May 1?

Ok, this month just flew by. I keep thinking 'oh, I should put ..... on my blog' or 'hey ..... was really cool, I should blog about it!'. And have I done it? No. I know my masses of fans are gnashing their teeth for the next entry. Well here you go: Over the past few weeks I have been hella busy. Work a couple weeks ago was crazy. My boss was at a conference for a week and one of our servers decided to crash. Luckily our IT folks are AWESOME and did a work-around until a new server could arrive. I was working 10-11 hour days trying to get everything done as well as try and help everyone else with their issues. My boss was so sorry for me she told me to take last Friday off. That actually worked out really well cause there was a lot of stuff I wanted to get done at the house and was needing to take some time off. Here's what I did last Friday:

Got up at 7am! (earlier than when I do for work! Argh!)

8:45am - carpet cleaner guys arrived. The carpets haven't been cleaned since I bought the house in Oct of 04. Luckily since they're so dark there aren't any visible stains, but they did need a cleaning.

9:30am - Sears Washer/Dryer guy came to do my annual maintenance - hey, I paid for the 5 yr contract - I'm using the damn thing! Oh, and I do really recommend those front loading washers. Love mine. It's like a jet engine when it spins. The clothes come out practically dry already.

10:30am - landscape vendor comes out to check my grass. Do I have a fungus? Bugs? Nope. Just need to water and fertilize. I was worried that I did have an infestation but now I know I don't. Just need to take better care of my lawn.

11:30am - Sears Refrigerator guy comes (see above)

1:00p - Where the hell are my plumber and electrician? They're late!

1:30p - Electrician and plumber show up. Electrician pisses me off by saying he's just there to give a quote and not actually do the labor. What the fuck? I made it clear to the dispatch lady that I was taking the day off of work to get all this done! He reschedules for Monday morning after I confirm with my dad that he can be here to let the guy in and supervise. (again I must say I love my retired parents that live 10 minutes from me!) I show the plumber what I want done. He quotes a price I can buy a used car at. Sigh. Fine, just get it done. (more on all this below)

2:30p - landscape vendor comes to give a quote for a sprinkler system....I'm just curious on what those things run

4:00p - Sears dishwasher guy comes (see above)

9:00p - Plumber finally leaves. Asshole.

During this whole time I was outside doing yard work in the back. I finally bought a cool patio set and I'm trying to get my backyard into some semblance of 'pretty'. A couple weeks ago my No Kidding group had a plant swap and I picked up some cool stuff. My backyard is definitely a portrait of Darwin's survival of the fittest. Those plants kinda have to take care of themselves cause I always forget to water. The grass is ok cause it's got so much shade from all my trees. I'm slowly finding plants that can deal with my practically non-existent level of care. I love 'drought-resistant'!

All right...about the plumber. Now, in the past I've mentioned how Nathan, my dad, and I changed my kitchen faucet. I know that plumbing is fairly straight forward, but you have to have the right TOOLS. That's the issue we had last time and it was really hard and frustrating to change the faucet. I've been needing to change the faucets in my bathroom and my outdoor faucets leaked. I decided to have a professional come in and take care of it all at once. My dad also talked me into changing the faucet in the guest bathroom too. It was kinda grungy and might as well do it all at once. The plumber that came really didn't know what he was doing and had to go to Home Depot twice. I finally went to Lowes, asked someone there, and got the part that we needed. The faucets looked ok when he left, but Saturday I could tell the two in my bathroom were leaking. Luckily they sent someone else out this morning while my dad was here with the electrician and they fixed everything.

As for the electrician...sigh....here's the story. My friend Gil from No Kidding had helped me last year rewire all the plugs and switches in the kitchen to accommodate the tile backsplash. (Damn, was that really a year ago???) He had done a lot of electrical work at his house and had all the equipment and I knew I could trust him. I wasn't planning on calling him (really I wasn't!) but I bought new faceplates for the bathroom and the damn screws were too long to fit in the old plugs. What the hell? Isn't that all standard? I guess my plugs were so old, they only worked with short screws. I've also been wanting to change the lights in my kitchen which were hideous and I finally found a style that I liked. I know how to change out light fixtures, but it's not something you can easily do by yourself. Anyways, back to Gil. Once I realized I needed new plugs in my bathroom I called Gil and bribed him with dinner in exchange for his help.

