Everybody must get stoned

Progress. Rocks are heavy.

Nothing like sweating to prove you're hot

So we got out the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and sweated for a couple of days. We are demonstrating our awsome power over our little "triangle yard" outside the living room. We shoveled and moved lots of ugly stuff, and filled three recycle bins with honeysuckle and morning glories.














Then we went to the place where you pay big bucks for dirt and rocks.
(note green pool from neglect)















And we picked out 1.5 tons of sand and 3 tons of flagstone which we had delivered this morning. The sand we took home in a rented truck, then moved it all last night just as it was getting dark.














Then tonight after a spot of dinner, we moved all three tons of flagstone. Some we put in place but most of it is laid out in the pool yard so we can see it in the light, and pick out just the right pieces. It is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with 100 to 250 pound pieces.

OK, I fixed it already.

I re-doodled the site so the whining would stop. Apparently the horizontal rule was so last century that it could not be tolerated without recalling the Clinton presidency. The broken links were fixified, and I cleaned up the background by just going all white. (Thanks google for the original idea). Still need to get the new pictures page(s) built, and put in some links to something. Maybe some yarn porn for my knitter friends. Please advise.

This weekend promises lots of manual labor on the old yard. Front yard gets a bunch of soil work. The back will get some form of paving. I'll post pictures.

I got it up!

The new site layout is up and running with a few problems:

• last row of dickens fair page no backgound picture
  
• kids page does not load (no content anyway)
  
• some spaces missing on old pictures page
• blog photos broken now!
• New pictures page does not load (no content anyway)
• Links are missing in action
• Poems not there yet
• um, other minor problems
• hit counter reset to zero
  

But Grace, your page is there.

more meme mania

Thanks to Kate for tagging me. I don't know anyone else to tag that she didn't already list so you'll just have to count your blessings on this one. Here goes.

Ten years ago: Sharon and I had been married for 11 years and we had recently moved into our third house and were expecting our third child who was due any day. We had just put in a pool. I had been working at GMI for almost eight years.

Five years ago: I was working at GMI, living in the same house, and putting the third kiddie into Kindergarten. We didn't have a dog yet, but we had recently spent about $50K remodeling the house.

One year ago: I had just finished To Kill a Mockingbird and was looking forward to Dickens Fair. Still at GMI. Only one dog so far.

Five snacks: (not necessarily in order of preference)
1. Cashews
2. Beef jerky
3. fruit
4. Kraft Cheeze Nips
5. Chips and medium salsa

Five songs I know all the words to:
1. "Little Fool" - Elvis Costello
2. "Lazy Eye" - Hem
3. "Daniel" - Elton John
4. "I can't Help Falling In Love With You" - Elvis Presley
5. "I am a Child" - Neil Young

Five things I would do with $100 million:
1. Retire and goof off.
2. Have 100 spammers' houses trashed as a warning to others. $10K X 100 = 1% of my dough.
3. Pay off all of my debt and all of my families debts.
4. Lakeside house in Tahoe.
5. Get my mom into a swanky at-home care situation with 24/7 personal assistants and therapists. (Mom had a stroke)

Five places to run away to:
1. Lake Tahoe
2. Ipanema
3. Disneyland (But only if they get better food)
4. Nude beach in Amsterdam (if *you* know what I'm talkin' about)
5. Portland Oregon

Five things I would never wear:
1. Kilt (sorry ladies)
2. Necklaces of any damn sort
3. Turban
4. Thong
5. Heels (cause I'm already 6'4")

Five favorite tv shows:
1. Myth Busters
2. Sponge Bob Square Pants
3. Dragnet
4. The Simpsons
5. China Beach (with Dana Delany)

Five biggest joys:
1. Giving people I care for what the really want
2. Throwing huge parties
3. Building things
4. Um... boobs
5. Doing a show in a little theatre, especially if I can sing

Favorite toys:
1. Computer
2. My Table saw
3. All that friggin barware and liquor I have
4. My pool and spa
5. My Craftsman 19.2 volt drill driver

you got to make the morning last

One way to make the morning last is to get up at the crack of dawn and go to renfaire, like most everyone did this morning. And it was COLD, like in the low 50's or something. I thought it was still Summer for crying out loud. I didn't go since I'm not in it (though I have been asked to participate about a hundred times, it's nice to be wanted!) so I'll have to go one of those other days.

I had big plans to turn over a bunch of the mulch in the garden but so far all I've been able to get done is to sleep in, play with clean up after the dogs, and have a killer cheese sandwich. So much for industry. At least I made the bed. Maybe I'll do some laundry.

One of these days I'm going to need to get serious about my Dickens Fair costume. I need a dress coat and some plain front pegged trousers. The Brownlow character is supposed to have a bottle green coat with a black velvet collar. Any ideas?

Oh yeah, I need to finish the dang website too.

Retail Therapy

Had a great morning goofing off and having cookies and milk for breakfast. Then we decided that it was time to upgrade the fuzz out of the computing system here. Now we're staring at a very sharp and bright Samsung 930b flat panel instead of a fuzzy crt. We (actually Sharon bless her heart) also decided that since the scanner wasn't alive anymore we needed a new one. But a scanner/photo printer was not that much more $ and the old workhorse printer wasn't really that good anymore anyway so we replaced both with one unit. (HP PSC 1600) Looks like that will work just dandy. I need to print some photos to get the hang of it.

Got a lot done on the new site layout yesterday. I'm struggling with how the table is rendered in Firefox. I can't seem to get the lines between the cells to go away. Looks fine in IE. I may get crazy and add more graphics to the page, but I was looking for a really clean look. I could potentially take even more out but I did want a little color in the thing. I'm still not sure I'm going to keep the background graphic that makes the horizontal texture. The thig renders too dark and the effect is not subtle enough, plus I don't like all the blue in the page. It needs to warm up.

The new boobs page (just for you Grace) is done and I transferred the jokes and recipes to their new pages. It will probably be a few days until I pull the plug on the old one and put up the new. I will, of course, make an announcement.

Fallen leaves in the night

The week seems to have flown by in slow motion. The disaster in the gulf looks like it will kill lots of people who didn't deserve what happened to them, and the real horrors are not even known yet. The stories of dying babies made me cry. Painful terrible things happen to people and when I see them it makes my earthly problems (like $3 gas) seem so petty.

But I still have real feelings about my life. And I have cried more than once this week. And through the tears I learned some things about myself that I had not seen. And now I feel better about my life. And I see now how I can be better to the people I care about. Which gives me peace.