plow service

We decided to hire a plow service for our driveway, in this first winter in our house. It's hard enough to do all of the other crap around the house for the first time, we really didn't feel like buying a snow blower and then having to snow blow every day or every other day. We'd be playing a lot of rock, paper, scissors to see who had to go out in freezing temps to do it. Okay, that comment is not fair to Jon--I'd want to help out, but I doubt he'd ever make me do it.
Back to my complaint--yes, how could I complain about it, you ask? The plow guy will come at, like, 2:00 a.m. A lot of snow can fall between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. when Jon leaves for work. And a lot more can fall between 8 a.m. when I leave for work and when we get home in the afternoon. Our driveway still has a crapload of snow on it! It's snowed all of 3 or 4 times this winter, and I'm already wondering why we didn't just bite the bullet and buy a dang snow blower!

New favorite site:

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

For example:

work weekend

"On tap for next weekend: trimming back about a dozen lilacs, rototilling my future garden area(s), painting windows, raking leaves, killing (more) weeds, spreading grass seed, moving a crab apple tree, spreading mulch." That's what I wanted to get done. Ha.

Friday was beautiful!!! Saturday, work day, was awful. Rain and sleet, mud and grime. We hired two guys Jon works with, had his friend Matt and Matt's dad over, had my hard working husband, and ... me. Thankfully I had raked the front yard Friday afternoon, when the weather was lovely, but since we didn't have any yard waste bags, they just sat in piles on the front lawn getting wet Saturday morning. There was no way in hell I was going to try to tackle the back yard. It took me 45 minutes just to rake the front!

So what did we get done? Basically nothing on my list. I did have some help bagging the leaves and I spread grass seed in the front and back yard--in the sleety wetness--right before my back gave out. I knew it was going to happen, I just didn't know when. Jon and company did crazy stuff in the back yard. They moved a whole bunch of really big concrete blocks and rocks to our ever expanding "random rocks, blocks, and landscaping paraphernalia" region in the backyard. Also, there were these railroad ties being used as rudimentary landscape timbers that were removed and chopped up into burnable pieces for our fire pit. There was also a set of bars installed by the original owners to use for hanging clothes lines--cemented into the ground starting at about 18"-24" and ending at least 2' below that! These things were installed to stay! But they needed to come out so that we can move the shed from its present inconvenient location to right behind the garage (where the railroad ties and laundry poles were). Now we have even more DIRT lying around from where everything was dug up! Well, with the appearance of the snow this morning, I can maintain a blissful ignorance about the appalling state of my back yard. Yay snow?

winterizing

This being the first year we've owned a house, we're trying to figure out all that we have to do to winterize--and get help doing it. Our yard is a disaster--that backyard anyway. There are huge patches of dirt all over the place from where we've had "extra" from other projects and dumped it in a low patch in the back. And there are a lot of low patches. There are still a lot of low patches. It's looking pretty bare back there, but I knew that this was going to be a year of removal and hoped that next year would be a year of planting. It looks like grass seed will be essential to the plan of improving the yard to make our 1/2 acre more "Edenic." It'll take a few years, but it will look wonderful.

On tap for next weekend: trimming back about a dozen lilacs, rototilling my future garden area(s), painting windows, raking leaves, killing (more) weeds, spreading grass seed, moving a crab apple tree, spreading mulch.

No problem.

driveway expansion

So I promised Jon I'd get these pictures posted--they're of his hard work last weekend.

Here's what it looked like just after he got started. Grass, dirt, and pebbles.

Phase 2: remove the landscaping fabric and pebbles.

And the end result: a driveway that will be considerably easier to shovel and snow blow!! Yea!

Facebook???

So, I'm on Facebook now. I don't know exactly how it happened, since I said 3 years ago that I would never join. If I'd gotten in on the ground floor many years ago it would be different, but I figured it would be really lame for someone my age to get in on it so late. Who joins when they're 30? Well, I do, apparently. What's surprising is how much I'm enjoying it. As of today, I have 22 friends, including a couple of people who I've been trying to find for years! Now, many people would say, "ONLY 22 friends?! How sad!" And I say, holy cow, 22 people claim they know me?!?! That's frickin' fantastic! I may just have a heart attack if I reach 25!

Irksome!

For those of you out of state and/or who don't give a crap about Tiger's baseball, I'll tell you that this was a disappointing season, well a disappointing END of season. The Tigers (stupidly) traded away veteran, All Star catcher Pudge Rodriguez on the trade deadline in July to the Yankees and acquired a (crappy) relief pitcher, Kyle Farnsworth. This trade was bad (idiotic) enough, but after their season has ended I read this:


C[atcher] Dusty Ryan has shown enough that Detroit feels he could at least open the 2009 season on the major league roster, but the Tigers prefer to have a veteran to at least split time with the rookie. “Do I think we could get by (with Ryan)?” Leyland said. “Probably. Would it be the best thing? Probably not.”


They need a veteran catcher? Damn straight they need a veteran catcher, after they (moronically) traded away the best catcher in the league. But, hey, Pudge is with the Yankees now, so we couldn't get him back anyway, right?

Wrong. The Yankees won't be renewing Pudge's contract, which means he's up for grabs. But will the Tigers bring back our beloved Pudge? Heck no. Dave Dombrowski has done some fantastic things for the Tigers (including bringing Pudge here in the first place to anchor the struggling team in 2004) and some pretty dumb ones (most notably trading Pudge, but also the acquiring of Gary Sheffield, 2006, and Edgar Renteria, 2007). But even though we need a catcher, and one of the best catchers in the league (I don't care if he's 36) is available, this match up seems unlikely to occur. I suppose it would be a little embarrassing to bring back a player who was so recently traded away, but heck, the fans don't care. We just want our Pudge back!!!