A Taste for Phones

I've had a house guest lately. A little Golden Retriever mix named Dottie. Since Dottie is staying with us and I'm working on her housebreaking, she stays in a crate while I'm at work. Because Dottie is using the crate, Buddy can't use it. I've been crating Buddy shortly after I got him (he ate my armour, the phone, and a wall). Since I got Buddy 3 years ago, he's matured. Because he's matured, I've let him stay out of the crate from time to time. Most of the time it ended with a chewed up sock or a shredded letter (I think he was just trying to save me from having to buy a new paper shredder).

Last week I started to leave him out because Dottie is using the crate. He did great. That was up till this weekend. This weekend I went to the movies (Nannie Diaries - don't bother), and when I got home I found my cell phone all chewed up.

I think the boy has a taste for phones.

Personal Responibility

I am a teacher. I am not the kind of teacher most people think of. I work for the local transit company, teaching apprentices and mechanics how to be mechanics. My job title is Technical Instructor, but I'm a teacher. I took this job, because I'm a product of this job. I remember going through this program and learning so much. I wanted that knowledge.

At the time I was hired as an apprentice the company was hiring some good people that wanted to learn. I often said that in every apprentice class; a third would be good mechanics and would move up in the company (if they wanted to), a third would be OK mechanics ( they were either real smart, but lazy or not too sharp, but a great worker), and the last third wasn't worth a damn (it's a union job so you can't just get rid of them for being sorry). In recent years we have started hiring people who don't want to be a mechanic, they just want more money than they are making now. In a nutshell we have been hiring slackers, layabouts, and people who are as dumb as a bag of hammers (I apologize to the hammers for insulting them).

Because of the quality of students I've been teaching, I often hear excuses. They make excuses for everything; why they didn't study, why they didn't fix a bus correctly, why they weren't in the classroom on time. It is never their fault, it is always someone else's fault. Because of this attitude I often spend time that I should be teaching them how a bus works, trying to get them to understand personal responsibility (I might as well be banging my head on the wall).

I started running, hiking, and walking my dogs again. For the last two weeks I've sat on my butt making excuses; it's to hot out, I'm to tired today, I look good as a fat guy. After trying to get my students to take personal responsibility and stop making excuses for everything, I realized I was doing the same thing about exercising. So, I got off the couch and started running again (I've even increased my distance to 2 miles).

I can now say my students taught me something, even if they didn't learn it themselves.

Starbucks

Starbucks pissed me off today. For the last three weeks I’ve been teaching at a location other than where my office is located. This means I can’t make my small pot of coffee in the morning, so I’ve been stopping in Starbucks every morning.

All of these mornings I go in and order a large coffee and a pastry, and I receive a large coffee and a pastry. This morning I ordered a large coffee and a pastry, and I received a medium coffee and pastry. I understand that Starbucks wants to resemble themselves after the coffee bars of Europe, thus calling their coffee sizes tall, grande, and venti. But, if you have three drink sizes (no matter what you call them) they have to be small, medium and large. Logic dictates that if you have three different sizes, one size is smaller than the other two. That size will be the small size. And, if you have three different sizes, one size is larger than the other two, than that size will be large. The size left over will be medium. It is smaller than large, but larger that small, it is in the middle and that’s what medium means, an intermediate state (it comes from the Latin word medius meaning the middle).

I know you may be thinking that this is such a minor thing, and I shouldn’t be pissed about it. But, it was the morning, and I hadn’t had any coffee yet. The barista should be glad I didn’t get all medieval on them (that’s the European version of going Postal).

Found Dog

I haven’t posted much lately because I have a guest staying with me. Last Saturday I decided that I needed to do some type of activity, no matter what the temperature was. So, I called Lisa and asked her if she wanted to go hiking at Sweetwater Sunday and she agreed as long as the temp wasn’t too bad.

On Sunday, Buddy and I arrived at Sweetwater and waited for Lisa. I like to get to the park early so I can do a pre-hike walk, so Buddy can go to the bathroom near a garbage can, and I can dispose of it (it is so much nicer to hike when you don’t hake to carry a bag of poop around). A short time after the time Lisa and I were to meet I received a call. I was expecting her to say “she was on her way” or “something came up and she couldn’t make it”, but what she said was that she was down the street and she just found a couple of dogs.

