Spring has sprung early

March 16, 2010
Peoria, AZ

Well, the weather has finally turned "normal", with temperatures rising into the 70s (76°F is "normal" for this week) and even touching 80° today. Gotta love that!

The last few days have been a bit of a blur. Saturday, I cleaned up the garage in the aftermath of the whole painting thing (lots of tools and painting supplies all over the place) and then we headed over to our friends, Ana & Larry, for dinner (chicken with rice & beans and some awesome wines). Sunday, I caught up on bills and spent some time trying to figure out why the IRS disagreed with our tax return (they sent us $550 more than we asked for - not asking too many more questions on that). Yesterday, I ran a bunch of errands, ordering the Formica to finish off the kitchen sink installation, getting part numbers to upgrade the headlights in the coach to the new SilverStar Ultra ones, mailing an eBay sale to China (it's a small world), and ordering 5 tons of rock.

Huh? What on earth do we need with that? Well, after we bought the house, we went xeriscape. Actually, we went beyond "dry landscaping", removing not just the irrigation system but all the grass and plants at the same time. After that was completed, we laid down a new top-coat of the landscaping rocks that cover the yard. Well, almost; the eastern side of the house wasn't done because I under-ordered.  And it stayed that way for a while and finally got rationalized away as "no sense doing that until after we paint the house". Hmmm. House painted, so...

Anyway, off to the rock store I went, ordering 5 tons of the closest thing they had to what we put in 4 years ago. They work in tons, I don't. I work in cubic yards. That, I can figure out (I got an "A" in geometry) how much we need. "They" say there are about 1¼ yards in a ton. Hard to tell. I ordered 5 yards yesterday afternoon and around 9:30 this morning the big dump truck showed up and dropped a pile in the driveway. I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon spreading about 4 of the 5 tons along the side of the house, a nice thick layer. I'll finish up tomorrow morning before it gets hot, spreading a bit of the new rock on the old stuff to blend it in, running a hose over the new stuff to clean off some of the dirt that comes with, and fashioning any remainder into another decorative berm that'll pass the HOA's 2-foot rule on landscaping (don't get me started on rules).

Once that's completed, all the outside work for this season is done. I have to finish the sink on the inside, but we're in pretty good shape there as well. Now, I get to turn my attention to the list of things I want to do with the coach before we head out for the summer. Yeah!