Backyard patio update

Friday evening I was able to get the "water feature" in and working. The fountain is a large stone speckled with quartz. There is a hole drilled through it and it sits on a pedestal in the water. A pump circulates water up a plastic hose through the drilled hole. It sounds and looks great.

Put in patio edging all around. The edging should keep the stones from wandering apart. So all the stone is in place. Now I need to partially fill the space between with dirt which I'm filtering to remove rocks and weeds.

Then I'll fill the cracks with a special sand that will bind the whole thing together.

Spring Green

A quick entry with pictures of this year's Spring Green road trip.

Linda and her cow at the Baraboo Candy Store.

Lunch before the play at American Players Theatre.

We stopped at the International Crane Center in Baraboo. There are all 15 species of cranes located here in a beautiful setting.

Alex, cheering a great breakfast at The Shed in Spring Green.

Backyard patio update

Saturday, Sunday and Monday, September 12,13 and 14. Got area as level as I could and covered with the landscape fabric to keep the weeds from growing back.


Tuesday, September 15...working the edge....


Wednesay, September 16...edge nearly complete so filling in...


Thursday, September 17....this shows work after work and before going out to dinner. Did more work in the dark after going out to dinner with friends.


Sunday, September 20. Was out of town during weekend so only worked about an hour this evening. There is a full path from the back door to the garage sidewalk!

Showing the progress of work over the week of being home.

Buzzword Bingo

This is from an actual email I got at work today...

In the third quarter, we continue to make progress in pursuits and drive delivery excellence in existing engagements. Market conditions around the world are beginning to improve while assets remain largely undervalued, driving a renewed appetite for M&A. Through our solid client relationships and global delivery capacity, we are able to take full advantage of this trend. To further enhance our value proposition, the leadership team is ramping up the Center of Competency, led by , in the financial services and banking sector, to deliver targeted expertise to clients in high growth markets. As a result, our pipeline remains strong around the world.

M&A means Mergers and Acquistions

Kansas sunset

This beautiful picture was taken by my Aunt Donna.

Backyard patio project update

Okay, had to have a re-do on the project. I used all the stone I had and all the stone that Andrea and Jason had and barely covered the space.

My neighbor, Sari, and I went to Hedberg's in Plymouth, a stone and aggregate seller. We couldn't find anything that matched the existing stone. We couldn't even find anything that would go with the stone. But we did find a different stone. A stone that was smooth and came in large, uniform sheets. It had struck me that I have to be able to shovel off snow.

So it was re-do time. I purchased 5 tons...yes 5 tons! of Minnesota Dolemite....quarried in Mankato, Minnesota. We had taken a piece of the current project stone. The salesman said that it was Platville Limstone from St. Paul, Minnesota. It had been quarried from the city to build the sky scrapers and was no longer available. It is historic.

The stack you see is 2 of the 4 pallets delivered via an 18-wheeler. The "sheets" have to broken up to reasonable sizes. Many "thanks" to JT for loaning his sledge hammer.

It took about 10 minutes to take up what had taken be two days to put down.
I can get some pretty good sized pieces and the thickness is completely consistent. So laying it down goes faster than with the first stone. Prepping the area...making it level....is still the hardest part.

I'm including the old St. Paul stone in spots that won't see so much traffic. I like the look of it and now the history of it.

I'm working from home this week...a first since I don't know when. So I'll be able to work on the patio during the evening. I'm planning on getting the bulk of it done by Thursday night.

I was about to congratulate American Airlines

My on-time or near on-time rate has greatly improved in the last few months. American keeps changing the departure times both on Monday morning flights and Thursday evening flights.

Have been at the 6pm Thursday departure time for a few weeks and last night started off good. We were even at the same gate two weeks in a row. But then as 5:30 came and went, it started to look bad. The gate attendant finally announced that maintenance was on the plane and needed to pressurize the cabin for a test.

The departure time was eventually changed to 6:20pm. But that wasn't looking like a possibility as we weren't boarding by even 6pm. We did start boarding a bit before 6:20 but I noticed some ugly dark clouds.

We pulled away from the gate around 7pm....I really don't look anymore because it doesn't help to know. As we taxied out to the runway, the gentleman at the window seat made a comment that there were some 20 planes in front of us.

Our plane got in line and the engines were shut down. Small groan.

Pilot announced that there was rain in the area and the tower was restricting arrivals and departures and our flight was told it would be at least 40 minutes before we would know more.

It never actually rained at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. To make a long story short, we finally took off at 8pm...2 hours late. The one bit of good news was that there were not delays for our landing.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport runway construction project has caused landing delays every time since the project started back in August though the airports commission said it would not. Last night was an exception.

Oh, my goodness

Nothing like sitting in a airplane window seat for almost 3 hours after two days of back-breaking yard work.

I thought I wasn't going to be able to walk up the aisle to get off the plane. I am not able to sleep on a plane which is probably just as well because I would have been really stiff if I'd actually dozed off.

Back in Dallas where the temp is hot hot hot...and throw in some humidity for good measure. The cool summer was still going on in Minneapolis where we only managed a comfortable 79 degrees on Saturday and Sunday.

Backyard project

I may be totally in over my head or this is the most exhausting project ever.

I rented a jack hammer Saturday morning to bust up the sidewalk. It took less than an hour but it was loud and some of the sections were 6 inches thick. Took a boat load of effort to break into pieces.

Here is the pile o' concrete.

In the process of getting rid of all the grass, I kept running into more and more of the maple tree roots.

I snapped my shovel handle in the process of prying out a root. To be honest this shovel was one I bought with my house back in 1991 and who knows how old it really is.

I bought a new handle and with the help of my Dremel machine removed the old handle part and got the new handle in. Not nearly as easy as the internet site made it sound.

By the end of the holiday weekend I had another big pile of roots.

Friends, Andrea and Jason, bought a house with a yard full of all kinds of stone. Huge pieces of slate, tons of river rock, boulders and lots of shale.

I had sights on the shale. One truck load on Sunday and another trip on Monday.

Picture 1 is the start of the layout.


The following two are the end of the weekend. I felt like I'd put down tons and tons but only ended up with this much. It looks good but there is a lot lot lot to do.

Home

I am home. The week in Dallas was pretty usual except for meeting the hotel's corporate sales person, Aneela.

My boss lady, Shannon, has had problems with the hotel and either she or Aneela arranged to meet and have drinks. I was invited to join. We met in the lobby hotel which is called The Gossip Bar.

Aneela was meeting with a friend of hers, an American Airlines global sales rep. His name is Nash. he had a friend with him, Jeff. And a co-worker of Aneela's dropped by, ...I just forgot his name.

Gossip was the right name and location. There were some wild stories told.

We had a little celebration lunch on Thursday. We've finally hit a couple of milestones on this work project. But by mid afternoon I had a scratchy throat and runny nose. The flight home was about keeping my runny nose from making it look like I did not have swine flu.

Still have the scratchy throat and runny nose this morning.