Good idea from ***Dave. I might steal this as a regular entry.

On Friday, I said I was going to:

Tonight:

• People coming over. :: People came over — I grinned and laughed until my back teeth hurt. It was good.
• Diffuse Jackie’s desire to start painting the main room, because we (a) don’t have the paint mixed properly yet and (b) have a gazibbillion other things to do this weekend. :: Not a problem - Jackie took Justin and Tristan to see E.T., which the boy had never seen and thoroughly enjoyed. The Boy thought it was cool that the kids were playing DnD in the kitchen. Heh.

Saturday:

• Trip to Home Depot for “Stuph”. :: Done.
  
• Aerate, rake, water, and maybe even reseed portions of the lawn, front and back. :: Well, Home Depots the world over are apparently sold out of aeration tools, so that didn’t happen. I couldn’t bear to rake the dead grass out of the lawn because I was afraid that dead grass was the only grass I HAD. Reseeding we did and might do again very soon (we opted for some “High Sun” blends for the front of the house and “High Traffic” mix for the area around the patio), in addition to organically treating some of the harder-hit area and putting down some seed-friendly fertilizer. I’ve got some Scott’s Turf-builder I wanted to spread out, but upon reading the directions, realized that I can’t use it for about a month after the reseeding. My god this section of this post is boring, why are you still reading it?
  
• Do something with the bottom of the back fence so that Dizzy can’t dig under it into the neighbor’s yard. :: DONE, and well-done, I might add. It’s not exactly what I envisioned, but I will eat my shirt if Diz can get into the next yard over.
  
• Do something with the TOP of the back fence (razor wire, electricity, glass shards embedded in the border plank, whatever) to keep the idiot kids from the next house over in their own yard. :: Jake has removed any desire the neighbor kids had for climbing over the fence… he doesn’t like it one bit, nossir. Jackie claims she’s going to talk to the family’s mother and suggest the kids just waddle around to our front door to retrieve their errant sports equipment.
  
• Clean out the rain gutters. :: Turns out the gutters were fine, but one of the… drain pipes, I guess, was absolutely packed with the granulated gravel mix that makes up the top of each modern shingle. Also mixed into the impromptu drain-cement were roofing nails and shingle staples. Fun. We did manage to get it clear, however. Now if it would only RAIN.
  
• Finish the carpet/tile border in my fixed up bathroom and rehang the towel rack. :: The towel rack, which I never used anyway, is still not back up… the carpet strip is down, however, and looks good.
  
• File our damn taxes. :: *Shuffling feet* We REALLY need to get to that.
  
• Test out the sprinklers to see how badly they’re screwed up from not getting them blown out in the fall. :P :: Boys and girls, the sprinkler system is f-u-c, k-e-d, DEAD. It does NOT look good. At least one major joint in the above-ground plumbing is actually split down the side, and the whole thing acts as though the below-ground pipes are still frozen solid.
  
• Write some more stuff up for Dave and for Randy. :: Didn’t exactly happen as anticipated. Did I mention I’ve got too many projects going on right now?
  
• Host Randy’s game at the house that night. :: “That night” turned into “next morning” — I think we kicked them out about the same time all the clocks officially changed.

Sunday:

• Spend the morning crying like a woman from all the muscle aches and blisters I’ll have from Saturday’s activities. :: Saturday wasn’t that bad, but I still spent the morning crying because sometimes a man just needs a good CRY, dammit. I have no clear recollection of the morning hours, except that it involved printing stuff.
  
• Over to Casa Consortium in the afternoon. :: And a good time was had by all, I think. Well, by me, anyway.
  

After all that we came home, re-watered the lawn, did some weeding, and watched a new Alias episode (any show that can teach you how to survive drowing after driving into a river by breathing the air in your car tire is a damn good show in my opinion).

And that’s it. Weekends feel shorter to me these day. Probably because now I’ve actually got to DO something on Monday. I should have been in bed hours ago. G’nite, chilluns.

OK, I have to admit, the lawn stuff was fascinating to me because it illuminated me about all the stuff I have to do for my lawn but have had, up to this point, no clue. You mean there is such a thing as high-traffic grass seed? It makes it seem like my lawn might actually be salvagable... but then, I've been having back-breaking dreams about rakes lately, and not the jaunty beret types, either.

I didn't know the stuff existed either until I went shopping on Sunday and saw all the different types of seed available. Even picked up a handy little seed/fertilizer spreader for 9.95.

bears-cave.com -- you're home for... Lawn Care?

You and Dave might want to do a yard co-op. You help us with the fence and we'll help you with the sprinlker.

"My god this section of this post is boring, why are you still reading it?"

Because this is on my spring agenda, of course...
Right after I get out the hay wagon and cut the field down (why do I always let it get so long before the snow falls? dunno - but I do)

"Turns out the gutters were fine, but one of the... drain pipes, I guess, was absolutely packed with the granulated gravel mix that makes up the top of each modern shingle."

Bad sign, dude... how do those shingles look? Any 'cupping' or 'fishtailing'? That much grit falling off is a signal of something... usually bad...

Actually, what it looked like to me was that someone had reshingled and just didn't clean the damn roof off afterwards, figuring it would "just wash away". We had the roof inspected about 6 months ago and everything was "Great".