Watches, Hanging Out

Wednesday Feb. 1 - Friday Feb. 3

February gets off to a rather inauspicious start. I awake kind of stiff from the big bike ride yesterday, so I decide a good workout will be just the ticket to stretch out those sore muscles. And speaking of working out, I tally my number of visits to Anytime Fitness for the month of January, and they come to 10, which works out to just a hair over $6 per visit for the $61/month fee I am paying. There probably would have been more visits, but there was a big gap between between Jan. 8 and Jan. 13 during the cruise and Julie's time here with me in Ft. Myers. So I think this expenditure is well worth it.

Heather (my landlady) will be meeting me at the condo at 5 p.m. today to pick up her rent check for February, and hopefully will have my box of watches that have arrived from Evansville via Dawn.

Phoebe is doing better and limping less and less on that left foot of hers, and that is good. She will be 13 years old this year, and is still one tough resilient little kitty girl. I just love her, and she looks so funny with the "poodle" cut on her left leg. I should have the had vet shave her right leg, too, so she would have a matching set (just kidding).

Heather arrives promptly at 5 p.m., and picks up her rent check for $1,650 for the month of February. She also has my box of watches. I tell her about Phoebe and her accident and that is should not prove to be any inconvenience for her while watching Phoebe (and Abby) the upcoming week while I'm in Daytona Beach. I also ask her about the "Swifter" mop in the closet for cleanup on the tile floor surfaces. She tells me which kind of mop heads to get.

I go to the Walmart supermarket and pick up a rotisserie chicken, and also some mop heads, of a generic brand, that are supposed to fit the "Swifter." Back at the condo, I dine on chicken, Uncle Ben's rice, and steamed carrots, and I have plenty of chicken left over for a couple of meals, plus I save the bones and scraps for soup.

I try the Swifter mop on the kitchen floor, but there is no mechanism on the mop for the wrap-around edges of the disposable cloth to stick to the top of the mop head, so the cloth just kind of flails around on the tile floor while I squirt a little "juice" from the reservoir of cleaning fluid on the device to provide some cleaning action. I mean, the thing works, but it's certainly not a very elegant solution to the problem. I know people spend millions of dollars of these things, and of course this is another one of those devices like men's razors where the manufacturer of the device (which is Procter and Gamble, by the way) will practically GIVE you the God damn mop and then make their fortune on the disposable cloths and the cleaning fluid, both of which no doubt have about a 500% profit margin. I don't think I'll be buying one of these things, though my $7 expenditure for a small pack of mop clothes will help clean up of the condo floor (the condo flooring --- both upstairs and down -- is all hard surface. Tile downstairs, and wood laminate upstairs). Does anyone use one of these "Swifters"? Am I missing something here? Am I using it the wrong way? Was the burden of mankind reduced in any significant way by the invention and propagation of this device? Failing any evidence to the contrary, I am renaming this device the "Slugster."

I spend the remainder of the evening sorting through watches, and come up with four possible dress watches for my friend, Carol, and set aside a few others that I can sell on eBay individually. The remainder, I will sell as a lot on eBay so I don't have to bring them back with me.

Expenses: Slugster mop head refills: $7; rotisserie chicken, $6. Total: $13

Thursday Feb. 2

Today I head over to the Publix for some deli (they have a better deli -- featuring Boar's Head cold cuts and cheese -- than Walmart) and also because I have a $1 Publix coopen (coupon) for some of those dishwasher tablets with the rinse aid built in (which, by the way, I think is a GOOD invention). I also snag an extra $100 cash (in preparation for my watch show next week in Daytona) at the checkout using my debit card. (Another great idea -- getting "free" cash with your debit card instead of paying $2-$3 service fee at the ATM; I think the merchants love it, too, because they have less cash to count/handle at the end of the day).

I do another workout today, and for dinner I make a delicious chicken salad with leftover rotisserie chicken, celery, grapes, walnuts, and Miracle Whip, and then stuff that mixture into onion Pita pockets. I watch a DVD this evening, called "Running with Scissors." It's a very good movie (released 2006), and while there were several laugh-out loud hilarious moments in the movie, it is overall very dark and deals with extreme family dysfunction and an extremely unethical psychotherapist supposedly trying to help the family, but only making things worse. It is based on the journals/memoirs of Augusten Burroughs, born 1965, who spent his childhood/adolescence going through this nightmare, and lived to tell the tale, and is still alive and living/working in New York. He even makes a cameo appearance in the movie at the very end. There’s a lot of good actors in it, including Annette Benning, Alec Baldwin, Jill Clayburgh (now deceased), and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Expenses: Groceries, $16.


Friday Feb. 3

Today I find a nearby Ace Hardware store and visit there to pick up a couple of watch batteries for the watches I have found for my friend Carol. She is coming over at around 4 p.m., and we're going to look at watches, and then I'll either cook her something over to the condo, or we'll hit a local spot called the Lazy Flamingo, which has a raw bar and various other seafood goodies, and a good selection of beers.

I get the watch batteries and then the Sun Harvest Citrus place is nearby, so I visit and get some free juice samples, along with a slice of key lime pie (the best I've found in Ft. Myers) along with a cup of coffee, and enjoy that on their patio.

I prepare four watches for Carol to look at, and she arrives at the condo at about 5 p.m.. She brings me a small gift of a covered butter dish after she has previously learned that Phoebe likes to jump up on the counter and lick the butter in the regular dish that I have it in. This was very nice of her.

She loves the watches I have picked out and got running for her, and thinks I am her hero. I give her a quick lesson in the economics of modern watches, i.e., that they are typically marked up five times what they cost. I tell her never EVER pay full retail for a watch. Even when they are "on sale" at 80% of original retail, they are still typically being sold at twice what they cost! She ends up with three of the four watches (the fourth doesn't quite fit her) which will hopefully look very nice for her job interviews.

I decide to make dinner for us at the condo, so I throw together some more chicken salad, using up all the remaining rotisserie chicken (I still have the scraps for soup) and serve the salad on onion pitas. For dessert, I make a variation on the "Hot Fudge Number One" sundae from Ella's deli in Madison. I grill a couple pieces of pound cake in butter. Then top each with a scoop of vanilla Haagen Dazs ice cream. Then hit it with a layer of hot fudge, and finish it with chopped pecans. Carol is wowed, and I have to say the dessert was pretty good. We chat for a while, but then Carol wants to take a nap before she reports to work at 11 p.m. We have agreed to this ahead of time ... that she will bring her work clothes and change into them and leave from my condo, since her work is about 5 minutes from my place. So I set her up in the guest bedroom upstairs, and I let her sleep while I watch back episodes of "Biggest Loser" on my computer while wearing the headphones. It made for a rather surreal "date." I have to say this is the first date I've ever been on where I had to wake the person up at 10 p.m. so they could go to work!

Expenses: watch batteries, $5; Sun Harvest Citrus, $5; sundae fixins, $5. total: $15

Bruce