Category: Just Saying …

To catch up:

The grass sod was put down last Friday (plus a bit more on Saturday). The sprinklers are in, and watering the sod three times a day to get the roots established. Right now it looks a bit ‘stripey’, but a lot better than the weeds that were there a back in June. The border areas are still dirt. No trees yet, since you don’t want to plant the trees when the grass is getting so much water. The trees are scheduled for a few weeks from now, when they will hopefully be on sale. The first frost around here is usually in the middle of October, so they should be able to get a bit established before going dormant. My landscaper knows what he is doing, though, since he has lived in this area his whole life.

I’ve reserved an area for a garden, although it it too late to plant anything around here in Utah. I was planning on some raised boxes to use up some of the extra dirt that is left over. I went to Lowe’s today to get some lumber, but didn’t find enough good 2 x 10 x 8′ planks. Then I saw a book on “Square Foot Gardening”, which uses raised beds and sort of a high-density growing technique, rather than the traditional ‘row’ gardening. I’d heard about this before, and it looked interesting, so I bought the book (same title, by Mel Bartholomew, Cool Springs Press) instead of going to a different home store for the wood. I did pick up a wheelbarrow, though.

Since I won’t be able to plant anything until spring, I have some time to get together the materials for the boxes. The Square Foot Gardening technique looks quite interesting. Minimal weeding (almost none), easy planting and maintenance, and other things make this technique appealing. You can find details about it at their web site (www.squarefootgardening.com ). It looks interesting.

No progress on the ‘get a job’ front. Haven’t heard from the last company (the work at home gig), even though they were quite positive during and after the sit-down interview lunch. I did send them a “just curious” note last week, but no response. Oh well. Still looking.

In the meantime, I’m working on a site redesign for an old friend. It’s a bit of simple Content Management System (CMS) for the variable content. The plan is to allow the site owners to FTP an ‘article’ to a specific folder with a specific name, and then convert the text (no html code needed) to get it displayed on the page. A bit of PHP does that task. Some other tricks are used to provide a common look to all pages: the content fits in a CSS box on the main page, and a URL parameter is used to display the page template and the content. Not ready for prime time yet, but it is interesting to do, and is helping me gain some PHP experience.

The houses next door and across the street are both at the ‘finished the foundation’ phase. The next step is to pour the basement floor, I think. I don’t suppose they would appreciate some ‘concrete angels’ in the wet cement.

Really windy today! Sustained winds 35mph, gusts to almost 50mph. The wind is coming from the west/southwest, so lots of dust in the air. The dust is obscuring the mountains (about 15 miles east of my house, I think), and very dusty over the Salt Lake. The afternoon evening sun was just a dim orange/brown ball. As of 10pm MDT, the winds are still blowing, still in the 25-35mph range.

Last night there were thunderstorms all around here. When I went to bed at 11pm MDT, the storm was farther north. Another thunderstorm cell to the NW. And then about 430am this morning, we got a nice cell. Mostly cloud-to-cloud flashes, but there was one big cloud-to-ground strike that was so close the thunder sounded at the same time as the lightening flash. Quite loud. And then the wind came, blowing all day and into the night.

With the lightening, there were several lightening-caused fires. As I went outside tonight (at 10pm MDT), there was a definite smell of grass smoke in the air. Nothing nearby that I can tell, though. The forecast is for more wind tomorrow, then a few cool days in the low 80’s before back into the 90s next week.

The back yard had all the topsoil spread out yesterday. Most of it is still there; the back patio has a fine layer of topsoil dust. I ran the new sprinklers for a while to wet down the bare soil, but got uneven coverage due to all of the wind. Not sure if that was worth the effort, but it kept me out of trouble. Hoping to have the concrete edger guy come tomorrow, so we can get some grass sod put down, but I expect that won’t happen until next week.

We had Christine and all the grandkids over for dinner (Jared works evenings), so it was a bit noisy for a while. Joelle (oldest, 9) gets to spend the night. She’s upstairs watching Disney channel (some ‘princess’ show). I’m lucky that there is a TV downstairs also, so I was able to watch the season finale of “Burn Notice”, along with others that I have recorded. Last night was “Man vs Food” (Discovery channel), which is quite entertaining. And I found some airings of “Carson Comedy Classics” (Johnny Carson), which is still funny after all these years.

In the meantime, a bit of work on a web site redesign. Using PHP code for a lot of it, which is a good learning experience. I also did a bit of work on the FileHurl site (free file transfers at www.filehurl.com ). That site is working pretty well, although it has a problem with really large files (over 750mb) related to limits in the HTML POST command. I’ve been looking for a nice alternative, perhaps in Flash, but haven’t found one yet that will work with my 1GB test file (sent to my local server, a IIS7/ColdFusion/PHP server running on Windows Server 2008). Still looking, though.

Much progress on the back yard today. A crew of 6 quickly graded the yard, trenched, then finished up all the sprinklers. And there were two dump trucks of dirt delivered late in the day. They will be back tomorrow to spread the dirt and then the grass sod is next (after some concrete edging).

In the meantime, the big pile of dirt attracted three young grandsons – Liam (7), Max (5), and Dane (3). They had a bit of fun climbing all over the pile for about an hour. A bit of water from the hose got most of the dirt off, but I suspect there will be baths in their near future.

My day was spent watching the landscape crew work. And realizing that it would have taken me eight months to do what they did in about eight hours. Heck, it would have taken me 8 days just to figure out the sprinkler plan!

