A Walk in the Park

The last few days in the office have been painful. Sheer boredom and complete apathy have set in and there's no telling when they're going to head out. So today at lunch my co-worker and I ate lunch at the Capital. It's kind of cold and gloomy today, but the rose bushes were in full bloom and we had some cover from the wind. Now that I'm back from the lunch break I'm having a mental break down due to the fact that the squirel eating a carot (thanks MC!) was the highlight of my day.



That and afternoon iced coffee with the same co-worker. We have to stick together in order to survive this place : (

ps
My new phone (that I love) has the worst camera!!

Whoa...we're getting old

Well, my wife and I 'celebrated' our five year anniversary this past weekend. For the last six months we had been thinking of grand plans on how to spend our long weekend together. We could not make a decision on what to do, which turns out to have been a blessing. Instead of spending a nice romantic weekend together, I got to take care of sick wife, including a fun-filled visit to our local ER after she was unable to keep anything in her system. The highlight was me giggling like a schoolgirl when EVERY nurse asked is she was preggers. hahhahahaha

Weekly Update

Sorry for the lack of updates (for the two stalkers, I mean readers). It's been a crazy week.

Last weekend instead of finishing up the pond and starting on the patio, we bought new furniture for the patio, which has found random places inside the house to reside until it has somewhere outside to go to. Here's a sample pic...



For some odd reason World Market had the set on sale last weekend and informed us they would not be getting any new ones in. Made the decision very easy since my lovely wife had already decided this is what she wanted.

There has been progress made...the electric line is installed outside and just needs to be connected to the breaker box. As a side, Home Depot returned my call today (two and a half weeks after my call to them) to get an estimate to do this work for me. I'm becoming less and less impressed with the big orange box.

I've also the got the waterfall complete on the pond and should have a pic of that this weekend with water and plants in it! We're very much looking forward to the sweet sound of running water in the backyard soon...and the reaction Phoebe will have to it!!Of course my wife already has an idea of what she wants to have in the pond...

I love Peking

On Sunday we went to this great little Chinese place with some friends. We had a wonderful time with awesome food...which was followed by the most awesome fortune cookies ever. My wife opened hers first, then could not stop laughing. She is not a very animated person, so I knew it must of been a good one. I kept my mouth shut after reading mine waiting for hers to be passed around the table (she couldn't read it outloud!).

"A romantic evening awaits you tonight."

Thank you Mr. Chinese Fortune Cookie Man, you are my new hero : )

Things got a little out of control...with my wife in tears...after reading my fortune.

"Your skills and talents will be called on in unusual areas."

I seriously looked around the resturant looking for Ashton Kutcher and the Punk'd team to come out.

Pond Update

More delays in getting the pond finished up. My parents stopped by this past weekend so that my Dad could help me run an electric line out to the retaining wall in our backyard so I could plug in the new fish pond pump. After some debate, it was decided that it would be best if I dug a trench in the yard to bury the line rather then running it through the crawl space (which would have involved giant me in a three foot high crawl space for hours after drilling a hole in the foundation). Turns out that digging a 70' trench is very time consuming and causes sore muscles! Who would have guessed!! Then of course, by the time it was completed, the rain started again! Hopefully one evening this week I will be able to get the entire electric portion of this project complete so I can get back to finishing up these projects!

In case your wondering, the electric line had to be put in now because soon we will start construction of our new patio...which will go over top where the electric line needed to be installed. Pics will some soon.

Random Acts of Corporate Generosity

Two different experiences with two different companies have left me baffled. The first, on Saturday afternoon was at a car dealership...of all places! I stopped by the parts desk to purchase some touch up paint for my wife's new car. I was fully expecting this to set me back a Hamilton and was perfectly content doing so. Until the guy behind the desk handed me the bottle and said that'll take care of ya. I tried to purchase it but he insisted there would be no charge. 'Okay, well thanks, have a great weekend.' The stranger part of the entire scenario was that this was not the dealer we purchased the car from two weeks ago (I was also awkwardly dodging the salesperson who tried to 'give me the best deal').

