Recently in Home/Garden/Home Improvement Category

The energizer bunny by god. That's me some days, or at least it feels like it.

I didn't sleep for shit last night. In bed at midnight, up at 2AM, up again for work at 5:30ish. Although it was officially my day off one of my managers is off as well so I am responsible for staffing and whatnot. Wednesday being payroll day I had to show up at 6:30 and send that stuff to the office and then pressure wash one of the sidewalks at another one of my stores. I managed to finish that stuff up shortly before lunch so went and got a haircut, which looks mighty fine, I might add.

Arrive home at noon, plant a bunch of flowers, vines, a bush or two. Cleaned out the other pond, which was really nasty. Nasty enough so that I couldn't see my hand when I stuck it in to pull out the plants. Got this one huge 3'x3' mass of lily pad roots and miscellaneous garbage that they have grown around. From the bottom it looks like hundreds of snakes or worms all wriggling around. Like I said, fucking nasty. Trimmed back the Wysteria and wove some of the extra in around the wiring which brings us to right now.

I also put in some kind of pond grass that the wife picked up from a friend. Half of it in the pond and the other half just outside as an experiment to see if it will grow. It get's these really cool purple flowers but other than that I have no idea what it is.

Now that I've showered and am starting to fel a little better I think I might print out a burn permit and get rid of a couple of piles of brush that are just sitting there calling my name. I'll have to wait a little while though. The girls have to be picked up from school in a half an hour or so and I need to put a couple of posts up at my other sites anyway.

Hell, the day's only halfway over. I'm sure I can find something else to do as well. I know my seedlings need to be watered but I can do some of them while I'm burning.

Twice in one day is just too much. Damn, I experience the blood curdling stench of feces rotting in someone's mouth not once, but twice today. This dude just insists on talking to me in close quarters. This evening I was able to beat a hasty retreat out the back door as I told him to have a nice evening but this morning I was in the little 3x5 office paying people and he was standing in the doorway. Every time he would expound on whatever the fuck he was talking about I would flinch as the wave of nastiness blew through the office.

Today was a pretty uneventful day overall. I had a guy that's been giving me lots of problems in one of the stores. He's been written up several times and verbally warned even more. I suspended him for a week at one point but the dude just won't behave. I had to fire his sorry ass today. I hate firing people but after having received several complaints from customers and his co-workers, I had to let him go.

Rather than working out today I came on home to work in the yard for awhile. I've planted a ton of bulbs over the last few weeks as well as strawberries but not many vegetables. The only thing I've put in thus far is broccoli and some tomato plants.

I also cleaned out a large portion of the leaves and stuff that has found a home in my goldfish pond over the winter. At least one of the goldfish lived through the winter :) I know because he went flying with a handful of leaves but I noticed before the thing had been out too long.

Working in the yard is always good stress relief for me. I think that as long as I get to go work out tomorrow afternoon I may come home and finish cutting the grass. I started using one of the lawn services and they sprayed some fertilizer last week. After this past rain it's just been shooting up.

...smoking that is.

This is really a no-brainer but the article entitled "Smokers encouraged to give up for financial health" really struck a chord with me. It's all about how much money you can save by quitting smoking. It shows how much money you save if you smoke twenty cigarettes a day and quit smoking. Well, I smoke two (or did) two to three packs a day minimum. If you figure it that way, based on forty cigarettes a day at $3.50 a pack that's seven dollars a day, $49 a week, or $2,548 a year. That's a chunk of change. If I were to turn around and put that into, say my mortgage that's like making two extra house payments a year.

I did some reading a few years ago on paying off mortgages early. The example given was to pay half your mortgage every two weeks and by doing so you would end up making ONE extra payment a year and pay it off seven years early. How much earlier would I pay it off by making TWO extra payments a year. Not a bad deal at all, particularly considering that the cost of smokes is just going to keep going up and up until they are taxed out of existence by the Federal government.

It's been a pretty uneventful day here at the Miles Casa. I have a ton of things on my to-do list and haven't managed to get very many of them done today. I need to pay some bills and start working on my 2007 taxes but somehow just don't want to.

I did manage to get about ten hours of sleep. Maybe a bit too much but damn I am behind. I need to find a way to balance my sleep/job/stuff at home so that I can get enough rest and spend some time with the family as well. It's pretty difficult at times.

I am doing so-so quitting smoking. I managed to get down to a pack every couple of days and then quit Monday night when I went to bed. I didn't smoke at all at work yesterday. Ended up going about 16 hours, which is quite a long time. What I didn't realize is that I apparently had a pack in my car that I found on the way home from work yesterday afternoon. So much for that. I had thought the wife was going to take them with her this morning but apparently she forgot. It's almost gone and once it is I will quit once again. I feel like such a darned lightweight.

I have a nice dinner planned. The wife thawed a couple of pork loins so I marinated them in olive oil and rubbed them with a some different spices. They are sitting in the refrigerator now just waiting to go in the oven. I figure around four I will pop them in and decided what else to have with them.

