Clean Fleet = Sunburn

Since we are going on a cruise in July during another shutdown at work I decided to take my shirt off while we washed "the fleet" to get some sun and not be so pastie white. For some reason I believed I wouldn't get burnt to bad. You'd think after 31 yrs I would have figured this out. So now I pretty much look like a tomato with white racing stripes. As you scratch your head trying to figure what "the fleet" is, that would be my S-10, the Silverado, the Harley and Mandy's new car, a 2008 Chevy Trailblazer SS.

Yes, sadly we cancelled the order for the 2010 Camaro. We got to drive a V6 about a week ago and while it was smooth and had plenty of power, even though we ordered a V8, we couldn't see anything. It was kinda scary actually. You hold your breath when you change lanes because you can't see anything over your shoulder or out back. Dad's truck with the camper shell, which pretty much eliminated the use of the rear view mirror, had better visibility than this. So we talked about it some. Do we wait 6 months and hope we like the car or look for something else.

So we finally decided to look for a new vehicle and luckily they happen to have this. I have to say it's pretty sweet and Mandy loves it. I won't go into the full details but since it's an SS it has the LS2 engine with the 6.0 that the corvettes and previous generation Camaro's had in it. We've yet to see just how hard it will launch. At 20 it will break the tires loose. It's almost perfect :-). If only it was AWD. It's not quite the Syclone or Typhoon I've dreamed of but it's pretty darn close.
Here is the 2nd night we had it home. It only took 4 hours in the dealer to try and give them the money the night before!


Here is the best 3 looking vehicles we have. The S-10 still looks better from a distance.


I thought this looked pretty cool since you can see the reflection of the Harley in the SS.

Southern Living and Hockey Playoffs

Now I did take some pictures after we got the mulch down but I figured it would look better if we had the before and after side by side in the same post. We've been told excellent, wow, best in the neighborhood and even "it should be on the cover of Southern Living". That last one might be a stretch but I'll take it none the less.

Before:


After:


Flood now you SOB! I covered the drain entry point with 6 bags of pond stones. This allows the run off from the house to slow down before entering the drain. I was then able to cover this with the edge stone. I did have to put a temporary stone down to keep the sand from the driveway from entering my drain. You can also see about half the stones gone.


Here is the other side after we moved some shrubs around and planted some new stuff. Those are marigolds, inpatients to the sides and a hosta to the right with a Mickey Mouse Gnome rain gauge hiding back there too.

I will also add it was the NHL Eastern Division playoffs and the Carolina Hurricanes were playing Pittsburgh for the semi-final round to get to the Stanley Cup playoff final round. Tradition is players and sometimes fans don't shave during the playoffs and it has since been deemed the beard-o-thon. The players and fans often raise money for charity during this time. Since I was off anyway and doing manly dirt digging things I figured I'd let the facial hair go wild and see what I could get in a week or so. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had to trim it since it got pretty fuzzy. So here is out before and after and my dramaticly cool hockey playoff beard. I swear I didn't pose for this Mandy just snapped it.

More and more edging

Laying these edging stones is not rocket science but it takes time. The first row always sucks and takes forever. It was literally one full day just to get the first row laid so we didn't take any pictures that day. Sure we ran to Lowes to get some plants and skip out on the hot part of the day but we were still leveling at 8:30 with the flood lights on and that counts as a full day.

So here the first full row is and nice and level, back filled and fully stabilized ready for the second row to start.

Bam, no waiting for the blog readers. Instant gratification. Here the second row is. It only took about 2 hours to get down. Then came the fun part. All that dirt that didn't go back in the drain had to go some where. That somewhere was the flower bed area we've now defined. Except all the clay we pulled out of the corner of the house. That all got tossed into the truck to dump on a unsuspecting country road somewhere. We got it all moved, level some spots in the yard and gave a full wheel barrow full to my neighbor since he said he needed some.

As you can see from the smile we enjoy this part. It means we are basically done and all the neighborhood people will quite sneering as they walk by and start actually speaking to us again. Mandy is planting and transferring our newly purchased plants.

