feeling the pinch?

A few of David's good finds...thought some of you might get a kick out of this...If you don't understand the first one, might be best not to ask...

dissertation movement

Today I 'presented' (using that term loosely) my dissertation ideas to the class I'm in right now. I got some really great feedback, especially from the professor, and am excited to move forward on my dissertation prospectus.

Now I've just got 2 weeks to make significant improvements in my document... argh!

silly photos

As requested, here are the silly photos of Sam

Here he got a whiff of something and was following it with his nose...or maybe he was just being snobby ;-)

I guess he got tired of sitting nicely for me...

better photos?

This morning was a pretty bright but with diffused light so I took a few more pictures of the outside. There are also some additions in these photos that weren't in the last ones.


I couldn't resist adding a photo of sam sitting nicely for me.


The back yard with Sam for scale.


Here you can see the new vegetable garden fence David installed to keep sam out of my veggies. I was going to mix in compost this weekend and hopefully plant some seeds.

This is how much vegetable garden space I have....plenty!


And here is the 'fence' we installed. Just simple metal- enough to keep Sam and his friends from escaping the yard when they play.

And here is the new neighbor's fence. You can see it stops at the back of their house, just to the left of the 2nd arborvitae.

rockery/yard

Here are a few photos of the rockery project we have been working on in our backyard.
The new rockery is in the background above. I took this photo in the morning so there are some shadows, but it gives you a sense of the scale.


The next three photos could be 'stitched' together to show a close-up of the rockery from left to right. Above is the furthest left,

this one goes in the middle,


And this is the last one where it ends. Sam looks sad on his leash, but as you'll see in the next photo, we had no other option, since we had no fence.


This is looking from our new rockery to the new house next door to us. As I noted in an earlier post, the fence has been installed now.

And this is their ginormous garage (with fake stone below the siding, just on the back side-so tacky!). I feel bad for the new owners. They will hardly have a yard at all.

fence

Apparently we have a fence now. I'm still at work, but David is at home and he said they finished the fence. Yea!

Of course, they finished the fence more than 10 feet away from the end of our house, so in order to keep sam in the yard, we will have to extend it ourselves to our gate. But, we are going to do that with some metal t posts and cheap metal fencing (not quite chicken wire, but close). So, the builder might not like it b/c it makes their house less marketable, but they are the ones who chose not to extend the fence to our house.

OH- also- I found my camera battery charger, so I'll have pictures up soon.

14.25 hours working

That's all I have to say. Long day today.

12 hours

I've now been working for 12 hours. I just got back to my hotel room for the first time since 8:45 this morning. I'm sapped. Tomorrow is a 13 hour day, I believe. I've got to catch a shuttle to the meeting at 7:15 or 7:45 am and then the shuttles back to the hotel leave at 8:15 and 8:45 pm. Forget about trying to get anything of import done after that much time. I can barely find the energy to check my email, respond to a few, and then go to bed.

don't mind me, I'm just tired and complaining. I should have tried to get some fresh air today- didn't get out the hotel for even a minute.

planted

This weekend, we got the entire back terraced slope planted, and mulched! It looks great, and we even put up a little rock border at the top, to keep the mulch in. I can't wait to see some of the plants grow and thrive.

I bought a 2' tall lilac bush. I love the lilac bushes we had in our yard when I was a kid, and I wanted to plant one of my own. I'm sure it will take awhile to become a decent size, but until then I can have good memories of mom cutting the blooms and bringing them into the kitchenette and putting them on the table. I would sit there and do my homework and just be flooded with that wonderful smell. It is addictive.

when are we gonna get on that?!

Last night when David was working outside, a 'neighbor' from who is not in the immediate vicinity came by and said hello to him. We've met her before, but no one can remember each others names.

Anyway, she was saying how she wanted a family with small kids to move into an empty house next door to her, and how she really likes kids and wants more families in the neighborhood.

Then she proceeded to give David a look and ask him something like, " Speaking of kids, when are you gonna get on that?"

I don't know if David's jaw dropped, but mine surely would have. Like it is any of her business what we plan to do about kids! We don't even know her! I think David mumbled something and waved her off.

I just couldn't believe it when he told me about what she said. I had to share it with all of you.

rock laying

the rock laying last night was successful. We (meaning David- I'm just moral support) place 6 or 7 rocks last night and made some significant progress. We just might get it done in time to plant this weekend.

YEA!

rock puzzle

David and I have been working on re-doing our rock retaining wall in the back part of our yard. David has been working on it more than I have. It is difficult. A puzzle so hard that I need grandma to solve it!

We have all these natural rocks of different sizes and shapes that were there to begin with or that we dug out of the ground when we were moving dirt around. Some are smaller than a bowling ball, others are the size of a pillow. They are all heavy! You have to find the big heavy rocks for the bottom, but you have to get them to fit together well so that they are stable. Here is a picture I found online to sort of show you what this will look like. I have no idea whose house this is. The thing is that our rocks fit together much more closely than the ones below- they fit like puzzle pieces. The only problem is that it feels like we are missing a piece. Last night we spent much of the evening trying many different rocks for one spot. We placed ONE rock last night. So much for having the rock wall done for the weekend! Well anyway- we'll keep working on it, and hopefully we'll have better luck tonight with fresh eyes.

grey goo part two

So the haz. materials guy came by yesterday and looked at the stuff with David. While he didn't know what it was, he felt confident enough to say that we could throw it in the garbage. So yea for us!

BTW- I would post pictures but my camera battery died, and I can't find my charger...I'll keep looking for it this weekend.

grey goo

no- not the kind of grey goo in M. Crichton's (spelling?) book. This is grey goo we found in our back yard last night as we were preparing our upper terrace for planting.

I called it "ooeey-gooeey stuff", which might not be all that specific, but it is descriptive. This stuff sticks to your shovel, gloves. I think we got all of it out of our yard last night. We filled about 6 garbage bags half full b/c they were too heavy to carry if you filled them more than half full. I mean each garbage bag must have weighed 30 or 40 pounds.

We found it under about 2 inches of soil and grass. In some places, it went 8 inches deep, and it spread out over an area maybe 3 feet by 3 feet (I'm not good at dimensions, so keep that in mind).

I called household hazardous waste today and a guy is going to come by our house to check it out. Even though it isn't really 'household' haz. waste, this guy got kind of excited by a "mystery" material and wanted to come out and see if he could figure it out. Worst case we have to spend a couple hundred dollars getting heavy metal tests at a local lab, after which we have to spend another couple hundred "remediating". Best case is that we can just chuck it into the garbage. I hope it isn't toxic b/c it was in the area where I wanted to plant vegetables. I may not be planting vegetables at all, depending on what this stuff is.