.

I did rest my hands yesterday and it was good. I can take my time spreading sand and not overstress my body. It will be interesting when we get the 3 pallets of grass delivered to see how long it takes to put that in place. That is next week’s challenge.

Sodbusters

Penny likes to watch all the home improvement shows that are on. It paid off today because she saw a show where they used a sod cutter on someone’s lawn. I thought I was going to use a rototiller to rip up our old “lawn”. We checked with the rental place and they had a sod cutter. So today was my sodbusters day. I filled a dozen lawn bags so far before I got too tired and sore to do more but the machine was just the tool I needed.


The machine is basically a blade that moves back and forth under the sod and cuts a strip that, if the sod is thick enough, can just be rolled up. In our case since the lawn wasn’t that thick and we had killed it the machine ripped it up nicely and loosened the dirt underneath.


I may take a break from everything tomorrow to rest my hands. Each night they’ve been very sore and I don’t want to do any permanent damage now that my shoulders have healed.


I had a nice chat with a pregnant woman that lives down the street. She walked by while I was bagging some sod and commented on how much work I had to do. She was walking with her daughter in a stroller. She is due in May and it’s a girl. I told her about Karen having a girl and she said that she knows about 8 people who either are having or had girls. What’s it mean when everyone is having girls?

My guess that we would have a lot of rain now that I have the sprinkler system in really missed the mark. It’s supposed to stay dry here through the weekend. At least it’s been good weather to do the work I’ve been doing.

Bring on the Rain!


They say that if you want rain just wash your car. Well, I just finished installing my sprinkler system. I figure Mother Nature will now provide lots of natural irrigation – somewhat along the lines of the wash your car theory.


Yesterday I installed the last zone of sprinklers, hooked up power to the timer, and connected all the valves to the timer. Then I held my breath and set the timer to cycle through all 8 of the zones one at a time for 1 minute each and pressed enter. The pump came on the valve to zone 1 opened and the sprinklers watered for one minute. Everything worked! Each set of sprinklers ran for one minute and then stopped. That meant that I was done installing the system and now could fill in all the trenches and cover the valves (which is what I did today) and move on to the next step – sodding the front yard.


The most difficult part of the installation was adjusting the rotors to spray where I wanted them. I thought I had cracked the code on doing this but the first time I turned things on I was watering the road, spraying the house and pretty much watering everywhere I didn’t want to. I pretty much had to dig up and reposition half of the sprinklers – sometimes more than once – to get them aligned properly. Next the arc of the spray needed to be adjusted. The first time through this process I got soaked and the water is cold! The angle of spray is just right to hit me in the crotch. I looked like I severely wet myself.


The job involved a lot of work with my hands and each evening my wrists and fingers ached. It reminded me of when Christy started working at Baskin Robins and had a sore wrist from scooping ice cream. My wrist, thumb and forefinger have felt that way each evening for the past 5 days. At least my shoulders are not acting up.

I am almost at the point where I can start splitting my time between the lawn and the crib. Rototilling will be a full day and laying sod will also be full days. Beyond that spreading sand, leveling and doing the garden can be done on a mixed schedule allowing me to get cracking on the crib.

Mama and babies


Today (Monday) was a mixed day. We spent the weekend in Jacksonville for the Gate River Run. Karen, Christy and I walked the 15 K course and it was fun. There were spectators all along the route shouting encouragement. I found that I was smiling so much at the spectators that my cheeks began to hurt at about the 6-mile marker. Overall it was a very well managed race and I’m looking forward to doing it again. The walk was on Saturday and all of us were sore after it and rested Saturday afternoon. Sunday the woman-folk went to a baby shower and the men-folk rested some more.


I bought a kayak about a year ago in Jacksonville but because of my shoulders I left it with Karen for her use. Now I can use it and Karen can't so it came home with us. I’m glad Karen had her kayak moments to enjoy.


We drove back home Sunday eve and got back around 10 PM. My internal clock is completely out-of-whack. Between the change in time zone, the mixed up schedule due to the walk, the change to daylight savings time and the drive back my body doesn’t know when to eat or sleep.


So today was a little bit of yard work, a little bit of paper work, some recuperation and some other stuff. I started to complete another zone on the sprinkler system but while crawling around under the sago palm I discovered a number of baby sagos growing there. Penny calls the plants that sprout from the palm’s seeds babies. These guys were more like adolescents. I ended up spending the rest of my sprinkler time digging out the babies.


Here’s the mama plant,

and the babies.

Next we went to the kayak shop and got Penny a wooden kayak paddle. I already have one and it just feels better than the composite ones and even seems to work better. I hope to report on our first kayak trip since the surgeries soon. It sure was nice to be able to lift and carry the kayak with no pain.

So here I sit 1 hour past my normal bedtime waiting to get sleepy. I’m happy to say that there is no more soreness left from the 15 K walk and my butt is feeling better than it has in a month. Oh – and mama and babies are doing fine.

1000 Feet


My sprinkler system used 1000 ft of PVC pipe. That was every piece that was delivered. All that’s left unused is about 10 feet of pieces.


After two 8-hour plus days of working on the sprinkler system I now have all the lines and valves in place and glued together. I ran the system with no sprinkler heads attached to flush out any sand and make sure I had cemented all the connections. Everything worked. Now it is time to attach sprinkler heads and bury everything.


This is definitely not rocket science. It is a lot of up and down and kneeling and a real workout for the hands and shoulders and knees. It was, however, very satisfying to turn on the pump and open the valves to each zone one-by-one and see the system working as designed.


After everything is finished and checked out manually then I have the fun of installing and hooking up the automatic timer. I expect it will take a while to get all the sprinkler heads set properly.

It’s going to be strange not dragging hoses any more.

Just Another Day - Blog # 101


I made my practice walk today for next weeks 15 K walk. I walked 2 ¼ hours making a big loop on Mooney Rd, Racetrack Rd, Beal St, back to Mooney and then a loop around the neighborhood before reaching home. I should have covered at least 7 miles. It was a nice cool day today so perspiration and thus hydration was no issue.


As I walked along Racetrack I noticed what has changed over the 30-some odd years we’ve lived here. I passed the high school and middle school the girls went to, the Daily News building where Karen worked (where we surprised her with her Neon). I marveled at the fact that the skating center was still alive and well and still having skating parties. The Amsouth Bank branch building is closed for good. There is a big apartment complex now where there used to be a trailer park. Racetrack road itself has grown from 2 lanes to 4 with turn lanes.


I was surprised when I got home that the balls of my feet were sore. Otherwise I’m ready for the 15K. I may need to use some cushioning in my running shoes to keep my feet from getting sore.


Most of my time this past week has gone into the sprinkler system. If I can put in a full day on it tomorrow I should come close to finishing up in the front yard. I also started cutting on the crib. The first parts to get cut are the legs. Each leg is a laminate of 3 boards so the 4 legs are actually 12 boards.

There’s not much to blog on when I spend all day rutting around in the yard. So don’t expect much this week. It will get interesting when I start trying to run water through the system and attempt to program the timer.