It was all going pretty smooth. We were able to go and buy a cubic yard of mulch to cover this side and some other spots on the other side that needed dressed up some. We didn't to plant the smaller flower until the much was down with the fear of killing them. So we took our time. I was water our new flower beds and Mandy was patting the last bit of mulch around her last marigold. Then drop, drop, gush! The flood gates opened and we got soaked. My truck was in the yard with the windows down so I jumped in it and moved it and rolled those up. Mandy headed for the garage. I got my rain jacket to clean up the tools etc. It was at this point, we decided to call it an evening at 9pm in the rain.

Edge stone

I seriously should buy stock in the Pavestone company. We had to order a full pallet of edging stones (because Home Depot and Lowes decided white was not the "in" color this year) and had them delivered. This saved a lot of hassle but cost about $50 to deliver them. It was worth it. Back to the "half ton truck" problem. These were over a ton per pallet and I would have just had to manually unload each one, then reset them in the ground anyway. Might as well deliver them and save my back/hands the workout.

We were pretty pooped about the Freedom drain. So we didn't get a lot done the next day. We did however get a game plan. I bought a matic and went to town. It cleared a nice 8" wide, sharp edged trench all the way down our lawn. Then we got the stakes and string out and leveled it. It doesn't look like much but after those first days of the drain, this was it for today. We ended it with a nice Harley ride to blow off the dust.

Freedom drain follow up

OK, so from the first day forward we pretty much worked ourselves to complete exhaustion. So the routine was get up, eat, work, lunch, work, shower, eat, bed. There's not a lot more to say.

We put down landscape cloth to keep the dirt out of the drain, 1.5 cubic yards of gravel in the ground with a 4" -47' long drain pipe. Then we had to cover that with dirt then put the semi-salvageable sod on top of that and try to get it all level. Every shovel of gravel going in the trench was a shovel of dirt that wasn't going back in so we knew we had a lot of dirt to do something with.

So here is my poor truck with only a half cubic yard of gravel in it. It's squatting a little. If it was an entire yard I would have been doing wheelies on the way home since it would have been over a ton.

So here you can see half way through. I know, terribly exciting isn't it. You can kinda look at the landscape cloth and tell it's pinned into the side. Well we took a bunch of coat hangers and cut and bent them up to make those. All in the details and we frequently forget about the details. So we had to stop and make 60 or so of these.

For the final slope I dug a nice big deep pit and filled it with gravel for the water to dissipate back into the ground. I say deep because it was pretty deep. I'm 6'-3" or so on a good day without a hair cut. It was plenty deep.

OK, a little landscaping humor there. It's not quite that deep but it was over 24" deep and about 3' wide.

Here is where the main collector will be. This catches all the water from the driveway which is the primary culprit.

Here we've covered everything back up. As you can tell with some careful work, you can hardly tell where we even were.

Several updates 3/3 (french or freedom drain)

We've got this horrible drainage problem and have since the house was built. Was I smart enough to have them correct it, of course not. Am I crazy enough to dig a 12" wide x 18" deep x 47' long hole in the earth. You bet!

There's not really to many details to figure unless you come see it yourself but the half of the front of the house and half the garage all drains off one down spout to this corner. The driveway slopes here and the yard is also pitched toward it. All this makes for a very shallow swimming pool or a very wet yard. So after we got past the standard, "you don't know what your doing, this will never work" bit we finally got in a rhythm. Trying to salvage the sod was the worst part. Man that sucks. After that it was pretty easy short of calling each utility company and telling them we already had the lines marked, now just tell me how deep and all of them saying, "oh, we don't know, hope you don't hit it". The gas company actually came out and he was pretty cool and gave us more info than any of the separate utilities did. So we dug slow in those area and now we have to go under the cable and phone line which was only 6" deep. Pretty sure code is 24" unprotected not that I'd know or anything.

We made good progress this morning considering it was 40 something when we woke up so we just slept the morning away instead of getting out in that weather. Once it warmed up we went to the Home Depot and dropped some cash on some new tools. So technically we haven't spent anything on this project. Tools do not directly relate to the cost of the project since they can be used for many project, many more times.....yea, Mandy doesn't buy that either. We'll be getting up tomorrow and getting some stone to cover this bad boy with, then some corrugated pipe, then more stone, then landscape fabric then pile all that dirt back in there. Ah, good times.

