Home Improvements

swissdrunkfooltour, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

After receiving a tax bill that made our hair curl, and then looking at our maybe too ambitious home improvement projects slated for this year, Jon and I decided to cancel our 10 year anniversary trip to Puerto Rico. We are going to use the vacation time ( and money ) to help get some of these projects done.

We have all ready had the side fences in the back repaired. They look almost brand new! The bill = ouch.

The trim around the house has been repainted a darker color - I'm not completely sold on the color but it beats the worn out yellow it has been. The bill = not so ouch but still ouch.

The columns on the porch have been replaced. The bill = ouch.

The vines that covered the back fence in our yard have been completely removed along with some small trees and varying weeds. The bill = ouch in the sense of that poison ivy makes you all itchy.

We now have gutters in the front, hooray! And it was so rediculously non-ouchy I'm very sorry we didn't have it done when we first moved in. We paid someone to do it and it cost less than $300.

Still to do: Repairing the concrete around the pool (big ouch), replacing the back fence to something people can't see through now that the vines are gone (moderate ouch), adding a sprinkler system to the front lawn (moderate ouch) then sodding the lawn (a huge honking ouch).

So I took one of the saved vacation days yesterday and prepped the area in front of our house for new plants. I'm determined to have a damn hobby so it's going to be gardening.

First thing I did was attack the area ( 32' by 5') with a mattock. You want to get in shape? Swing one of those puppies for a couple of hours. I managed to loosen the very clayey soil and murder many earthworms. I then mixed the topsoil with about 12 bags of humus to make the area more hospitable for plants. That was a lot of raking and howing.

I know, you are saying why the hell didn't she just rent a rototiller? 1) Noise, and 2) it's my damn hobby.

After a quick nap I made my 2nd trip to Lowe's and tried to decide on some plants. I ended up with 2 gardenia bushes, 3 hostas (I love hostas) and a leland cypress tree. I still have to plant my hostas. The area, because of the bigassed oak tree in the front yard, might not get enough sunlight for the gardenias to bloom (and that would be a damn shame) but the hostas will be happy. The cypress tree is for the very end of the area and it gets plenty of sunlight. I still have to lay mulch down.

I should have taken another day off to buy and plant some more stuff, plus I have to lay down some mulch, but I decided to go into work today to get some rest.

This photo from Switzerland a couple of years ago is here because we have a houseguest. Mic, the dark haired gent on the left has been here for the last 2 weeks. He's helped remove some of the stumps out back and he's cooked dinner occasionaly. My kind of houseguest! He is one of the friends Jon base jumps with and he's here getting his skydiving tandem rating.

Photos of home improvements soon come.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I have admitted before that I like the original CSI. While television series I consider far better are being axed left and right, CSI TOS (and I wish that were original with me) is in its 9th season and I don't think it is suffering from the absence of William Petersen, Jorja Fox*, or Garry Dourdan. When Petersen left, Laurence (Cowboy Curtis) Fishburne came on board and to be honest, the series is just as enjoyable and as much a guilty pleasure as ever.

So my dedication to the series was rewarded in spades when I watched the last episode. Some t.v. producer was murdered, ostensibly because he had the gonads to take a beloved ancient science fiction series and re-visualize it into something more realistic and darker. The CSI team is viewing a video tape where the victim is premiering a clip of the re-imagined series to a bunch of geeks avid fans at a science fiction convention. The audience watches the clip and then there's a few moments of utter stunned silence. Finally one long-haired bearded geek gent stands up, points at the guy, and yells "YOU SUCK!!!" at the top of his lungs and chaos ensues.

The yeller is a cameo by my beloved Ron Moore, who was responsible for the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, and that was the best META MOMENT EVER and forever amen.

*Jorja Fox is involved in my 6 degrees from Kevin Bacon. Really! My brother (1) had a room-mate(2) who dated Jorja Fox (3) who was in Memento with Joe Pantoliano (4) who was in The Fugiti ve with Tommy Lee Jones (5) who was in JFK with (TAA - DAA) Kevin Bacon!

What I'm Watching

IMG_2618, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

The television season is winding down, if that even has any meaning any more. I saw the season finales of two of my three favorite shows, and in both the case of The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Life, I most likely have seen the last episodes ever.

Spoilers below for these two shows:

The finale of SCC is a total mindfark, and I thought it a great ending if that's what it is. John Connor travels forward to sometime after the war starts, and meets both Kyle and Derek Reese and neither of them in this timeframe have ever heard of a John Connor. There's more to it but that was most painful and appropriate. Sarah is back in the past and she promised John before he disappeared that she would keep trying to stop the war. She failed again, obviously.

I loved the season ender for Life and I will miss it. It still might be renewed but I'm not holding my breath. Not everything made sense or was neatly tied up, but it was emotionally satisfying ending. Charlie Crews demonstrating to Roman Navikov exactly how he survived 12 years in prison was especially whoop-worthy.

