When we moved into EGB, in January 2001, we had to start mowing right away. They planted winter rye grass along with the Bermuda. Buying a house depletes you of cash, so I went the cheap route and bought a Black & Decker “Grass Hog” electric mower. I know me – I hate having to go get gasoline before mowing. The mower ended up working great, and we got 4 1/2 mowing seasons out of a $169 investment. Today it finally died just as I was finishing up the back. Electrical smoke started coming out of the spot where you plug the extension cord it – I guess there was a short. I could probably fix it, but I have already fixed this mower a couple of times and brought it back from the brink and now it’s time to let go.
Let There Be Light
Last night I finally installed a fluorescent light in our garage. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time so that I can see well enough at night to work on projects and find tools. The light kit cost a mere $18.95 and you could tell. Step one of the directions should have read “go back to Lowe’s and buy two toggle bolts.” The clear plastic cover over the lights doesn’t fit – not even close, but currently it’s staying up there. I fully expect to see it on the ground soon. But all in all, I’m happy with it.
The Origins of EGB / Travel Plans
In my last post I made a reference to EGB. That might have made some of you scratch your heads. EGB refers to our house, on EaGleBend Lane. We adopted that name for our house some time back because of our love for travel and because of my tendency to refer to cities by their airport code (EYW is Key West, for example). The FAA currently is not using the code EGB, so if anyone ever wanted to get me a really unique gift, perhaps the FAA would be so kind as to officially designate my house as EGB. Hopefully that wouldn’t cause planes to land here.
So far I have only used 1.5 days of my 16 vacation days per year. I receive 3 weeks and 1 personal holiday. It’s kind of a nice feeling, given that 1/3 of the year is already behind us. We have been talking about the possibility of a motor home type trip with Bobby & Ian late in the summer, and very soon we will need to go visit Tim & Kate. That will be a long weekend, and there may be some other long weekend trips in there too, perhaps to SFO or ATL (San Francisco or Atlanta).
Meet the Cachers
One of the things I did on Saturday was place a new cache. This one is a night-time only cache that uses reflectors to lead you to the final cache. I have been wanting to place a night cache for quite some time now. The problem was finding the reflectors. I looked at Wal-Mart and similar places but finally had to send e-mails to the people who had used these small reflectors before. They answered “Academy” and then that same night, Bobby, Ian and I ended up going night-caching and found one that contained as a prize a pack of 50 of these trail reflectors! Yay!
Inconvenience Store
Saturday was spent doing political things like putting up big signs and planning strategery (thanks W!). About 3 I got home and printed off clues to go geocaching with the dogs. We all had a great time. I’ve gotten 83 caches now and I’m only 7 away from having all the Frisco caches done.
I took some water for the dogs in a squirt bottle like usual (they love to drink it that way – it’s refreshing, and it’s fun!) but I didn’t take something for me. I decided I would splurge and get a soda, a Coke C-2 was what I wanted – that’s the one with half the sugar/calories. I pulled into a convenience store that used to be branded Mobil, and I won’t buy from them or Exxon for a variety of reasons. Now it’s branded Shell so now I can stop there.
Phones Are Good
The telephone in our house pisses me off. It almost always rings while I’m in the middle of something, like taking a nap or preparing meat (and therefore having yucky hands). Plus, it’s almost never for me. Sometimes I don’t even bother looking at Caller ID unless it rings more than twice. And I guess I’m getting old, because if the phone rings after 10 pm I think, “it had better be” one of only a handful of people.
So tonight the phone rang around 10 and it was Tim, my closest friend.
If you follow the link, Tim would be the non-baby guy. The girl is his wife, Kate and the baby is their baby, Isaac. Got it? Tim is, I believe, the only person in the world who has express written consent to call me any time of night for any reason, trivial or otherwise. He has excercised this right on several occasions in our younger days, and some of those calls are the subject of legendary stories which maybe I’ll re-tell here one day.