Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

I really need to get to bed, but before I did I wanted to post a quick link to this article. I caught it on Digg, via my Google Personalized Homepage.


Is Circuit City in Danger?

Movie Night was fun.

Drank some good beer, ate some good appetizers, brought way too much popcorn, oh well more for later.

Well, off to bed.

Laterz

Well, it was a bit earlier than dusk when I started, but it was definitely dusk when I finished.

The front lawn has been growing and growing with all the rain and sunshine that it has been receiving. The backyard has grown quite a bit as well, but for the most part is made up of a finer style of grass than the front yard.

Gina made a joke about how the backyard doesn't get any love. Taking this as a signal that the backyard better get cut too, I cut the backyard first. Normally I cut the lawn with the lawnmower on about the halfway height setting. However, given the height and thickness of the grass, I set it all the way at the top and still managed to choke the out chute a couple of times.

Oddly enough, the front yard's wide blade grass doesn't seem to choke the out chute as much as the smaller grass. I guess maybe it doesn't have the opportunity to clump together quite as much. Don't get me wrong, I can clog it up and choke the chute cutting the front yard too, but generally it just doesn't happen as often.

It is kind of funny, whenever I start cutting the front yard, I look at the stream of green cut grass flowing out of the lawn mower and wonder if that is what the output of a giant salad shooter would look like. Minus the carrots and radishes, mind you.

Now, I will say this, the lawns have been mowed. But I think I am going to have to go over them again tonight. Because, I did it at the tallest height and honestly at that level there are two things that suck.

1. It doesn't look as good, because sometimes the grass gets laden down with the cutting that are thrown on it, so you miss some spots.
2. It has to be mowed again even sooner.

#2 is the main reason I will do the lawn again tonight or tomorrow night, depending upon the conditions (ie maybe it will rain, or maybe it will still be 90+ degrees out).

The grill ran out of propane last night. I have a spare tank, but I never seem to have both tanks filled at the same time. Probably goes right along with my general issue about keeping gasoline in the garage, except this time the stuff is under pressure, so not only does it burn, it explodes. I think I watch too many movies where things blow up.

Anyway, I will have to get one of them filled soon, as Gina and I like to grill during the summer. It cuts down on the mess in the kitchen after making dinner and well it keeps the kitchen from heating up.

Also, I am not sure exactly what it is. But I am allergic to something that is on the lawn. I mean I think it might be that the lawn has been dropping lots of pollen. But whenever I walk through it my feet kind of itch. And after cutting the lawn I sneeze and my arms are itchy.

I guess I should just take some OTC allergy meds and quite whining, but it is weird. I don't remember really ever being itchy when doing the lawn before. The sneezing bit, well that happens to me anytime there is a lot of anything in the air, I would wager that happens to almost anyone.

Well, I best get back to work.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I think I am going to take that pole saw and do some tree trimming this weekend. Along with possibly effectively cutting down two dead trees that are in the backyard.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

Here are some pics I snapped yesterday.

Jeremy and I finished cutting up and bundling the limb this morning. I need to take some pics of the bundles and such.

I think we are going to bug out and get some lunch.

Laterz

I think that is how the saying goes.

Regardless, Jeremy and I got the last of the tree limb out of the tree.

I took up the pole saw this time and trimmed off the remaining leaf bearing branches on the dead limb. I also attempted to trim off some parts that we thought were keeping us from being able to remove it easily from the tree. A couple of pieces I cut off might have proved useful. However, given what the solution we ended up using to remove the limb, I doubt it.

Jeremy at one point was on top of the ladder pushing the tree limb up, as to dislodge it from the other limb it was sort of stuck in. However, even with me helping out we couldn't lift it high enough.

The way in which we were attempting to dislodge it, ie lifting it up, made me remember that I had some 8' (maybe 10') 2x4 beams in the garage from one of the renovation projects. We went and retrieved two of these and set about finding a good spot to plant the beams as to be able to push the limb up and out of the tree.

And with a resounding... CRASH-THUD, the limb hit the ground.

Luckily it didn't hit either one of us. Just before my thought about the beams, while Jeremy and I were messing with the limb whilst Jeremy was on the ladder, Gina had let Curly out into the front yard. Thankfully, when the limb had come crashing down finally, Gina had taken Curly for a walk around the block, we think the limb weighs a good 80-90 pounds, so it most definitely would end the life a little dog (or a knucklehead who is trying to jostle it out of the tree).

No one was hurt in the end, which is good. However, now there is a front yard full of tree limb to take care of.

I can honestly say that I am avoiding the task, as it is very HOT and HUMID out.

Jeremy and I are currently hanging out at the DraughtHouse in downtown Austin. We ate a late lunch @ Delware subs just south of here and are now currently enjoying a pint. We are going to work on John's weasel site. We will likely move from here over to Mozart's coffee house, as there doesn't seem to be any power outlets, which always seems to be the case for me.

Time to get cracking.

Laterz

Well, the weatherman says it is supposed to keep raining until the cows come home, course the cows have long since been washed away by all the rain.

Just kidding, sort of.

The weather forecast says that the rain is supposed to keep up until about next Friday.

Work has kept me busy most of this week and with Jeremy here I haven't really bothered to boot up my home PC much.

So we had a little bit of a surprise waiting for us when we got home. Gina and I didn't notice the surprise when we first got home, of course it was sort of dark by then. I wish I had gotten some pictures of the gigantic tree limb that had broken off before Jeremy started cutting it into more manageable pieces.

The neighbors tree that shades a good part of the front yard has had problems before where limbs have snapped off during storms. This one didn't fall to the ground or hit any houses, rather it hit another limb and was just teetering there. However, the limb it was teetering (and part of it still is) on is near the porch.

And I am sure that if Jeremy hadn't cut part of it off when he did, a good gust of wind would have probably dislodged it and allowed it to slide down the limb it is resting on and into the side of porch, causing some damage.

So after work on Wednesday we hit the Home Depot and bought one of those chainsaws on a pole. They really, really should check ID or give you a 10 minute training course with a pass-fail test before letting you guy such a thing.

I bought the electric one, because for those that don't know me, I don't like keeping gasoline around. I mean we did this up north kept the gas can for the lawnmower underneath this little crawl space in the back of the house. But it was Michigan, a 90 degree day is newsworthy up there.

Down here in TX during the summer you can easily have 100+ degree days for several days straight during the summer (not so far this summer mind you), so the idea of keeping a highly flammable substance in my garage or my shed, where the temperatures can get outrageously hot makes me not want to tempt fate.

So I opt for electric stuff, electric lawnmower, electric chainsaws, etc.

Anyway, so this thing is an 8" electric chainsaw on a pole that telescopes out to around 12 feet or so. Yeah this thing is dangerous, but cool.

Jeremy cut two LARGE pieces off of the limb and I dragged them towards the front of the lawn.

After we get the last piece out of the tree we will have to cut up the LARGE pieces into smaller pieces and bundle them for removal. That should be fun as I have had to cut up and bundle smaller amounts of tree branch than that and those times I spent at least a good 1/2 day.

Oh well, I will get some pics of everything when we get home.

Hopefully, it hasn't started raining again by then.

The weather here this summer has been CRAZY.

We get rain in the morning, then for a few hours it stops and if we are lucky the sun comes out, then it starts raining again in the evening and usually rains some more at night.

Don't get me wrong, I love that we aren't in a drought. But WTF, is Texas turning into a tropical climate?

Time to hit the road and head home.

Laterz