When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,…
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… well, because I’ll never be a guru, actually. But after the extremely humbling trudge I had hiking around at Starved Rock last weekend, I finally decided it was time we started working out again. Granted, it was hot on Saturday, which totally wipes me out. But come on, I was passed by an elderly couple going up the stairs. Jeebus. I’d have felt slightly better about it if they hadn’t been light-heartedly humming and chatting, while I stood to one side gasping for breath and sweating like a Clydesdale hauling barrels full of skunky bad American beer. So anyway…
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He’s here to fix the… faucet! Yes, the one from last winter. And now to repair the even larger, but somewhat neater, hole in the drywall. Or maybe get some kind of access panel type-deal from Home Despot. The guy was from the same company that “fixed” the faucet the last time it froze (and that one took 2 trips). The work is being covered under warranty. This means a lot to us. Also on the list of prospective plumbing jobs: replace ejector pit, possibly install a utility sink in the laundry room. We’d previously gotten an estimate (rather high,…
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The mailbag is open at Velcrometer, where a reader mentions that “Dr. Jellyfinger” may have had a cousin, “Mr. Hamhands.” I’ve been reading your entries for a about a year now and I have to tell you how much joy my husband and I get from of your entries on Dr. Jellyfinger. You see, it seems that we live in a house owned by his cousin, Mr. Hamhands. Now that’s interesting, I think that Dr. Jellyfinger’s great-nephew-in-law might be the former owner of this house, The Rev. Izontha Prize Doolittle. Rev. Doolittle apparently spent so much time looking up to…
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Now that the weekend is over, the deluge clears off and the sun comes out… too late to do anything outside now, of course, and everything is soggy underfoot anyway. What fun we’ve had today – first I had a screaming shrieking hissy over my inablilty to get Front Page (insert sympathy shrieks here) to do what I wanted it to do for the Holy Moly web page. Then at the height of the fit (and the top of my range and volume) the power went out and all the various UPS‘s started beeping and chirping along with me. Which…
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Well, I’ve put an 8-hour day into screwing around trying to get something to work again. So now, let’s talk about the house again, shall we? The “kitty garden” is growing fairly well, except that the lawn service guys keep cutting the hell out of it with their big string trimmer. I keep forgetting to put some fencing around it; they came earlier than expected this weekend and caught me again with no fence and no little sign in Spanish saying “Favor de no cortar” which I hope is a fairly polite way of saying “please don’t cut (these).” However,…
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We’ve had a spell of very windy weather, and it looks like there finally might be a storm coming. For 3 days now, we’ve had high, warm winds blowing steadily from the West. Until yesterday the skies were clear, but today it’s steadily gotten greyer, and the clouds are starting to pile up on one another and look like something’s about to happen. We haven’t had much rain, so I haven’t put out the other two rain barrels; I need to get some blocks to raise them up abot a foot or so, and also they would just fly away,…
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Well, it was a fairly productive weekend. I did somehow manage to get up early-ish and dig the bed along the side of the garage. All the daylilies are packed in black plastic bags and will become compost. Most of the plants my TL gave me are planted in one of the front “hell beds.” Need to decide what to do/where to stick the lilies-of-the-valley tomorrow after work. Probably the shadier bed on the other side. All the tools and trash and things were put away just before the lawn guys came to mow. Napped most of afternoon and evening.…
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My team leader heard me blabbering yesterday about digging in the yard and sticking some new perennials in, and she realized she had a chance to foist some plants off on me rather than toss them in the compost (her yard is probably overgrown and in need of thinning). So I have a loverly box o’ dirt which happens to include one or two columbine plants, some dwarf hollyhock, and some lily of the valley (happy birthday, Timmy!). These will go in the front “hell beds,” which will get dug over and composted and mulched tomorrow. It’s not supposed to…
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Let me start by saying that I can’t stand daylilies. My mom had them in a hardscrabble little bed in front of the porch for years, and one of my garden chores used to be deadheading the daylilies. They’re really boring flowers; there’s no scent and they’re ridiculously hardy, so they can’t be killed off by anything short of a mini-Ice Age. They grow, they bloom, the flowers die, they keep growing and blooming. Meh.