Training for the Half Marathon is done.

Now it's time to rest up.

I've got some painting to do tomorrow - on the house; nothing artistic, just painting the white highlights. Oh, and I need to mow the lawn and take the old garage door to the dump.

I'm on vacation.

1989-2010. Not a bad run for an appliance.

It's my fault the old Shop-Vac died.  I left it outside to dry after vacuuming up water that might have had sulfuric acid in it.  It rained cats and dogs the next day.  The watersoftener ran yesterday and reflooded the low parts of the basement near the floor drain I was trying to unplug.  I plunged out the drain, which runs fine now, and went to get the Shop-Vac to clean up the bathroom rug.  Then I remembered that I'd left it out under the eaves in front of the garage door. 

I poured about a cup of water out of the motor compartment.  I gave her twenty-four hours with the dehumidifier to dry out.  It wasn't enough.  She lasted about five seconds after I turned her on before the motor burned out.  I should have blown her out with a blow dryer first.

No time to mourn.  I still have to get that rug dry.

Mundanity of mundanities!

All is mundanity!

I spent the day picking up a shed from Menard's. Then I had to make a perfectly level spot to put it in. As the sun was setting I was screwing in the last screws in the floor.

Oh, no! That's just the first step. Now I have to put the shed on top of it.

I got my exercise loading the shed into the truck alone, hauling it from the truck to the back yard alone, loading 30 50# (approx. 44 KG* for my friends overseas) bags of gravel into my truck back at the store - this time I had help (funny, they promised to help with the shed and no one showed up, while for the gravel nobody promised me anything and there they were), and I hauled that from the truck to the back of the back yard. Alone again. (Naturally).

After that it was just nitpicky stuff - fitting the pieces together, and mastering the art of screwing their cheap-@$$ screws in without breaking them. I can't claim to be there yet.

They claim that one man can put up the shed in four hours. They neglected to mention any of what I spent my whole day doing.

My back is killing me.

*Correction in comments.

My Father-in-law gave me a power mower.

My lawn was out of control. It's possible to keep control of a lawn with a reel-mower, but not if it rains for a week in the Spring. Once the grass goes to seed, it's pretty much impossible to get a reel-mower to cut it.

God bless my Father-in-law!

It's a 1971 Briggs and Stratton motor on a True Value body. I got out of the power-mowing racket because I couldn't work on my last one. The manual said that I should send it back to the manufacturer for the problem it had. BS!! It would cost as much as I paid for the mower to ship it back to them, let alone the the cost of the repair!

I brought that thing home and cut everything on my land down to two inches high. Now, if I feel like it, I can pull out the the reel-mower and keep up with the growth, but it took the 1971 gas mower to make that possible.

Naturally, since the Weatherman predicted scattered showers

and thunderstorms, it's been simply raining cats and dogs all day. If these are scattered, they must be huge.

I can't hear any rain on the glass spires of the roof of the atrium because there are too many jovial people greeting and joking and laughing out there.

We're expecting In-laws tonight. The house is a mess. Somebody I know keeps saying that if I'll get the children out of her way, she'll clean up. I think her method is to sit in her chair and brood about how she never gets any help. Then she does laundry until her aches and pains drive her into bed. I don't know how we produce that much laundry, but we do. We always have clean clothes to wear anyway.

I play with the kids until story time, get them ready for bed and put them there. Neither of them ever gives us any trouble about bed-time.

Then, I suppose, Somebody expects me to start house-cleaning, but there's no way I'm going to begin any physical work after nine. OK, I'll fold a basket or two of laundry if you ask me to, or make a bed so we can get in it...

Oh, whine, whine, whine...

Did I mention that it's raining?

Steve reminded me of something.

We had a few difficulties of our own at easter. And I've got pictures.

Who's the first to show up when the camera comes out?


Easter Ham!


So we finally get the whole family together and what do I get?


To be fair, neither The Accountant nor I have any idea how that last picture came about, but it was too effin' hilarious not to post. Of course, the kids, who are obviously hanging their heads in shame (or embarassment for us), might have a different story (that they're not telling us).

Couldn't have had a nicer early spring day!

We went out to Wagner's Drive In for dinner this evening. The wife and I had Double California Burgers and a family-size order of onion rings. She had a chocolate malt and I had a blueberry shake. The kids had identical orders of hamburgers with Rootbeer Floats. And, of course, they shared the rings.

There were several classic cars, and a couple of those kit pseudo-classic hot-rods (that are still pretty cool), there--a black and cream '54 Chevy and purple '49 Ford...some kinda souped-up Willys (I didn't get over to that one).

Then we popped into Walmart & bought grilling supplies for the month. We do charcoal on a Weber Kettle. I have no idea why anyone would spend a thousand dollars on a gas grill. The best tasting thing I ever ate was Johnsonville Brats grilled on a Weber.

Might be why I married the wife, come to think of it.