I loaded Buddy up, and we went down the street to meet Lisa. When we got there Lisa was sitting with a little golden mix, but the lab mix ran off. We loaded up the dog and decided to split up and look for the lab and maybe the owner too. After driving around for about a half an hour with no sign of the other dog or the owner we decided to take her with us on our hike (we didn’t want to leave her, or the area, because we had made some calls to local shelter, animal control and activists in the dog rescue community).

After our hike, Lisa and I discussed our options and I decided to take her home till we could find her owner or get her in the adoption program at Golden Retriever Rescue of Atlanta (GRRA). It was better for me to take the pup, because Lisa has 4 dogs and a stray she picked up in her neighborhood ( although if she brought another dog home she might get one of those cool neighborhood nicknames like “The Crazy Dog Lady”, “The Woman With All the Dogs” or “The Dog Babe”).

I brought her home, bathed her and introduced her to my Lab, Allie. Allie is pissed. If you never heard the saying “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie”, don’t worry, neither has the pup (we are calling her Dottie now). Every time Allie lies down, Dottie pounces at her. This usually elicits growls, snarls and snaps from Allie, followed by her climbing on top of me to get away from the pup. Buddy on the other hand likes having the pup around. He and Dottie chase each other around the yard, and in the house they play tug-a-war and wrestle (which also causes Allie to growls, snarls, snaps, and climb on top of me).

Besides Allie being pissed, another down side is that Dottie is not house broken. This means I am constantly taking her outside to pee or I’m inside cleaning pee (woohoo). One good thing is I’m loosing weight. It is a lot harder to get up and go to the fridge if you have a 90lb Lab lying on top of you.

I just want to let everyone know I won’t be changing the name of this blog to 3 Dogs and a Fat Guy. Dottie is just a house guest till we can find her a home (either the one she is missing from or a new forever home). I couldn’t keep her and put that much stress on Allie. Allie is too good of a dog and too old to do that to. She deserves to travel into old age gracefully, and not with a young dog nipping at her heals.

Brown Air

I have been back from Reno for about a week and I've started working out again. My first work out was a run that took place last week before I was over the effects of my Reno trip. I wanted to get back into the swing of things, even though I didn't feel up to it. The run was my normal 1 1/2 mile run at the Bell Bomber Loop.

I started off and before I even got 1/4 of a mile in I was tired. It was hot out (with the heat index, it was in the 100s), and I was already soaked to the bone with sweat ( this was a lot different type of heat than you see in Reno). The air seamed thicker, making it harder to breath (also a lot different from Reno (higher elevation - thinner air). It took me a lot longer to finish my run than it normally does, and I figured I was just not recovered from my trip.

A few days later I decided to go for a bike ride. I had been riding the silver comet a bit and wanted to try something else, so I decided to go and ride the Berry College Campus in Rome, GA. This is a beautiful campus and a easy ride (as much as any ride is a easy ride to a fat guy). It has a couple of small hills that I thought wouldn't give me any problems, and by now I felt like I was completely recovered from my trip, so it should be a fun little (12 miles) ride.

I started off late in the afternoon, in order to try and beat the heat (it didn't help, it was in the high 90s even then), and before I had even gone 2 miles I was tired. At the 6 mile point I had to go up a little hill and I couldn't make it. My heart rate (HR) was at 95% of my Max HR and I couldn't catch my breath. It took longer to finish this ride than it should have.

As I drove home I started to worry that I may have caused myself some damage hiking in Reno, or that I was in really poor health. But, luckily around that time I started thinking these things the news on the radio reported that it was the forth or fifth straight day that the smog alert was at CODE RED. When I heard this, it was as if my eyes had opened for the first time in a long time. The air was brown. No wonder I couldn't breath well, the air had substance. When I was working out, I wasn't breathing air, I was eating air. This also explains why I haven't been hungry lately (I thought it was just the heat), I'm full from chewing on brown air all day (mmmm brown air).

Things I've Learned On My Trip to Reno

I learned a few things from my recent trip to Reno Nevada. First thing I learned was the higher the altitude, the harder it is to breathe. In order to keep my current level of workout enthusiasm going, I had decided to go for a run after a long day’s meeting. I put on my heart rate monitor/GPS watch (I like to refer to it as my Dick Tracy watch) and other running gear and headed out. About a mile out, my Dick Tracy watch started beeping (I was pretty sure that it was my Heart Rate and not Prune Face robbing a bank) and I was breathing hard. I slowed down to a walk (I know Reno is a betting town, but I didn’t feel like gambling with my life). I couldn’t figure out why I was breathing so hard, my legs weren’t tired, and I’ve jogged up hills and gone further at home. I started looking at the information on the watch and that is when I discovered that Reno is 3000 feet higher than Atlanta and the air was thinner. I ended up having to jog then walk then jog then walk all the way back to the hotel.

