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The Rest of the Weekend
2006-04-19, 8:24 a.m.

Day 604a The rest of the story

The remainder of the weekend (Saturday, Sunday & Monday) was pretty normal. Relatively speaking.

We have a small manufactured pond in our back yard. 4 feet by 6 feet, 1.5ish feet deep. Kept fancy goldfish in it. The first winter, we tried to keep the fish in the pond, tried to keep an area free of ice & snow, tried not to feel bad when the pond was buried in 3 feet of snow.

Got 3 more fish last spring. To replace the 5 that perished over winter. Got a few more plants too. Little pond was nice last summer. Found out that two of our fish remembered their lessons on the birds & the bees. We had puppies! Two little Shibunkins � all of an inch long.

Rather than try to over winter the fish outdoors again, we splurged and bought a 32 gallon Rubbermaid storage bin (on sale, $7), an air pump and some hose (again, on sale, $12) and tried letting them hang out in the garage all winter. With no food what so ever. It worked. We still have 3 adult and two little baby Shibunkins.

Our little pond, however, didn�t fare so well over winter. Lots of leaves. Water looked like tea, smelled like ass. Where is this going? Well, a while back, I mentioned wanting to enlarge our pond. Go bigger both in surface area and depth. Expand from a measly little 4x6x1.5 foot puddle to something more like 9x12 and 3 feet deep. This weekend was put up or shut up time. Did some shopping at local nurseries & pond specialty stores. Got scared by prices. Went home, did a little on-line shopping. Got scared by more prices. Then we stumbled across this one place. Same materials, same equipment, less overhead. Prices not scary. Prices downright friendly. Ordered us a kit. Includes a 20x20 liner (sufficient for a 13x13 puddle, 3 feet deep), includes a 1500GPM pump, filter & waterfall, plumbing, start up bacteria & chemicals, winterizer kit AND assembly instructions (who needs those?)

The UPS guy is going to hate us. He is due to drop off our packages Thursday. Kit apparently comes in two parts. Part one weighs only 18 lbs. Probably the chemicals, start-up bacteria & winterizer. Part two (liner, pump, etc.) weighs in at 140lbs. Wonder if he�ll just leave it at the end of the driveway? Wuss.

Just to demonstrate my level of commitment (you pick which KIND of commitment), I, with the help of Bob, pretty much wiped out the old pond. Pumped it out, moved all the edging rocks to a nice neat pile, picked out all the plants & gravel, then yanked the liner. At least now we have a nice underlayment for the new liner.

Guess what I�m doing this weekend? Yeah, we still have 5 fish in the garage that are in desperate need of a new home. They�re not big enough to eat either, so I guess we gotta get the pond finished.

Monday, I got to stay home from work. A nice man from the local phone company came and installed DSL for us. Later, 4 guys from Dish Network came and installed the 4 room package. Two things I noticed right away: DSL is faster than Road Runner and the picture quality of the satellite signal is better than the cable signal ever was. The local Road Runner Home page that took forever to load? Gone.

Faster, less expensive, better quality. Such a deal. Bye-bye Time Warner.


Updated stats:

Weight start: 206.5 on 1/1/06 (265.0 on 1/15/05)
Current weight 195.75 on 4/15/06 (down 2 from last week!! Nerves??)
Target: 180 by 7/1/06 (getting nearer the target line again)
Next �official� weigh in: 4/22/06

The Keep on Truckin goal: (idea stolen shamelessly from Marn�s Big Adventure)
Miles at speed 4/18/06: 289.13
Miles with cooldown: 318.83
Target for 2006: 1000 miles

Might have to add a little something for the 5K training too.



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old habits - new tricks