12:00 and all's well. Right now, I'm sitting on the back deck with the portable plugged in... the only way that it can run. Notepad in Win3.1; not too bad.

This keyboard is going to take some getting used to, though... it's not split, and the keys take a little extra effort to punch. And the space bar is too small.

It is, however, a beautiful day; the sun shines, the birds sing, people are out working on their lawns, the city is cutting the grass in the park directly behind us. And here I sit, doing nothing but enjoying it.

That will soon be over, however; I'm going to get busy and do some work here shortly:

• Spray the back yard, kill them damned dandelions;
• Clean up and mow the front yard;
• Workworkwork!

This is, of course, a very short-term thing. The computer downstairs is doing a restore on some software that I deleted so that I could load another program; it will soon be done. And I still have some inside things to do, like clean off and move the bookcase downstairs. I made room for it earlier, moving stuff around in the basement. Now there's just the physical part, moving each and every piece of crap down, then the bookcase, then putting all of the pieces of crap back.

I should take the time to go through everything and throw stuff away, but that takes so damned long, and I am chronically unable to throw almost anything away. That is one of my biggest faults.

Speaking of my faults... no, let's not go there right now. Introspection is best left for the gloomy days, and they are coming up pretty soon.

I figgered out that if I actually sell both of the vehicles that I have for sale, I could build a garage... which is the first step in a remodel that will get Karen a new kitchen. That was a strange thing to say...I will have a new kitchen too, won't I?

And that, of course, is another one of my faults... I don't take much responsibility for the work around here, especially the cooking/cleaning up part. The truth is that I could care less about eating most of the time... which is another major fault, I guess.

But I'm not gonna talk about my faults on this beautiful day... no, I'm going to get to work here shortly.

My original plan for this day was to go fishing... and Karen is taking the afternoon off, so I thought, that would be wonderful, I'll take Karen fishing with me. But her original idea was... to get some work done around here. So the fishing will wait until tomorrow, or next week. I can't believe that it's May already and I haven't been fishing at all yet... pretty damned bad for a guy who lives to catch bass, huh.

OK... to work now.

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16:41
It's been a long time since I worked this hard... Karen says it's been more than a year, anyway... and she was working too.

Besides mowing the front and back and side yards, and cleaning them up in general, I started taking down the chain-link fence on the north side of the house. Parts were easy... the parts that weren't buried or had trees growing up through them. Those parts will wait until I've got some more energy.

Our neighbors to the south moved this weekend, and he left behind a broadcast fertilizer spreader. Since I was planning on paying thirty bucks or so for one, I took a look at it. OK... so I'm a trash-picker. It's a long-standing tradition... I learned it from my uncle Earle. Anyhoo, it was rusted tight... but not tight enough so's I couldn't get it loose with WD-40. Wonderful stuff, that WD-40.

So... since it's supposed to start raining tomorrow, I couldn't put the Weed-be-gone™ on the back yard. But I think that I'll go to Kmart or Wal-mart and get some week-n-feed type stuff, which I can put on tonight... and get some grass seed too. So maybe by the middle of the summer I can actually have grass in my yard... keep up with the old neighbors, y'know...

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19:25...
Well, Karen and I went to Lowes, but only after we'd gone to Applebees'. Steak night, Y'know. That's my favorite place on this side of town... So, we got to Lowes, which is a super lumberyard/home center, and we got fertilizer and grass seed, which I then came home and applied.

If I'm giving you the impression that I know what I'm doing with this lawn stuff, forgive me.

Except for the part that needs the shady grass seed... I gotta rake that up really good before I plant that. I did go ahead and fertilize it, though. Then I started watering. An hour for each section, it will take me six hours... then I need to start over again. It would be nice if I could water the front and the back at the same time, but then the water pressure would be cut in half... it would take twice as long. But I would only have to move the sprinklers once... Hmmm... that might work. No, it won't... the spray won't extend as far with less pressure, therefore watering a smaller area. O'well, it sounded good there for a minute.

What I really want to do, with all of this physical exertion... is go to sleep. But if I do that, it will screw me up for tomorrow. So I need to stay up for most of the night tonight.

I'm not really sure that I can do that, though... the alternative is to be sleepy at work tomorrow night. Hmmm... be sleepy on company time, that sounds a lot better than being tired on my time, doesn't it. OK, you talked me into it.

Things to do now... more moving of sh*t from upstairs to downstairs. More tomorrow...