I have mentioned a few times that I really hate the Samsung i760 that I picked up. In theory I like the idea of a pocket PC phone, but in practice I don't like the implementation. I guess it's all about what you like. Apparently it's still pretty popular as far as PDA/phones go. I got a blackberry last week instead and will put the Samsung up on eBay later this afternoon. I have a few reviews I need to get written first.

We are still talking about redoing our bedroom later this spring. I think the wife and I both have different ideas about what we want so I am just going to stay out of it now. Doesn't really matter anyway as long as the bed is comfortable. I am going to end up putting a TV on the wall and make it into a small home theater. The wife seems to prefer the idea of having it in the room. That's fine, I can put on in the bedroom and another in the living room. Eventually it would be kind of cool to put some home theater seating down in the basement and set up an HTPC down there, but that may be a while. It's more of a wish list thing that is down near the bottom.

I think the wife and I have two different viewpoints about what we are going to do for our 20th anniversary next May. She wants to redo the entire bedroom. New furniture, paint, all that good stuff, and I want to spend the money on a trip to the Caribbean. Originally I was thinking Hawaii but just the thought of spending the greater part of the day in a flying coffin makes me want to hurl. Since I am the man in this household what I say goes...

...

As I was saying, we are getting a new bedroom suite for our anniversary next May, and I have looked at around 100+ different web sites and types of furniture trying to decide what I want. Or at least what the wife wants that I can live with.

Home & Bedroom furniture online has all different types of stuff to look at for the bedroom including Hillsdale Furniture. What's nice is that they have all sorts of discount bedroom furniture and for me, anything that's on discount is worth looking at.

Regardless of the type of bed that we get I do know that I want a big old armoire for my stuff. I don't have a ton of things that I really have to hang up aside from my work uniforms and it would be nice to have them all accessible right there together. As far as beds go I have been thinking about a nice big poster bed although Canopy beds are pretty cool as well.

Either way I will bow to she who must be obeyed and just go about my business as usual. It may be that we can do both, go on a nice vacation in the Caribbean AND get a new bedroom suite if I play my cards right and do what I am told...

Only one person hung me today and I have taken her off the rest of the week. Amazingly enough for a Saturday I made it home at a decent time. I even had time to stop and get ice and chips for the party. Right now I am just drinking coffee, although once the Sam Adams Oktoberfest is cold enough I will have to break into that.

Party on...

When I was growing up I remember my parents had this really cool iron candle holder on the wall. I was sort of a triangle shape with flowers and chains that ran down it to each of the arms. I'm still not sure why but that thing just brings back a lot of good memories. All of my life I have loved iron wall art, particularly sconces and other candle holders like this Bonna Wall Candle Holder.

I like candles in general anyway, so this combines two of the things I like very much. When you turn down the lights and have several candles going it looks and smells wonderful. The way that the flames and shadows dance over the gorgeous metal wall art is pretty cool, almost medieval.

After I found that candle holder I started browsing through the site and found that Wall Decor & and Home Accents has some pretty nice wrought iron decor available besides the candle holder as well as other stuff such as shelves and clocks and other architectural pieces. The old saying about your home being a castle is doubly true when it looks like one :) Perhaps I was just born at the wrong time, but I could sit around and find watching the flames play over this stuff even better than television.

If you've had the chance to come to the house you know that I am somewhat concerned about the way the yard looks. I don't want just a nicely mowed lawn. I love gardens and knickknacks around the yard as well. I have Elephant Ears and Lillies, flowering vines and other neat stuff including two goldfish ponds. That's one of the reasons I have been so concerned about the dry spell we are in. All of my plants are suffering and since my county is under a complete watering ban there isn't much I can do. When it rains I open several coolers that I have on the back deck and let them collect the water for later, but that is usually only enough for one watering.

In addition to the plants that I have growing I like flags and plaques and whirlygigs as well. Anything to brighten the yard. If I had them I would probably have pink flamingos and garden gnomes out there as well just to add color. I really want to stick this sundial out there from MailBox And Beyond...

It's a little over $60 which isn't bad at all. It also comes in weathered bronze and moss green but I like the verdigris that is shown in the picture. This thing would look great above my upper pond. I really need to do something with the area anyway, at least mulch around it. Unfortunately there isn't any grass in that area and everytime it rains anything loose gets washed down.

Mailbox And Beyond mainly sells residential mailboxes but they also have quite a bit of stuff like the sundial as well. There are a couple of really nice mailboxes over there as well, but I will have to wait on any of those for a while.

Of course they brought the mulch first...

Now I get to spend tomorrow afternoon loading fill dirt on a tarp and dragging the shit AROUND this pile of mulch to the pond area. I have it set up where the pond area is right at the end of the driveway where all of my humongous Elephant Ears are so all I would have needed was a shovel.

Stupid...

I would get to it tonight but with it being a holiday weekend all of the multi-unit managers are working supper supervision tonight which means I go work in one of my stores from six until ten, get home shortly thereafter, write some more, get back up at four thirty and drag my sorry ass in to work. One of the joys of getting promoted is actually working more hours and doing more work.