The second thing I learned on my trip to Reno was; nothing realigns ones distorted view of their body image as the bathroom mirror in a hotel. For the past few months I’ve been losing weight, and people have been commenting on the loss of weight. I been feeling pretty good, my pants have been looser and I have more energy. I started thinking of myself less as a fat guy and more as a slightly overweight guy. That delusion stopped the minute I opened the shower curtain and saw myself in the bathroom mirror (I’m still a fat guy, just not as fat as I use to be). At home my bathroom mirror only shows my head and I’m either clothed or wrapped in a towel (hiding the fat) when I pass the mirror in the hall.

Third Thing I learned on my trip to Reno was; Golden Retrievers Rock! I know, technically this is something I already knew, but I met a Golden named Boo at the Great Basin Brew Pub (Great Beer). He hung out with me and let me recover from my dog withdrawal (my pups were in the kennel while I was out in Reno, and I missed them).

Fourth thing I learned on my trip to Reno was; I’m not too smart. I stayed an extra day after my meeting to go hiking. I was planning to go to Lake Tahoe, but because I didn’t plan ahead, I ended up staying in Reno. I decided to go for a hike along the Truckee River (there is a multi use trail that runs along it). So I left for my hike with no water, sunscreen, hat or map (told you I wasn’t too smart). I got to Rock Park and headed towards down town Reno ( I figured I could stop and get a bite to eat and if I was to tired I could grab a cab back), but because my memory and sense of direction is so bad, I didn’t head towards downtown Reno, I headed towards Salt Lake City. After about 5 miles and the total lack of buildings, I realized I must be going the wrong way, but did this stop me? Did I turn around then? No. I decided I would keep going because by then I was getting close to the base of the mountains, and if I made it to the base I could tell people I went hiking to the mountains of Nevada (this is a pretty stupid reason to suffer from heat exhaustion). By the time I turned around I realized how stupid I was and that I needed water, so I got off the trail and found a truck stop and got some Gatorade and water. After I re-hydrated I headed back to the hotel. By the time I got back to the hotel I was in bad shape. I was sunburned, blistered and suffering from heat exhaustion. I am glad I survived.

The last thing I learned on my trip to Reno was; be it ever so humble (and messy) there is no place like home.

Heft on Wheels

I went riding the other day on the Silver Comet Trail. For anyone who doesn't know what the Silver Comet Trail is, it's a Rails to Trails project that runs from Marietta, Georgia to Birmingham, Alabama (I didn't ride that far, I rode 14 miles). I had decided to ride 10 miles after work (I am trying to keep my workouts fresh so I don't get burnt out and stop (remember I'm a fat guy, I don't need much of a reason to stop)).

The ride was good, I rode from the Cooper Lake trail head to Anderson Mill Rd and back. I was riding great, my heart rate was good, I wasn't tired or sore (I hadn't been on my bike for months). I was on back to Cooper Lake when I became demoralized. It wasn't that I was tired, sore, or that I thought I went to far on my first foray back on a bike. It was that I go passed by a 60-70 year old man on a cruiser.

I could not let this happen, so I sped up. I waited till we got to a road crossing to pass him (this way I wouldn't look like a tool (fat tool) for passing him(he had to stop at the road crossing for the light, and I timed it right)). I layed on the pedals, putting distance between us. I thought "he won't be able to catch me now", and that is when the alarm on my heart rate monitor went off. The alarm is set to warn me when I am pushing to hard (I don't want to break loose any of the large amounts of cholesterol coating my arteries, and have it float up to brain and cause aneurysm (although some of my friends would say becoming a drooling idiot would be an improvement to my personality)), so I slowed down till my heart rate returned to normal. About a mile away from the car it happened again, I got passed by the old man on the cruiser.

I would like to assign blame for why I got dropped by a old guy; my brakes were rubbing, the old guy was on steroids , contrary to popular belief a cruiser bike is more aerodynamic than a road racing bike, etc..., but the truth is this old guy didn't let himself become fat like me, he probably maintained a healthy life style and even at 60 - 70 years old he was in better shape than me. I am heft on wheels.