Lessee….work week started, but didn’t seem any different from any other day around here. I had a nice lunch with a prospective employer, where we discussed how wonderful and talented I am. (heh) Our landscaper came over this afternoon to discuss the plan for the back yard. They will be starting tomorrow morning (early) with a rough-out of the plan. It will start with removing the top 3-4 inches of sandy soil here, doing the rough grade, and starting the sprinkler system. Then the edging guy will come in with his magic concrete machine to put in the mowing strip, and continue from there. I’ll be supervising, of course, or at least watching from the patio (or from inside), trying to stay out of the way. I’ll take some pictures of the progress so that Pam will have something to scrap if she wants. It will be nice to get the back yard done, although that will require a bit more mowing.

More organizing around here; there are still boxes in the garage from the move. But I have made some progress the past week.

Lowe’s was kind enough to let me buy some more garage cabinets. They are the basic formica-covered pressboard types, nothing fancy, but are easy to put together. They are 24 inches wide and 72 inches tall, with two adjustable and one fixed shelf, and a door. Nice hardware, pre-drilled holes for those lock-down screw connectors, and well-made. I got four more to help store all the garage stuff. I got them put together in a couple of hours, and emptied another dozen boxes of garage junk.

I also picked up a 4 foot by 4 inch by 1 inch pine board, sprayed it with some off-white spray paint (found in one of the boxes I unloaded), and stuck six basic coat hooks on the board. Mounted that on the garage wall between the two garage doors. It’s use will be for winter coats and gloves that will be used when there is some winter snow to clean off the driveway and walkways. (That will be a new experience for this California boy.) I plan on getting a large and thick floor mat for that area to place snowy boots on during the winter. Maybe a small oil drip pan to catch snow melt. I’m guessing here; I suspect one of my two readers from the snow states might have some advice. Pam is insisting that I get a snow blower, as she doesn’t want me to overtax my heart with any snow shoveling duties.

Today was lawn mowing day. I just have the front yard to mow at the moment, and only got half a bag full of clippings. The lawn has never been fertilized while the house was empty, although I did spread a bit of fertilizer last week to strengthen up the lawn. I still need to do a bit of edging with the string trimmer, but that task is on tomorrow’s schedule.

I did get a bunch of cardboard boxes taken to the local recycling bin, so that helped get a bit of the garage a bit cleaner. I still have some big empty boxes, but the grandkids have been using those to play in when they visit, so those are still around. I have been saving all usable moving boxes; most are the letter/legal size (the ones you get at the office supply store). Those are available to anyone in the neighborhood that is moving, along with some bubble wrap – at least the bubble wrap that the grandkids haven’t popped.

The big ‘quit your job and we’ll give you a going-away bonus’ check came this week, so we’re going to get the landscaper to start on changing the back yard from a weed patch to lawn. It’s not going to be really fancy. There will be a garden are for some vegetables (no squash for me; tomatos and cucumbers and whatever else grows around here). The beds will be raised ones, I think. Probably won’t be able to get anything planted this year, though, due to the lateness of the growing season here in Utah.

Pam also wants a ‘meditation area’ with some flowers/bushes/trees and a garden bench perhaps with a small overhead covering. Some pavers for the bench area, I think. It will be a “Jason’s Retreat” area in honor of our late son (see www.jasonhellewell.com ). Since his gravesite is in California, this will be an area to remember him.

We don’t plan on any fencing in the back yard. Although we are in a subdivision, we are surrounded by empty/unsold lots. We plan on some concrete edging, with an planting area around the edges of the lot (and as a buffer area for the weed-strewn empty lots). Sprinkler system will be connected to the irrigation water supply. (In this area, there are separate water systems for house/potable water and irrigation/lawn/garden water. There is still a lot of farming around here (corn, alfalfa, hay mostly) that uses irrigation water. But you only get irrigation water from mid-April to mid-October (I think), and then it gets shut off during the cold-weather season.)

So, have been keeping somewhat busy, although I do have lots of spare time. We spend some of it with the grandkids, and have taken a couple of short half-day road trips to explore the area. And staying indoors in the basement during the hot parts of the day.

If your children are bored, just grab a couple of large empty boxes (appliance ones are good). Cut a door and a window in them. Give them some crayons and markers, and they will be happy for days.

At least, that’s what I have noticed. Every time the grandkids come over, they want to play with the boxes. Happened again yesterday after dinner. Even though it was in the 90’s, although they did play on the covered patio, so it was shady.

Until the wind picked up in advance of a small thunderstorm on the lake. We all had to quickly put away the boxes in the garage before they blew around the neighborhood.

As for today: mowed the lawn, and then put down a bit of fertilizer, on the advice of my neighborly landscaper The lawn has never been fertilized, although it was mowed and watered regularly until we moved in. I only got about a half-full lawn clipping bag. The fertilizer should help the lawn get a bit stronger and thicker.

I got the quarterly 401K statement today. The results were much better than before; an increase of about 11%. Much better than the negative amounts in the past 2-3 quarters.

This morning’s project was a light de-weeding of the back yard. Mission accomplished before it got too hot outside.

And then the three youngest grandkids came over. It was our job to watch them while their Mom and Dad and Aunt Stacy took the two oldest ones off to see the new Harry Potter movie. So we all went down to the basement to watch “Mickey’s Clubhouse” and play with the toys.

The dishwasher repairman came by. His prognosis was a bad water valve and control panel. Which he ordered, but he won’t be back until next Thursday. That means some dishwashing duties for me. But since there is just the two of us, not a difficult duty.

After the kids left, I did some testing of a new way to upload files for the “FileHurl” place (free unlimited file transfer service at www.filehurl.com ). Not entirely successful; it uses Flash forms for uploading, but the upload fails with an error. I’m testing it on my local ColdFusion sever – that’s the one with minimal memory, so that might be related to the error. But the Flash form might be interesting to play with a bit.