Sat. I was able to mow the lawn before the rain and storms. That was a good thing. I also was able to change the oil in both cars. Much needed, was a bit over on both of them. Taylor was great all day. She stayed up late with us, but for the most part, I had tired her out early in the morning so she pretty much just laid around all afternoon and evening. Sunday jenny was on call so I got some work done around the house. Put up one run of the electrical conduit in the basement. Pulled a string and one coax cable through it before I went to bed last night. Have to glue all the joints together and attach one last part of it and that will be all set. I want to put up one more run for wiring and then have to put up probably 2 that go to the computer room and then want to put 2 or three runs just down the wall on the utility room side. Just for future cabling if I want anything there. Have to figure out where I want to put the projector but really need to buy one first and then setup the projector to see how big of a screen I want to get and the throw distance and what now. Bought the tools and piping so I can sweat together the tubing for the sprinkler system. Hope to get that all up and setup this week sometime. Then I will just have to hook it into the main line coming into the house. That will be that last connection. Want to get plenty of practice before I do that stuff. Then if I get good at that I want to relocate the kitchen sink feeds to go in the truss are so I can put drywall where the pipes are right now. Then I will need to run a few feet of pipe for the shower and the toilet. Think I might be able to do all of this. Hoping I can at least. The only thing I am worried about is the waste hookup for the sink, toilet and shower. I will try my hand at it first and then call a plumber if it looks to be to much. Now that I have conduit for the basement I think I can pull most of the audio, video, telephone and data lines. Maybe I can get that done this month and then get the rest of the insulation put up. At that point I will be waiting on getting the shower into the bathroom. After I get that in I can plan on getting drywall and closing up the room. Who knows might get that up this year yet. Want to be able to use it this time next year if possible. It is so cool down there all the time. WIll be nice to just go down to relax. Probably will hang out down there more than upstairs when it is finished. Also will almost double the living space, not quite double, but close. Wonder if that will add to the property value. Will give taylor a nice place for her cage also, so she can hang in there and we will be around also.

Was able to wake up a bit later than normal and go get the dog up. Feed her and spend some time with her. That was good. Then had a friend come up and we went and hit a few balls at the range and then played 9 holes. Was a good time. Didn’t go very good at all, but did par two of the nine holes. I have finished up the front landscaping for now. Burried the last part of the sprinkler system I wanted to get done(still have 2 leaks to fix but not worried at this point, have to plumb into house perminatly also). Have 12 day lilies I want to plant still. 8 on side of house and 4 in front. Once those are completed I will have all plans of land scaping finished. I want to at least work on one more spot this year but might wait until fall to do it.

Well we had a physical inventory at work this weekend. That kept me busy all day saturday. Was not something I really wanted to be doing. Went fast though. Just made for a short weekend. I was able to work on the front edging like I wanted to though. Finished up the front flower bed with mulch and edging. Took the old edging out and cut it up to through away. Put the bricks down. Went and got a few more bags of mulch and a few more bricks also. Going to put one more shrub in on the front next to the garage and then going to put another bed in on the side of the garage and have 12 day lilies to put in there. Hope to get that tonight or tomorrow. Have to go help a guy with his PC tonight right after work and then will go home and mow and maybe wash the car and work on that area next to the garage. Hope to finish that up today or tomorrow. Have the day off tomorrow. Going to try to go golfing for the first time this year.

Well, after edging the trees in the yard and putting mulch down, I am moving on to the front landscaping area that is already done. I am taking the old red mulch up, because we don’t really like it. I will be putting bricks down to edge that area also, which means that I have to pull the old edging material up also. I have taken up most of the old red mulch, I have about 3/4 of the new cyprus mulch down and it looks good. Put in new shrubs and will be putting one more in later this week. Hope to mow the lawn tonight. After that is done I want to landscape around the two monster phone/electric/gas/cable box areas. Probably will edge, mulch and then put the tall grass around it and some smaller pine bushes that are 3 to 4 feet tall. Just to hid the boxes a bit. WIll make mowing much easier also.

Well I finally had some extra time saturday evening and decided to work on the valve that leaked on the side of the house for the sprinkler system. Found the connection that was giving me problems and fixed it with one more clamp. Seemed to work fine. But in doing that I had presurized the system for about an hour and found out that 2 other valves look like they have very slow leaks also. So I will have to take about 30 mins to an hour on each of those to fix them also. Not a huge deal at this time seing that I turn the water off for the system when I am not using it anyway, but still need to be fixed before the end of the year.