He put in the new plugs and switches in my bathroom and helped me put up the two lights in the kitchen. Ok, he was the main putter-upper and I held the fixture, but I could've done it! I had also wanted to change the light fixture in my guest bathroom. Hey, when I get in these moods I really go for it. The old light fixture was this old ugly bronze horizontal row of four lights. I was able to get the faceplate off to see the wires and didn't see any issues. As soon as Gil saw it, he was like 'wow....that's really bad'. That's not something you like to hear someone say about the possible fire-inducing electrical work in your house. What happened is that one of the previous owners (aka clueless lazy nimrod) decided to move the bathroom light from a ceiling fixture to a wall fixture. I knew it had been moved cause you can kinda see the patch job in the ceiling. I just ASSUMED they had done it right and put a new electrical box in the wall. Uh no. They ran LAMP CORD with DUCT TAPE from the ceiling box to the wall and then just duct taped everything together. Whimper. Sob. Freak out. Gil was industrious and went up into my attic to check it out. He found more duct tape and lamp cord up there. I was freaked out about him being up there cause the last guy that was up there (my roofer) but his leg through my bathroom ceiling cause he thought he was stepping on a secured piece wood instead of a piece of wood that was just laying there. At least he got it fixed and it looked fine. I was having flashes of Gil falling through the ceiling and impaling himself on a kitchen chair or something. Shut up - it could happen! So, anyways, Gil advised me to get an electrician out here to fix everything right and put up a new box in the wall. I've also been needing to change the fans in my outdoor patio so I had the electrician do everything at once. It actually wasn't that expensive. Now my screened in patio is awesome! I just need to get some potted plants to get some color. I'm hosting Game Night next week and maybe some people might like to sit outside.

Have I said this before? I'm getting rid of the tree in my front yard. It's a silver maple and it's a stringy piece of crap. Sure, it's kinda pretty and not diseased or anything, but it's not GROWING. It's been over two years and it's grown less than 6 inches. I need some shade for my front yard. The husband of one of the girls at work is a botanist and he's going to get me a kick-ass tree. He said that maples don't do well in Austin anyways - it's just not cold enough. I told him I didn't want lots of acorns and crap falling off the tree but I did want a nice canopy. He came up with the Lacebark Elm. It's really pretty, drought resistant (yeah!), resistant to most diseases that other elms have issues with, and it grows really big. I'm slowly taking down that limestone rock ring around the maple to save some labor cost for when the tree guys come with the new tree. They're just going to cut the maple down and put the elm next to it. I'm not going to bother with digging out all the roots. I think this will all get done in the next month. He also has a landscaper friend that I'm talking with about doing some stuff in the front yard...not sure what yet.


Yes, I know the lawn needs work. Stupid non-shading tree!
**PICTURE REMOVED**

been awhile

ok, I know, I know, I know. It's been a while since I've posted. And hey, this is my 150th post! Crazy. Baby Ian is doing well. He's gained weight and is growing. There's a hole in a baby's heart (or near it?) when they are still growing and it's common for premies to need a surgery to close it. Luckily his is closing on its own. Melanie was put back on bed rest cause her blood pressure wasn't going down as fast as they hoped for. I saw him in the NICU when he was still around 1lb. He was so tiny and his hands and feet looked like a grownup - very thin and boney - not pudgy like a full-term baby's. I didn't expect that. Melanie sent out a more recent picture and it looks like he's getting pudgy now. I'm sure he'll be running around and getting into trouble in no time.

I finally got a TX phone number for my cell phone. I've been out here almost four years and I don't know why I waited so long. Just stubborn. My cell phone wasn't holding a charge so I decided to get a new phone and new phone number at the same time. If I haven't given you the new number let me know. Some of the email addresses I have were not working. Now I have to think of all the vendors that have the old number that I need to contact. Never changing my number again!

What's going on in my life you ask? Not much. I'm getting a little frustrated at work - we're trying to hire for a few positions and the doctors are being so picky about the candidates. Sometimes you just have to give someone a shot and see if if works out.

I have a ton of yard work to do. We've had rain followed by sun - which makes plants grow, y' know? Mike bought one of those robot lawn mowers and it is so cool. Maybe I'll break down one of these days, but for now I'll stick with my lawnmower - at least it's self propelled. I think I have to re-sod some of my front lawn. It's really really dead. It didn't help that I refused to water it last summer. Maybe I should rethink that policy for this summer. I just want to cement over the whole damn thing. And I saw more poison ivy on the side of the house. Not good. I'll probably be making another trip to the doctor after pulling it all out. I have such a bad reaction to it.

For my 150th post I was going to write about a bunch of stuff, but it's 12:30am and I really should go to bed. Maybe I'll save it all for the 200th!