I know your looking at the title wondering what the hell am I talking about now. My buddy Andy informed me it's called a Freedom drain, not French because of the whole war french/freedom fry thing. Casey pointed out the drain is being snooty to me so it must be a French drain. None the less, we still have a full pallet of edging stone to lay down when we are done. Aren't these weeks we have off supposed to be fun and easy?!

So here is our victim. We somehow manage to never get the completely undisturbed pictures. You can see where the utility lines are marked and the string and stake mark our position.

Here we are after a good start and me a water break. I've yet to understand how I don't go rent a skid steer every time I want to do something like this, I mean, I do get a discount.

Here is the end of the ditch, sorta. This is pretty much as far as it's going at least. We still need to get the slope right and I've still got several feet to of earth to move at this point. We'll get it.

Mostly done. We actually had to add some fill back in and remove some in other places to get the grade right. I think Mandy was heading for China underneath the phone line. She was determined to find that thing. Turns out, its right at the depth we need to be at. Slight adjustment mid stream, nothing new. Hopefully tomorrows pictures will be of grass back on the pile with 2 shovels in the ground and all will be done.....hopefully.

Several Updates 2/3 (Mandy's Grandma)

Mandy's grandma passed away late tuesday night. She was 95 and would have been 96 on May 18th. She was a very sweet little old lady and from what I hear was quite a cook. I didn't know her all that well as she was well into her 80's when me and Mandy got together though we did visit when ever we came in. I don't remember all the details but I do remember she had 17 great-great-great grand kids! The church was full and it was just realitives!

Funeral's are always a crummy time but after the scare in March I think a lot of the family had come to accept the inevitable and had basically done a lot of grieving already. However that doesn't make it any less sad.

On a positive note, you do get to see some family, weather you want to or not. I was introduced to everybody and for the most part I nodded and agreed politely. Some I knew or had heard enough stories that I thought I knew them. Considered the circumstanceds it was a good trip in to WV and most if not all the stress is removed from Mandy's family.

So since most every picture must feature me, here I am sitting behind the picture. Left to right is Mandy's sister Julie, Mandy and Julie's step-daughter Keisha. On the left in the back is Richard, Mandy's cousin. Me and Mandy picked him up in a snow storm on his way from PA to WV while me and Mandy were in college and I still had dad's 4x4. We all 3 distinctly remember that night. The woman on the right behind the pole I honestly can not recall and Mandy has went to bed. I'll go out on a limb here and say cousin.

Hear is Mandy and Julie again with their cousin Marvin. He's a tall drink of water. Keep in mind, like Ron White says, I'm 6'-2" to 6'-3" depending on what gas station I'm leaving. I look up to him. In that family its a rarity. Mandy had told me he played baseball but when I got to talking to him turns out if was semi-pro baseball. I was quite impressed. This picture was shortly followed by him squatting down (to be funny I thought) then picking both Mandy and Julie up and he never once grunted or winced. I got that picture on his camera and hope to get a copy of it because it was funny.

Several updates 1/3 (Dog Sitting)

My neighbors took a short vacation and line up pretty much everything then at the last minute realized they forgot to do arrange to do something with their Alaskan Husky, Apolo. Now let it be known, I love a dog. One of these I'll probably have one but we are gone a lot and work late sometimes and I don't think it's fare to keep them cooped up all day nor do I trust them to roam the house, thus, no dog (we have fish).

So they normally let him out in the morning, put him in a cage in the garage and let him out when they kids get home and he's pretty good. So first day we came home, let him out and I played with him a few hours and he was good. I put him up at 10pm and went on about my business. The next morning I drug myself out of bed at 6am and stumbled across the yard. I opened the garage and at 6am even I realized, something smelled a little off. Oh yes, Apolo has done his business all the place and in his little cage, this means all over him. Great, now I know why I don't have a dog. So I got a hold of his collar and held him down low so he wouldn't jump, I didn't want pooh covered paws on me. I took him out back and tried to wash him off the best I could with no caffeine in me. I then proceed back to the garage to get the cage and wash it out. I didn't like it but I couldn't put him back in that. So about 5 mins in began the throwing up. Not Apolo, me. Yes by 6:15 I'm throwing up in the neighbors yard what a day this will be. So I put him back up around 7 and all was well.

