Saturday, July 7th
Today was a long day.
First, in spite of my insistence that I should go to bed instead of writing last night, I did stay up late. I didn't write, though. I was up until nearly 3:00 finishing this week's Civ game. It was a monumental victory, but probably not worth the late hour.
I'm not sure exactly when I got up this morning. It was between eight and nine. I spent a couple hours working on our finances, plotting out a general budget through December, and then I watched AB for a couple hours while T-- went to try to find someone interested in a free kitten. She found no one.
When she got back, we discussed what we should do about the kittens, and I ended up finally checking out Craigslist. I'd heard and read a lot about it, but I hadn't actually visited before. We placed an add for the kittens on there for free (the cheapest ad in the Daily Oklahoman is $60). We're going to see what kind of results we get before spending money on it.
Speaking of which...is anyone interested in a free kitten? They're adorable and friendly, and litter box trained. What more could you want? Eh?
Around noon K-- showed up to help me with a couple projects I'd been waiting on for a while. We were going to put a faceplate in the wall for my rear speakers (they're already wired through the attic, but the wires were just hanging out of a hole in the wall), and then T-- also wanted me to hang an outdoor swing for AB. The best tree for that required a much taller ladder than I have, thus the need for K--'s help.
Also, he's got this wood saw he's been bragging about for three weeks, so I asked me to bring that along to clear some of the deadwood out of our big tree out back while he was up on the ladder.
Everything but the swing ended up being a lot more work than it sounded like it should have been, based on the descriptions I just gave.
We had some...difficulties installing the faceplate for the speakers. For a while, I thought I was going to have to call an electrician, or possibly spend a whole Saturday working up in the attic to fix the problem. In the end (for very odd reasons), it ended up being a lot less painful than that, but what should have been a 10-minute job ended up taking over an hour as we tracked down and resolved that extra problem.
Then we went out back. I have tons of overgrowth among the various trees and bushes in the backyard. While K-- started climbing his way-too-tall ladder like a little monkey (meaning "without fear"), I stayed on the ground and worked on the yard. He started on the deadwood, to get that cleared out before we hung the swing. While he was sawing away, I got out the power hedge trimmers and set to work on the mess along out back fence.
Then he took a break, and I took up the saw to cut some trunks too thick for the hedge trimmers. I fell in love.
Okay, that's a little over dramatic, but it was an amazing wood saw. It cut through live wood like nothing. We piled up all the limbs and trees (I cut down whole trees along the back of our house, to keep their roots from damaging the foundation) in a big bunch on a muddy, grassless area in my back yard, to wait for Big Trash Day (now a month away). That pile came out about five feet tall, twelve feed wide, and six feet deep. That should give you an idea how much work we did.
The difference was amazing. It opened up the yard a lot, and it's going to make ongoing maintenance a lot easier. It also gave us a clean, clear place to hang the swing, which K-- did really quickly and easily. AB's already taken a ride in it, and she seemed to have a pretty good time. There'll probably be pictures on T--'s blog any day now.
After that, our friend Julie and her man came over for the evening. We had chicken soft tacos and played Wii. They'd never played before, so we got to show off all the Wii Sports games, and then Carlos asked me to show him Zelda. Between us (after a couple hours of trying) we figured out how to catch a fish, and progressed through the puzzles pretty quickly from there. It was so funny seeing how much fun he had using the remote like a sword to control the character's sword fighting. That really was pretty cool.
And that stretched on, even after T-- went to bed, we were still playing Zelda. Fun stuff. Around 11:30 they decided to call it a night, and I reluctantly convinced myself to go for a walk (even after all that work this afternoon!). I'm home now, and my water's gone, and I've got church in the morning. No Civ 4 this time, really. No writing, either. I'm off to bed.
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