I'm Bushed
2006-05-30, 11:06 a.m.

Day 646 Weekend Recap (why I�m bushed) When the weekend started, I had no idea just how beat I was going to feel by Monday evening. Truly beat. Very pond-centric too. Worth all the blood & sweat though. Saturday morning � got in my usual big Saturday workout. Headed down to the BIL�s house to pick up Bob, who will be camping with us for the next few weeks. Home by noon � ready to start the weekend in earnest. Saturday afternoon turned out to be an easy warm up day. Planted some annuals, cleaned up the patio, putzed around a little. Looked at the pond and was vaguely displeased with how the edge had turned out. The whole slate/liner/water interface just looked clunky. Cindy had been wanting to re-do the whole edge with paving bricks. I was resisting because I couldn�t picture how the finish product would look. I was shooting for a more natural appearance � softer edges, gentle slopes. With the brick edging, the look would be a little more formal and I wasn�t sure I wanted to go that way. Anyhow � looks like I lost that debate. Spent Sunday morning at H0me Desp0t, staring at paving/wall building bricks. Settled on this �Buff� color. Loaded 140 9lb bricks from the display pallets onto a dolly. Lugged the dolly to the register, and paid up. Got a 10% discount for being a veteran. Nice little surprise there. Then moved said 140 9lb bricks into my van. One at a time. At home, contemplated moving all those bricks from the driveway all the way around the house to the pond. Lot of long trips. Ended up using my neighbors driveway and backed the van up to within 20 feet of the pond and dumoed the bricks. (Due to gardens, plantings, lamp posts, fences and general geography of my yard, I actually can�t get a vehicle to my back yard from my driveway. There are times when this sucks.) Spent the remainder of Sunday on my hands & knees, scooting under the pond liner, scraping the ground flat & level (relatively). Put a ring of bricks into the ground, draped the liner over it, then put another ring of bricks on top of that. The bricks had these nice interlocking tongues & grooves that ought to keep things reasonable secure. In the end, it came out not looking too bad. Cindy was quite pleased � so I guess I just have to accept it the way it turned out. Plus, it was pretty late Sunday afternoon and I was done playing around for the day. We knew we still wanted to extend the existing foundation plantings around the pond. Monday morning, Bob offered to buy us the plants and mulch we�d need to complete this step. So, off we go to the back yard. Whipped out the garden hose, (no, really, the garden hose) and proceeded to check out garden options. Have the edge here, curved like this? Tie it in here and there? Change the tie in points, slide the curves some, forget integrating the veggie garden? Ended up with a layout we both liked. Kinda placed the plants in our head, agreed on both types & numbers. (3 each of red barberry, golden euonymus, rug juniper and small upright junipers.) Went to the local Wal-Mart where we found all of these plants. Most were in decent shape, some were in need of rescue. Gathered up our plants, ordered some mulch. Got everything loaded in the van (again. Poor van, so abused) Worst part? When we got home, we had several hundred square feet of grass to peel up. Manually. Well, with pitch forks anyhow. By lunch time, the site was prepped (free of grass) and ready to roll. After lunch, plants got planted, mulch got spread. Things came out looking pretty spiffy. One of these years I�ll post pictures on photo bucket so y�all can see where I spend my summer hours, clipping and pruning, pampering all my plants. Changed gears, re-tilled the veggie garden, then got all that stuff planted. Over the years, we�ve pruned down what we plant to what we can eat as it comes in, or what we can easily preserve for future use. Still, it took a couple of hours to get the veggies planted. After the re-landscaping we did around the pond (son #1 was home Monday and put in a solid days work helping out), the veggie garden was easy, but still. Our first 90+ degree day of the year? Rugged working conditions. Came time to start watering the new plantings. Funny how Zach and I weren�t in a hurry to get out of the way of the sprinkler while we were adjusting the spray sweep. Felt really, really good. Finally, about 5pm we called it a day, broke down and each had a beer and a much needed shower. Man, did that feel good. The shower was good too. Might have started a new Memorial day tradition too. Smoked a turkey for dinner. Bought it back at thanksgiving time when the stores are trying to get rid of them, paid something ridiculous like $0.29 a pound. Smoking one is so easy � all the work is done ahead of time (inject marinade, season, prep the smoker), all you have to do is watch the temperature of the smoker and re-fill the wood chips every now & then. Takes about 6 hours to do a 12 lb bird. Needless to say, there will be a lot of turkey sammiches eaten for lunch this week. Back to another week of work. Lot going on this week Major deliverable tomorrow afternoon! Eeekk! Better get humping on that. It�s something another guy needs to do his part, and it will confine many of my decisions for the next couple of months. This is Both good and bad, but it�s part of the business. Commit and live with it - just do your homework ahead of time. I gotta go review my homework.

Updated stats: Weight start: 206.5 on 1/1/06 (265.0 on 1/15/05) Current weight 189.75 on 5/20/06 Target: 180 by 7/1/06 (Start of swim suit season??) Next �official� weigh in: 6/3/06

The Keep on Truckin goal: (idea stolen shamelessly from Marn�s Big Adventure) Miles at speed 5/26/06: 406.76 Miles with cooldown: 447.45 Target for 2006: 1000 miles

Weighdown Stats

VICTIM	NET LOSS	TARGET	WEEKS TO GO
Brian	4.0	14	4
Sport	0	8	4
alison	2	8	5

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