Came home, same story except worse. This was to the point me and Mandy had to tie him up and bath him. He smelled much better when we were done. This time we let him stay out until like 11:30 and I walked him around some to try and run anything out of him. The neighbors sent me a message asking how he was, I replied you've got a clean cage and clean dog now.

So help me! 6am and if he wasn't covered in it again! What the hell, he seriously can't hold it for 6hrs?! So we cleaned him up again. Let him run the back in the cage at 7. Off to work thinking about the poor little shitting machine I'm trying to take care of. Came home and thankfully he was mostly OK. Still need the cage cleaned but he wasn't covered like before. Still hosed him off a bit and played with him several hours. This is when I think he realized I was a friend trying to take care of him. He'd greet me with his ears all down and "sorry I shit all over the place" look. None the less he was OK.

The neighbors came home later that night and I now have added dogs to the list of things I don't need but need somebody else to have so I can play with them. This includes kids, dogs, campers and boats. Since he was playing good we got some pictures with him. So here is some pictures of my neighbors dog that made me throw up.

coat rack finished

look out, scott finished a project and it only took 4 months.

as you can see here this is my finished coat/helmet rack. it holds 4 helmets across and 4 heavy jackets. the coat hooks are harley brake levers held up with push rods and p-clips. i dressed it out with timing covers from 4 different generation of bikes and add to other covers to side. its high enough i won't hit my head but mandy can't reach the helmets. however, as she pointed out, she won't need them without me :-)

Camaro launch party

went out to the big camaro unveiling tonight at hendrick chevrolet. they had the actual #0001 production car that is rick hendrick's. they had the #0099 car i sat in and took pictures but they also had the pace car from richmond last weekend. the rubber was still there, how cool. unfortunately i only had my camera phone. so here you go.

crazy weather

we are having some crazy weather this evening. we are about 20 miles from raleigh and 12 miles from our work in cary and they are reporting tornadoes. we, on the other hand a just sitting comfortabely watching the news.

post paint

so here is the project after paint. i still have to put the coat hanger and dress it up a bit. i went tot the local harley shop and got some misc parts to make the rest. i've already polished brake levers and push rods to create the hangers. then i have timing covers to dress it out a bit. it will be done eventually.

so i've decided to make a coat/helmet rack. its a little hard to explain at the point but it will have a set of stripes and be able to hold 4 helmets and coats.

another pic of inferno orange in the sun.

2010 camaro

here we are sitting in our new car. notice mandy is on the wrong side, the drivers side. there that little details of actually ordering, delivery and paying for it but it will look just like this one.

Jimmy Buffett in Concert SummerZcool Tour

Fist off if the pictures suck give me a break. We bought this camera yesterday with the sole intention of taking it to the concert. Our old point and shoot lived a good life but it was time to move on. So we got this nice little Canon A1000 IS. Seems to be a good little camera but I found out this morning it has no Tv, Av or M modes. If you scratching your head wondering what that is, you probably wouldn't miss them.

OK, so back to the concert. We had some awesome seats and you can see from my cell phone pic below. We were 9 rows back, almost dead center. Closer is cooler but we could see the entire stage which is what you really want. No sore neck from looking up the entire time either. I've been fortunate enough to have front row tickets a few times and while it is pretty awesome. 8-15 rows back is the best spot by far. All in all this was a great concert experience. We got parked pretty quick, not to bad of a hike, snuck the camera in with no problems, only a little beer spilled on me and no flat tires or wrecks on the way out. Funny, I now consider, "a little beer spilled" perfectly acceptable like its supposed to happen.

So here's about mid show Jimmy and Mac sung "Come Monday" with just the two of them and acoustic guitars. Very cool.

I don't recall the song but it's a good picture.

Fins up, fins up! It's really hard to explain going to a Buffett concert. You just have to see it to believe it. So here we are at the start of a feeding frenzy.

I tried not to make this too shaky but I like it. Fins to the left, fins to the right. You get the idea, just push play.

They took a quick break after this one like they always do. The lights went out as usual and this huge security guard came down the aisle in front of us which we found off because there was really nothing going on. He gets this little girl, maybe 7 or 8, that was on her dad's shoulders and had been singing every song word for word all night. The security guard gave her something. Oh wait, it's Jimmy's flip flops that are now autographed! Holy crap! Everybody around her was pretty excited for her and she knew exactly what she had. When Jimmy came back out he looked right at her and give her the thumbs up as she waved the flip flops back and forth. How awesome is that. I'm watching for them on Ebay.

