I'm All Broken Up

Well... Broken out anyway.

Last Friday, I decided to tackle trimming the bushes in the front yard, a task that Pam has been pestering me to do for some time.  So I got out the hedge trimmer, and started cutting.

One of the things about this job is that there were some vines climbing up one wall behind the bushes.  Well, I just jumped right in and started yanking them down.  Bad mistake.  It was poison ivy, and I was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt.  You can imagine the results.  By Saturday afternoon, I was breaking out on arms and legs.  Sunday, one eye was swollen partly shut.

Best of all, I started my new job on Monday.

Now, on Tuesday, the eyes are mostly better.  Legs too.  Still have a lot of dry itchies on my arms, but I'll live.

Lesson learned:  long sleeve shirt, long pants, gloves when doing yard work.

Yes yes, yell at me.  I haven't been posting on this blog with any regularity.  It's been a stressful 6 months while I was looking for work.  Well, that is coming to an end, since it look's like I'll be getting the contract with GeoMagic up in RTP/Durham.  Tentative start date is the day after labor day.

With a new job in hand, and a steady source of income more or less assured (for a while), my motivation and ability to work on household projects has increased dramatically.  As I get back to doing these projects, I hope to post about them more frequently... maybe even weekly.

Spring Is Here!

In spite of the fact that we had near freezing temperatures the last couple of nights, spring is definitely here, as evidenced by the rose bush in our front yard.  I'm going to have to trim the darn thing again if it keeps growing.

Over the weekend, I pulled out the rototiller and loosed the soil in the garden.  Kind of wish that I had the bigger model, since my little tiller barely gets more than a few inches into the soil.  Still, I could have bought the really cheap one that would have been basically useless.

I think that the current plan is to buy tomato plants this weekend.  Pam want to put in six this year.  We will probably hold off until after the toastmasters conference to put in the rest of the garden (especially the green peppers that have been growing in the kitchen for the last two months).

Monsters!

Specifically, Gutter Monster brand gutter hoods.  We finally broke down and decided to spend the money to buy an improvement for the house gutters.  Should help out the value of the house, which is the main reason to do it.  Also will help keep the pine needles and leaves out of the gutters, which normally need to be cleaned out a couple of times a year (at a cost of ~$100, since I can't get to some of them).

New Gadget For The Garage

Broke down over the weekend and bought a Drill Press for the workbench.  This isn't one of the things that was high on my power tool list, but I determined that it was going to help me do certain chores that needed doing... including getting up to work on my antenna traps (see KKRETS On The Air blog).  Put the drill together Sunday afternoon.  Now all I need to do is clean up a space on the workbench for the drill, and bolt it down.

Decorations put away

Yes, everything is taken down and packed up.  I even got most of the bins put away in the attic over the garage... all but two of the larger bins, which will require rearranging the attic storage a bit to make room.  Something else to do this coming weekend.  For now, they are sitting in the hallway outside the door leading to the attic.

Of course, the house is still a mess... plastic pine needles, etc.  And darn if the kid refuses to let me break down one big cardboard box that the tree used to go in (but doesn't any more).  We'll get there...

Christmas is over

We took down all the decorations over the weekend, and now everything is boxed up, excluding the Tree and it's decorations.  That will have to come down over the next couple of evenings.  Then all the plastic bins and cardboard boxes go back up to the attic until next year.