10/30/11 (18:52)
  • another great usc/stanford game. went to palo alto last year and saw that one, but this one was even better. stanford's defense is definitely suspect and usc's offense  wasn't as sharp as i have seen it be this year. i think oregon may be the best of the three teams and i don't think even they are that great. frankly, i think it's a down time for the pac-12. anyway, it was a great game even though it didn't turn out how i would have liked. definitely some missed opportunities, but it has me as hopeful as ever about usc rebounding from the sanctions. they finally looked good in the red zone and mcneal should be their rb from now on. tyler was never really cutting it. barkley needs another year and wasn't making the throws that he usually makes without trouble. he needs to work on his accuracy, especially downfield.
  • while in la i also ran a tv cable in the wall for my mom and visited people.
  • my dad is more or less blind out of one eye now and my mom's cousin was arrested for drug trafficking or some related crime.
  • last week i had three precancer things frozen off my forehead, guess i have to watch out for that now.
  • wednesday should be the last day of the patio work. lay down the sand, broom it in, vibrate everything down, lay down more sand, broom it clean and water it down. hopefully it goes as easy as it sounds.
  • going to watch the niner game right now.


    • 10/27/11 (19:15)

  • in my movie review for southern belles a couple weeks ago i said that that was the movie that would make me sell short netflix stock. too bad i didn't take my advice. their stock went down about 30% the other day.
  • new big boss man at work is an obnoxious micromanager. could be bad news.
  • been real busy lately. working on the patio which is a day away from being done. just need to get sand into all the cracks and vibrate everything down. yay.



    • 10/15/11 (19:39)
  • usc still isn't playing well even though they got a win against cal. no red zone offense to speak of and their defense is spotty. worked against a green qb who had a bad game, but isn't good enough for the next level competition.
  • tomorrow is a big game for the niners. we'll see if they're for real or not. their o-line will get a workout against a really good d-line.
  • worked today because of homecoming. hopefully will get a lot done tomorrow since it's my only weekend day off. hope to have the driveway all dug out and a trench done for the drain which will hook up to one of the downspouts on the side of the house. we're basically just going to get a gravel trench dug and have the water leech into the soil near the front lawn, rather than pool next to the foundation.
  • also need to do several movie reviews and there are a bunch of little projects that have been piling up.
  • next weekend sean will be in town so less gets done around the house, but he's a good worker bee so the time i spend on the house is more productive. hope to have him help put in a little retaining wall in the front yard.
  • tigers are having some problems. really they're the only team i would want to win at this point. i think the brewers are pretty much done for at this point, i don't like the rangers and i'm not a cards fan either.


    • 10/11/11 (17:26)

  • rained all day yesterday which made progress very slow. meryl stayed inside most of the day and i tried to get some stuff done for the driveway. the slab there is thicker and wasn't moving much. took the remaining pavers off the driveway and dug up a little bit of space on the side of the house to make way for the pavers as they approach the driveway.
  • here are some progress shots. i think we did a pretty good job of keeping the lines straight, especially for first timers and especially once we got past the first few sections.
  • tomorrow i'm hoping that we'll get the driveway broken up and dug up. then we can start laying the base and doing all that fun stuff again.




    • 10/9/11 (17:04)
  • got a lot done today on the pavers project. paved almost all the way up to the driveway, put in most of the edging, concrete on top of that and mulch over top of that. it's looking pretty good. tomorrow will be tedious. lots of cuts to make the house side of the path fit. also want to get the landing outside the kitchen fixed up because they had to cut a hole in the concrete when they redid the sewer lateral. after that's all done we'll demo the driveway and start the same process over again there. that'll be more difficult since there's a slope to the driveway and it'll need to be very well compacted and graded since my truck will be there all the time. after all the pavers have been laid we'll compact them all down and put polymeric sand in between them to lock them in place.


    • 10/9/11 (08:46)

  • taking off monday so i have a three day weekend to try to get the patio done. yesterday we made a lot of progress and we should be done with laying the bulk of the pavers today. then we have a bunch of cuts and some edging to install. after all that is done we'll rip up the driveway and do that section. hopefully we'll get that done by the end of wednesday.
  • are people taking herman cain seriously or do they just like him because he's funny and they want to prove they're not racist?


    • 10/6/11 (20:44)

  • tried working on the patio today. it was raining off and on most of the day, though, so that was a challenge. we got some concrete on the edging and got most of the cuts done. then a tropical storm came through and washed away a bunch of our sand and messed up our concrete work a bit. hopefully it'll turn out okay. we were going to need to get more sand anyway because we're going to end up tackling the driveway sooner rather than later. i'm hoping that we can get the majority of the patio done this weekend. we have a good system down now so i think we should be able to make good time.
  • worked inside for an hour or so as well. working on the big room. meryl is leading the charge. we cleaned up the cracks a bit and i patched a hole. going to need to do some plaster repair, another patch and more cleaning before we can paint. also we'll redo the electrical, install new lights, sand/stain the floors and probably do something around the fireplace.


    • 10/5/11 (18:16)

  • rained a lot the last day or two so that may have set us back on the patio project. hopefully the sand setting bed didn't get washed away too much. hopefully the sun is out tomorrow and we can continue where we left off. if not then we'll do cuts, get the edges secured with concrete and maybe begin work on the big room inside.
  • broke up the house pictures by year. this should make it more manageable to update as well as view. will take a day or so to get it all reuploaded though.


    • 10/4/11 (20:41)

  • should be uploading the updated pictures tonight. been fairly good about sticking to my schedule of getting the new pictures out the first week of the month.
  • sarah and eli came over on sunday and we got a good amount done. also did a bunch of cuts on my own, those took a while. hopefully the rain stops and we can work on some more on thursday.
  • took a couple days off in the last couple weeks to get a little more done on the patio as well as hang out with meryl for her birthday. we went to the zoo which is a favorite place of hers. the rest of the day we watched movies and hung out. it was raining so i didn't feel too bad about not working.
  • also went to luke's last week to get some stuff knocked off his punch list. he's in france now and renting out his house so there were a number of things that needed fixing in order for that to happen.


    • 10/1/11 (18:27)
    worked on the pavers today. we're finally done with all the prep so we started laying down the actual pavers. inch of sand, screeded to its proper slope and then lay down the pavers. we have 8 pallets of pavers, a little over 4,000 of them, along with 3 yards of sand. we may run out of sand and we've gone through 2 pallets of pavers. we got about 250 sq. ft. done today which is pretty good for a day's work when it's the first time we've laid pavers. tomorrow meryl is working for the raiders so i'll be on my own most of the day. but sarah and eli are coming by and i think we'll screed the next few sections first and then i'll have them keep feeding me pavers until it's all paved. then i'll fill in all the cuts and do the edging when they're gone since those are a one man operation anyway.