One of the last songs, The Beatles - Yellow Submarine. Yes, you get to hear just about anything you can imagine at a Buffett concert.

So he finished with "He went to Paris" which is a favorite of pretty much everybody. Just him and an acoustic guitar on stage. It's 1am and I really wish I could do it all over again tomorrow. Never fear though, ZZ Top and Aerosmith are touring together this year, Metallica is coming sometime, Mandy won tickets to two different other shows and who knows who else we'll see this year. Sometimes, it's just good to be me and I am thoroughly glad I am.

Please don't say manana if you don't mean it

A quick video from my phone that sounds terrible

freakin' sweet seats!

fencing

here is me and my neighbor working on his fence. this was wednesday, we still don't quite have it done, but we will eventually.

working on mandy's car tonight. her door lock actuator went bad. this car is possesed. you mention trade or sale and something happens to it. hopefully this will be the last $57 we spend on it.

Saturday

We managed to get everything checkout and made it to AK on time. Lots of people here for a Saturday, well, any day. The Expedition Everest walk is pretty much the same as the Soarin' walk so I won't bother you with this. Mandy jumps in the fast pass line again while I anchor the main line. She takes longer than I do so I got back out of line then she got fast passes. Back to the back of the line to ride first thing in teh morning.

Hum, this doesn't look good. Why is the track torn up? Whats up with all the prayer clothes and why is this girl in front of me looking backwards? Expedition Everest is awesome. If you hunt my post back to 2006 January you'll see we got to ride it the day it opened. It's unlike any ride we've ever been on and loads and unloads crazy fast. We've never stood in line more than 30 mins for this one.



Scott: scary gritty teeth face. Mandy: happy nerdy girl is school face. I don't know she was just off on her poses this trip. Have to work on those.



Cats doing what cats do best no matter the size, sleeping. We have some other pics with one asleep on it's back batting it's huge paw in the air like a twitch. Too funny.




Favorite ride pic. Oh yea, thats right, I'm the man and I'm coming our of the bathroom. Look out world, here comes Scott and he's relieved and has clean hands thanks to Brawny (see other post).




It's Tough to be a Bug. But wearing these dorky glasses is easy.

Post fast pass Everest pic from the Disney photographers. It seems I'm not the only one that can manage to get that darn mountain not to wash out and over expose.

We went to see Festival of the Lion King since we hadn't seen it in a while. After the opening song the performers walked off and the manager of the show announced they were having trouble and this performance had been cancelled. They did however let us have a meet and greet with the cast. So I got my picture made with the tumble monkey's.....I'm the one in the middle if you must ask smart asses. These guys are great. They are gymnast by every sense of the word. It's a great show to catch, when it's not cancelled.

I don't know her name and don't even know the part she plays but she is a beautiful singer. I don't honestly know but I swear it's the same woman we've seen every time since 2005.

Flame tree BBQ. How I do love the sandwiches. The seating, not so much. "Sure little middle schoolers, sit down with us, we weren't enjoying quite time enough, just take these seats. I clearly don't give a damn!" It is cool, they have paper straws here for the tree huggers.

So we knocked out Animal Kingdom by 1 and went back to the studios so I could take back a shirt. Sure Scott, get a Large shirt, you've only been wearing an XL since 7th grade, maybe today will be different. Idiot me. So we had to return this one so I could get my TK-421 shirt to fit. If you have to ask, never mind. This is our last shot with the good camera from our trip. Somehow I managed not to take any more at all.

Everything after getting our bags and getting on the Magical Express pretty much sucked. There was this needy, crying family behind us on the bus, same family in the check in line for Southwest, oh and wait, they are on our plane. How nice. It poured the rain so hard the pilot asked the flight attendants to be seated. Got wet luggage, my bag got searched (flowers in the suite case much look odd), we got drenched since it was pouring in Raleigh. We finally made it home a little after 10. We upgraded our tickets to annual passes since we'll be back in December. Had to rebook our December trip to take the tickets off that one. People, I've done my part to stimulate the economy, it's somebody elses turn. You can find me playing XBOX360 on my new TV or looking at my pictures from my trip. I'm done.