What a day!

We just finished up Maia's 5th Birthday party and it was a blast! I didn't get any pictures, but Uncle Zack brought his video camera and, so, hopefully, I'll have some video to post soon.

The best thing about this party was that there were almost no screaming fits or crying episodes from any of the kids! Given that there were about 10 kids, that's pretty amazing.

A big thanks to all the parents and kids that came out for the day. Everyone seemed happy, and the "new" yard was apparently a big hit. So, it looks like all that work was worth it.

Now that that's behind us, it's time to gear up for Logan's 3rd birthday in about 2 weeks. Maia's theme was a "Hello Kitty Princess Party," and I think Logan's is going to be all snakes....

Should be fun :)

Diz

No time for this

Another reason I never wanted to start a blog is that I was always afraid that I wouldn't have time for it.

Sure enough, yesterday was just too packed to take the time to actually write about it. Yesterday's task list included:

• Pre-register Maia for Kindergarten


• Celebrate Maia's 5th birthday (party on Saturday!)


• Go buy Maia a new princess dress for her party


• Do various and sundry bits of work for a couple of big clients

There was a bunch more, but I've just realized that I've got to wash the new princess dress so it will be ready for the party tomorrow.

Sheesh!

Diz

Here's the finished product

OK! Here's some pictures of the yard project.

First, we have (left to right) Logan, Maia, Grandpa and Grandma helping out




Then, here's the left-hand side of the house after it's all done.




And here's the right-hand side of the house.





Not too bad at all!

Diz

Heeere's Logan

Well, I was going to upload pictures of the finished yard project, but I came across this fantastic picture of "the boy" for your enjoyment.







I was never that young or cute...

Diz

All Done!

Well, we FINALLY got the front yard project done yesterday.

I must say, I was VERY skeptical at first, but now that it's done, it looks quite nice. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can get a chance to take some.

Interestingly, most of the comments we've gotten have been about the new "rock garden" that I threw together up by the mailbox. This was just a "what the heck are we going to do with all these rocks?" desperation project that my wife was totally against. Nobody notices grass, so we usually have to point out all the new sod to people.

Heh. That'll show her.

Diz

So Very, Very Cool

Well, here's something interesting... This post comes to you from inside the OS X Tiger Dashboard, via a very nifty widget called "Dash Blog".

Just pop into the dashboard, and fire off a blog entry. It almost makes blogging TOO easy.

Diz

Finally!

Well, Tiger finally arrived yesterday at about 3pm. I've installed it on 3 computers and so far the only glitch is that my PowerBook crashed during the first restart after the install. One power-cycle later and all appears to be well.

So far I like it quite a bit. But, I haven't really used it on my main machine (the PowerBook) yet, so I'm not sure how or even if it's going to change my work habits.

One thing I did find is that Automator is quite useful. I was able to duplicate most of the functionality of a CMI that I wrote with a single Automator action. Not good for the old shareware revenue stream, but very cool nonetheless.

So, today will be spent importing mail and waiting for Spotlight to index the half-Terabyte of data that I've got hooked to my system. Which means it's back to Home Depot for more sod and a final push to complete the front yard project.

More on Tiger tomorrow!

Diz

Not quite there yet

Didn't quite get the yard finished yesterday... but we got darn close. We need about 50 more units of sod to finish it off. It's going to look quite nice I think. (I'll post pictures as soon as it's all done.)

A big thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for coming over and helping out. Other than telling the occasional person to "sod off," none of us had ever done any "sod work" before, so we were all quite surprised at how heavy a unit of sod is and how tedious it is to actually lay it out so that it doesn't look like a madman did it. They make it look SO easy on HGTV don't they?

Another thing that's not quite here yet is Tiger. The UPS tracking info says "Out for delivery," but that could be anytime between now and 8pm tonight.

Let this be a lesson to me. ALWAYS pay the little bit extra for early morning delivery. That way, you'll know when something is actually late and can then get on with your day.

Diz

The Big Finish

Hopefully, today will see the end of a landscaping project that we've been working on for almost a year now.

It was last May that my wife's cousin came to visit with an eye toward, "helping around the house." I didn't realize it at the time, but this basically meant spending my money on crap we didn't need and tearing up the yard.

Well, OK, that's a little harsh, but money was spent and the yard was torn up. The worst part is that the cousin left long before the yard work could be completed and it was left to me to do most of the tearing up.

But, today we should finish it all up. A little bit of time with the tiller, a little bit of top soil and some sod, and voila! Instant (in geological terms) new front yard.

Time to till....

Diz