I still have more Fringe and Lost. There are rumbling that Fringe may be axed (no! I <3 mad scientists!) but Lost is guaranteed one more season. Don't even ask me about Dollhouse.

Gravity Wave! Plus non-sequitur photo

Chillin in the Wagon, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Sunday night the wind blew so hard (60+ mph) over 40 trees, all of them tall pines with shallow root systems, were knocked over at the park near our house. Two pavilions were destroyed and the park is closed until the guys with chainsaws can do their work. Since the park wasn't the only location with felled trees they have their work cut out for them.

We suffered one broken branch in our oak tree and I'm glad we had the thing cut back substantially last year.

So the weather phenomenon that caused the mighty wind is called a gravity wave, which sounds like something evil out of a cheesy science fiction movie. But here's a definition from the page I linked to:

What is an atmospheric gravity wave? Coleman explains: "They are similar to waves on the surface of the ocean, but they roll through the air instead of the water. Gravity is what keeps them going. If you push water up and then it plops back down, it creates waves. It's the same with air."

Kindle 2!

Kindle 2!, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

What I'm watching / reading:

On prompting from several people (including my brother Ed who assured me that the scriptwriters find excuses for Tahmoh Penikett to walk around shirtless every other episode) I finally started watching Dollhouse. The idea of people's minds being wiped and then implanted with skills and personalities to order is intriguing and there are lots of fun ethical ideas to play with, but the first episodes were kind of bland considering it is a Joss Whedon show. But with each episode I'm liking it better. I have only last Friday's to go through.

Which means I saw the episode where every one is affected by that hallucinogenic drug - there were some great Whedonisms in there, like Topher and Adelle sharing his stash of inappropriate starches. Speaking of Adelle I'm so glad Olivia Williams is in this show. The few movies I've seen her in she hasn't really been asked to act much (The Sixth Sense, Below, Rushmore), but now she really has a chance to show her stuff. And she gets to keep her accent! Nifty!

So we've met Sierra, Victor, and Echo, and we know there's and Alpha out there somewhere. Is there a Charlie, Mike and Romeo? Who is Juliet? Do the other dolls make fun of Foxtrot, Golf and Hotel? Have they avoided naming any of their African-American dolls Zulu? Or Yankee, for that matter.

But I digress: Lost is most excellent lately. Jack is still a douche, but I'm liking Kate's progress lately. And Hurley is the man, driving Miles batty with his total inablility to get time travel.

Life is down to one episode, and most likely the last episode ever. It has suffered lately becuase of Sarah Shahi's pregnancy - I joked with my brother that at least the writers didn't have her kidnapped by aliens, but since she was kidnapped and Roman seems to be involved it looks like I was wrong. Shahi's replacement, Gabrielle Union is a find. She plays well against Damian Lewis and if I get my wish of a third season, I hope they keep her around.

The last episode was great, or total win as the kids today say. A politician's wife is shot and some of the suspects are gun manufacturers. I detest gun-control screeds in television shows where someone gets shot in every episode so I was afraid. But the writers steered clear of any stupid gun owners = redneck stereotypes and in the end the story was about politicians who like to manipulate issues to get or remain in power.


I've kind of splurged on my Kindle: I read John Birmingham's first Axis of Time novel, Weapons of Choice. It's about a not-too-distant U.N. Navy task force that is going to do some operations in Indonesia when an experiment sends them to 1942 somewhere near Midway. I know, it sounds like a bad movie starring Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen. I have never faulted someone for taking a good idea that someone used badly and re-working it as long as they do it well. Otherwise I would never have watched Battlestar Galactica. It's a fun, pulpy novel with some horrifying moments, like the fleet from the future (mostly American and British) fighting tooth and nail with the American Fleet on the way to Midway and both damaging the crap out of each other before they realized who they were fighting. Some of the 'character' moments were hilariously over the top, but still I ripped through the novel.

I finally read Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass and I can safely say though I already knew this that the movie version blew chunks.

Dad found a hot dog

Dad found a hot dog, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Sheesh, I had better update! Nugget time:

I am suffering BSG withdrawl. I don't, incedentally, think the BSG ending was perfect. Far from it, actually. It's wierd, the ending of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was more intellectually satisfying, when Buffy was freed from the Slayer curse without having to give up her powers. But I was emotionally meh. I have a huge intellectual problem with the ending of BSG but emotionally I was devastated. Odd, huh? At least it was better than the ending of the X-Files.

So now I guess Lost is my favorite series. I'm still watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Life, but I have a sense of doom about those two shows. I have yet to watch an episode of Dollhouse but I will get to them soon.

Jon bought me a Kindle 2! Photos soon come. I am addicted to it of course.

Last Tuesday, for the first time in my life, I had an allergic reaction to something I ate so severe that I went to the emergency room. That does *not* constitute an Old Person's Disease Bingo because plenty of young people have bad reactions to food. It was just wierd that I had one so bad! Usually I get a little itchy on the roof of my mouth at the most. I'm not sure if it was the tilapia or the catfish.