Then this afternoon, I called Verizon to ask the status of them coming to fix my Fios line that I cut over the weekend (more on that soon). After being on hold a couple of minutes, the nice gentleman comes back on the line and asks if I'm still having trouble because his system is telling him a repair guy has already come out and fixed the line and his computer is able to talk to the odd Verizon box in my garage. Alrighty then. No charge. Huh? I break the line, make you guys come fix it and you'll pick up the tab too? Okay, as if I needed another reason to be in love with you!

Big Plans

What to do? I had these ambitious plans to finish up the fish pond (which I've been saying for weeks...darn rain) and get a good head start on the new patio this week. My lovely wife is out of town on business until Friday. But it's raining (again!)...which is a good thing for my grass and flower beds, but bad news for me.

I'm bored. Sure, I could clean the house to impress my wife upon her return. It's only Monday though and I'm sure the dogs and I will make it more messy by the time Friday comes around. I'm becoming more high maintence as I age. After marriage I realized how I need people around. When my wife is out of town, I tend to get sad, bored, just down in general. So I plan out big projects to keep myself entertained, have a sense of accomplishment (I should write a whole post on that topic), and most importantly, out of trouble! Guys, women know everything. Never doubt that!

I may just have to drive her new car around all evening to entertain myself until the sun returns tomorrow :-)

Personal Finance

I am in love with Personal Finance Blogs. I've been silently reading a number of them for over a year now. I'm still in debate over what all I will share on this blog. There has to be some balance between privacy and sharing useful information that might help a reader out. I think for now I'm going to work on showing a monthly Net Worth update (which I track already anyway) in percentage form and somehow do the same with our monthly budget (again, already keep track of this info).

Any thoughts?

Lack of Sleep

I love spring. It comes second to only fall (which has birthdays and Hokie football). Spring hates me. For the past month I have been sucking down any and all medication to try and alleviate the constant sinus headache, sneezing, itchy eyes, etc that lovely spring brings. Of course being the stubborn mule (or maybe just male?) that I am, I refuse to stop driving home from work with all the windows down and sunroof open, stop doing yardwork when everything has a greenish-yellow haze to it, or really do anything at all that the nice allergy doc told me to stop doing years ago. One day I will give in...

The other part of spring that I have a love/hate relationship with are thunderstorms. I love the smell in the air after a good storm has passed through. And more lately it means less days I have to spend watering everything in our yard...to which the county dislikes because I think they thoroughly enjoyed sending me those water bills last year. Since Phoebe came into our lives three years ago, thunderstorms have taken on a new meaning. Thunderstorms now mean we have a manic hyperactive poodle mix clawing at anything or everything that might help give her comfort. Last night we had thunderstorms throughout the night. Which meant Phoebe got locked in her crate (don't judge, it was NECESSARY!). The first few hours she clawed at the wall under our bed. Then tried to sleep on our heads. Poor little thing just doesn't like storms. I blame Fourth of July 2005...one day I'll share that story!

So here we are with a lack of sleep and some random ramblings to kick off this Friday morning...as the rain starts up again.

Fish Pond

For the past few weeks I have been working on putting a fish pond in our back yard. This has been a lofty dream of mine for some time now. Before now we haven't stayed put in one place long enough to warrant the expense of a project like this.

As you can see, the pond is still not complete, but it is looking like a pond! I decided to pour concrete for the pond instead of using a preformed pond or a pond liner. There were many reasons for this and while I am very pleased with the result, next time I'll use a plastic liner instead! It took 12 bags of 80lb concrete to make this small pond...all mixed by hand in a bucket. Needless to say, my back was sore for a few days!

Hopefully next week this little project will be complete...after the waterfall is installed, concrete sealed, and plants planted. Phoebe can't wait until she can play with the fishies!!

Getting started

I've been a fan of blogs for some time now...I'll put up some links of my favs one day soon...and I've decided to give it a whurl. Unfortunately for you all, I have a wide variety of random interests, so try to keep up!