Went out and bought some bricks this weekend. Put them around the 5 trees I planted last year. They make a nice edging now and then filled in around the tree with mulch. Went with the cypress mulch this time, didn’t really like the read mulch the builder put in. So I am in the process of getting the old read mulch up and out of the front of the house and getting ready to put the new cypress mulch down. Have the yard waste container full already so I will have to wait till after friday to finish up on getting rid of the rest of the red mulch. Have almost have done right now. We want to put two more areas in the front yard that will have bushes and mulch and stuff, so I might work on that this week if time permits. Going to mow the lawn tonight I think.

Last night I buried the last valve and mainline to the house. I still have the hose hooked to it, I need to buy copper pipe and get the inside work done still, but I have all of the zones up and running. Thankfully we have had so much rain lately so the digging has been easy and I have not had to actually turn the system on. I still need to dig one valve up and tighten the connections on it. It seems to be leaking. Other than that, I want to change the nozzles on a few of the heads to get the sprinkler to cover more area. Pretty happy so far with the system. Depending on what we do with the front yard as far as landscaping, I might need to put two more heads in. One right next to some telephone boxes that I want to put bushes around anyway, and on the other side of the house where there is a bunch of cable, telephone and power boxes also. I might hand dig that line in later this year. Just didn’t want to cut anymore lines for the time being. Hopefully the weather will hold off this evening so I can get out and cut my hay. The grass has really darkened up and started growing again thanks to the last fertilizer application and watering it almost everyday either with the sprinkler system or storms. So now that this month long project is coming to a close, what next? I believe I will work on putting a door on the back wall of the garage and then the lights in the backyard. Want to get both of those done before winter sets in. Don’t really want to be bringing taylor in the back door all the time this winter.

To start off, my boss has been out of town for almost 2 weeks. It has been a one man show at work for a bit. Not to bad but always a bit more to keep up with when things don’t got how they should. Then this week my brother got sick and had to go to hospital, all is fine with him now. For about 4 hours there I wasn’t sure what I could do from my desk, just was trying to play phone tag and get someone to make sure he was OK. Then the next day I get a call and find out my dad was in an accident. Wow, what more can happen ( I am sure a lot, thank goodness nothing more has happened), he is doing much better now also. Got T-boned by a full sized van while my dad was going 55 down the road. What are the odds that someone can hit you on the side of your car when you pass through a intersection. Guess it was not the first time this lady has blown through a stop sign either from the sounds of the policeman writing the report up. He sounds like he is doing OK, a lot of scraps and bruises and a broken rib they think, but that is all they have found so far. He has been wanting a new truck for awhile and been putting it off. Now I think he might have motivation to look for a new one. Thank goodness we had rain for about 3 hours yesterday. To bad I didn’t get fertilizer down before it though. Got fertilizer down last night though so if we get rain like the weather says we should over this weekend it will get soaked in. I was getting worried about the lawn. Still trying to get the lawn to grow (less than a year old still) and this no rain stuff means that new sprinkler system is getting utilized, to bad it is not all the way finished yet. Oh well. All in good time.

Well I was able to finish up the 2 zones on the garage side of the house. So they are all running now. I have to finish up one last zone in the front that I have been putting off, but probably should go ahead and finish and hope ameritech does not break the line when they pull a new telephone cable in for me. After that is complete, the whole system will be operational. Then I have to hook to house plumbing and fix at least one valve that leaks. Watered the whole yard twice yesterday. Once in morning and once in evening. Seemed to get most places. Will have a few brown spots but hopefully only one that I see right now. Planning on putting some landscaping there anyway so really didn’t want to plumb another head in right now. Grass is really starting to get brown in a few spots so I guess I should start to water. Will mow tonight and then put down some fertilizer and water that in probably.

Meijer had patio stuff on sale this week so jenny and I found a really nice set of deck furniture. Very heavy construction and wood surfaces. I really like it. Hope it won’t damage the deck to much since it is so heavy. Got an unbrella also, have to go get a base for the unbrella today and that will be all set. Will be nice to sit out there and eat or relax from time to time now.