The Triumphant Return
Well folks, it’s been a long absence from blogging, but it has been quite the busy Fall. After all the rain this past Summer, left quite a lot of “around the house” projects either unfinished or undone. So now that we’ve had a good stretch of cooler, dry weather, the weekends have been filled with lots of back-breaking work.
We started by trimming a few trees, which turned into a major pruning of all of our oak trees, we have 15 or 20 on the property. The cutting, pruning and trimming was the easy part…you just break out the chainsaw, have your willing neighbor climb up the tree and do the cutting, while you direct him from the ground and sidestep any falling branches. But the bigger job comes with finding a way to get rid of what you cut.
After 2 weekends of cutting up trees, we had a backyard full of branches, leaves and brush. We thought we’d call up someone to simply haul it away, but not for $800, so being the cheap, do-it-yourselfers we are, we decided to save ourselves some cash (at the expense of my back) and rent a 6″ brush chipper from the local Cash Savers Equipment rental center. Sounds easy enough, but 2 backbreaking days of dragging, sawing, cutting and shoving logs, branches and various tree parts into the deafeningly loud chipper hopper took quite a toll on my back and body in general, just in time for the next project (of course, I had to wait until I could actually move my body before starting something new).
Next on the docket, the front yard. No, not merely cutting the grass and cleaning up the yard, that would be WAY too simple and physically non-intensive, nope, we’re talking ripping out every existing plant and replacing the entire landscape. Yep, because we like to get in over our heads and create more work than necessary.
The easy part was paying our handyman to rip out and haul away the existing plants, the hard part was ridding the planting areas of roots, construction debris and carefully maneuvering around cable lines, sprinkler lines, gas lines, wires and other essential utilities that are barely buried beneath the thin layer of cheap-ass, weed infested, builder installed top soil. While the soil in our Rocklin home was hard clay and mucky when wet, Texas soil is like trying to dig in to 3 feet of solid friggin’ reinforced concrete. No wonder one of the top equipment rentals is an air hammer. It’s all rocks and solid things that look like rocks and it’s a wonder that anything even grows.
So after digging, trenching, pounding, a gazillion F-bombs, scrapes, bruises, blisters, a little blood, a few fire ant bites, 100 frog sightings and 1 snake, I managed to successfully replant the entire front yard. It was a project we’ve wanted to do since moving in, but the Summer is too hot to plant and the Fall is somewhat unpredictable, but this year, the conditions were right..fortunately (I think). Either way, it’s done. HooHah!
Next up is restaining the deck and fences…does the work ever cease? Apparently not, but the lovely conditions we’ve had here (70’s and 80’s) sure makes it nice to be outdoors.
So now that I’ve thoroughly bored you with my rundown of household projects, along the way, we managed to snap some photos of the kids, the dogs and some other stuff, so you might want to head over to the photo blog and see what you missed.
Until next time, folks.
Atypical Nonsense Gets Noticed, Well Sort Of…
I’m a fairly active participant in a number of online forums and blogs in a variety of interests. One of my main interests is blogging, Wordpress and web design.
This morning, one of my online mentors and (what I consider) internet friend, gave our little blog some worldwide attention by giving us a link to our site in his blog post. In the blogging world, links are the key to attracting readers. Apparently, Brian was considering expanding his professional and diverse universe with yet another project, but for whatever reason, my particular comment helped to clear his mind, essentially bringing him back to Earth.
While this blog is not promoted as anything other than a simple family blog, it’s nice to get noticed. So I want to say thank you to my internet friend, Brian Gardner for the attention.
Brian is a Wordpress theme developer and a successful blogger destined for greatness. I’ve used a number of altered Brian’s themes on this site as a basis for the design and his success over the last six to eight months has become an inspiration to me. When I think of Brian, it reminds me of this lyric –
“..a spirit with a vision is a dream
With a mission.” ~ Neil Peart
Thanks, Brian.
What To Write? Help Me Out
It’s a question I struggle with week to week. “What happened that I feel is interesting, useful or intriguing enough that others might enjoy?”
As daily life goes by, we each have minor events, occurrences or little tidbits that we overlook and chalk up to “routine”, while those routine items may just be what others find fascinating about our lives or, at least, interesting enough to read about. Many times, as I sit down to write an entry, scan my tiny little brain for something…anything noteworthy and I try to view the entry from your vantage point, but more often than not, I fail miserably.
So, I’m in need of a little help from you…are you game? (This is the part where you nod your head in agreement and flash a fake smile because you aren’t sure what’s coming next)
Here’s the $64,000 question…What is it you would like to see more of on this blog? Your input is important here. I only ask that you be honest in your requests and don’t be shy, just keep it above the belt..this is a family blog.
It might be something simple like, “More photos”, “Funny YouTube Videos.”, “What’s it really like living in Texas?”, “Discovery Channel or History Channel?”, “Is your favorite word really ‘asshat’ ?” or it could be slightly more complex issues like, “What’s the fastest way to burn body fat?”, “How would you solve the mid-east problem?”, “Are you really smarter than a 5th Grader?” or “Your take on troposphere temperature anomalies.” But just try and confine your request to something within the broad general scope of what’s already been presented in this blog and I think we’ll all be happy.
I’ll take the top 5 requests and send you each a free 80GB Video iPod, fully loaded with 12,000 songs and “The Godfather” parts 1,2 and 3. Okay, not really but I will take all of your comments under advisement and do my best to give you more of what you want.
I appreciate the help and look forward to your input.