Dang, if I thought we worked hard _last_ weekend, well, THIS weekend was a killer!
I darn near beat my weed whacker to death ripping up large quantities of grass in the back yard... really. I need to take it apart to see if it broke inside or is just loose. The poor thing has a wicked backlash-rattle now. Just a week, and it may be going in for warranty service.
Speaking of grass, did you know that clusters of grass make stumps? Gnarly! And in each stump, there seemed to be a large white grub nestled, happy and fat. Ugh.
So, the yards. We chopped off a lobe of the Yucca plant by the driveway, surrounded it with limestone, and gravelled it within an inch of its life. Looks good!
Then, more limestone blocks to line the beds all around the back yard fence. Leaving... way too much limestone left over.
So, from the gate in the fence at one side of the house, all around the house, and to the fence at the other side, we cut and lined a path.
And STILL we have two courses of limestone left on the pallette! We'll have to get creative now to figure what to DO with it all. Jeez.
As it is, I need about 2 more cubic yards of gravel to fill the path we made (way ahead of schedule) and a few yards of mulch for all the beds we made (also ahead of schedule).
Our spare (outdoor) cat, Sparky, loves all of this yardwork. He rolls in the ditches we cut for the blocks. He pounces on the bright orange electrical-cord snake. He rabbit kicks the landscape cloth. He gets lots of attention and dusty scritches from the tired humans.
So, is it because of the fun weekend he just had -- or is it because of the coming cold weather? -- that he left a rabbit head on my doorstep at lunch today? I think he's trying to buy entrance to the house; a bribe, as it were. Slip a twenty to the doorman and go in to where the food is tasty and the company is good.
Welllll it didn't work. Marla says it will take more than just the head; she wants the entire rabbit, dressed and roasted. And since he can't get in to use the oven, the poor fellow is caught in the classical catch-22.
Such a good cat.
Ooo a busy and productive weekend... of course, I'm still neglecging my writing, but I'll get back to it, I promise.
This weekend was a very social one -- Odd Friday to start; Julia's 3rd birthday party; Richard's 3rd Saturday gathering, where we watched some juggle video and hung out a bit; Michelle's Gaming Night. Oh, and schoolwork -- finished two classes; finals next weekend or the one after, when I feel like it.
The sweaty work filled in the rest -- prepping the lawn (more on that later), moving most of the rest of the first palette of 4" limestone blocks, and just now, moving most of the rest of the first cubic yard of gravel.
The yard will look very nice when we are done, and there won't be much grass to mow!
Mmmm, gravel.
Okay, this last year was the Year of Yard NoCare. I didn't mow the back yard all summer, I think, and probably not most of the year at all. It's interesting, grass -- it doesn't just grow longer, but it changes _character_ as it ages and matures. Gets thick. And clumpy. And a lot unlike lawn grass.
It's like this: suppose you have a nice housecat and you, like a good owner, trim it's claws every couple months (or however often you are supposed to trim their claws; Marla does ours). But say you get busy one year and forget to trim the claws _all year_. Oops. And then you wake up one November to discover that your nice little house cat has become.. a saber tooth tiger!
Yeah. Just like that.
So on Saturday morning I went out and bought a heavy-duty weed whacker; dual 0.080" line, 5amp electric motor, mmm, nice. I call it my Electric Scythe. And with this mighty device, I "mowed" the back yard.
It took a while, but it worked!
Actually, 7,280 pounds of 4" rough-cut limestone blocks (two palettes) and two (two!) cubic yards of 5/8" gravel.
Ummm, two cubic yards of gravel is more than I expected.
I moved almost half of one of the palettes of limestone into place after work today... 1,500 to 1,800 lbs worth... and it looks kinda neat. Also, a few wheelbarrows of gravel.
Hardly made a dent.
Guess what we're doing this weekend? Moving rock!
Look! A post! And it's been far less than a month!
So, Saturday late afternoon, four-ish I think, I was nearing the end of my VB homework. Yes, Visual Basic .NET 2003. Whee.
Anyway, they wanted, in the last couple of programming pieces, for me to create a user component thingy. Easy!
Well, okay, except that I had installed VB Express and it did not have a compilation template for components. Argh! After fiddling and fussing and Googling a bit, I decided I would have to install VB proper after all.
No sweat, I have licenses for it. Just not... disks. An advantage of working where I do; my MSDN subscription!
So... 40 minutes of download later (from MS's truly heinous website), I have what turns out to be a CD ISO. Dang, not a proper install at all... gotta burn a CD.
Oooh, there is no power to my CD player. My power supply blew out a few months ago, toasting my mobo with it (the pain! the pain!). So I stole, er, umm, borrowed, Marla's supply. Which was wimpy and short on cables, but just sufficient to drive my box... without the CD.
Okay, I could run VB on the Parallels VM on my Mac... or not! Heh. I don't mind SOME suffering, but that would be harsh.
So off to Fry's to buy a nice new power supply. The ones these days are quite nice, with modular cable configurations and stuff.
Into the box, burn the CD, install VB, and... by about 10pm that night... finish most of the assignment. And a coupla hours this Sunday morning too.
::sigh:: That burned a lot more time than I had hoped for.
I'm behind on re-submitting my bounced stories, and I'm behind on editing my written stories, and I'm getting _darned_ annoyed at not being able to write until I clear all this _other_ stuff out of my queue. School is a boulder in my road, but I'm down to 1 assignment each in two classes, and then finals... two weeks out. Then seven more classes to the end! Three of which I can take this year, it seems. Maybe. The scheduling at the online school changed late this year, for the worse.
On the home front, we didn't clean or wash much around the house, but we did cut a path in the front yard, and trenches around the front yard's garden beds, which will receive limestone blocks and gravel after this is all delivered on Tuesday by the Stone and Gravel Faeries. Over three tons of rock! Maybe 4 tons... it will be awesome.
If I think I'm sore NOW from all that digging, just wait 'till we move that stone around a few times.
Oh, and Marla made some really neat bread today, and cut the hell out of her finger.
I think we are going to drive to Carlsbad Caverns for Christmas and take a bunch of underground tours.
That should be fun!
I think I'll start writing more here soon... and then pester my family and distant friends to make sure they start reading.
Grr.
Lessee, on the writing front, "Eternity" and "Winter" have their first rejections! Eternity is a nice one; I like it; gotta figure who to send it to next. Winter is a bit Emo, but I suppose I should send it around more anyway.
I'm supposed to be editing "June Bug" and "Summer" but Halloween put a couple weeks crimp in the whole thing.
Ummmm, "Delrin Jannis" and "First Love" and "Night" are all still out there, sweating bullets.
"Family" is simply waiting to pop up in the rotation.
These are all kind of experimental, each written a tad different. They probably all share a weakness when it comes to character-driven storylines... so that's the next thing I want to do; exercise my character muscle.
I'm anxious to do that! I have ideas! I have plans on how to organize the writing!
But I need to clear my task list first.
Sigh.
Had some fun with and as zombies this halloween. There was a brief writeup of zombies around town, including the one I worked in with Richard and a variety of dancers! Yayy us!
Here are links to the article and to my pictures:
On the school front, things are going well... I continue to blast through and, for the most part, ace the classes. They lost one of my exam requests, so I missed my clear spot for taking that one; I'll take it next weekend. And it took them about two months to get my a grade on a previous final... but I have that now and can submit for reimbursement.
I'm in the middle of 2 easy classes (all 100s so far); after these, in just a few weeks, there will just be six more. Assuming the school's stupid new scheduling will float them into accessibility on a reasonable timeline, I'll be done soon.