Ill omens.
I got a lousy night's sleep... got to bed about 00:30, extremely tired. Because I'm such a nice guy, I left the bedroom door open, 'cause Karen doesn't like it when it's closed. To me, door open, door closed... makes no difference.
Unless, of course, an animal of some kind (say, a cat...) decides that an open door is an invite to sleep in my bed. Then I have a problem. If the damned cat would just go to sleep... but y'know, they gotta scratch, and stretch, and yawn, and... and... breathe!
And this makes no diff to Karen at all, 'cause she's asleep. In fact, the door being closed only really bothers her for the thirty seconds between the time her head hits the pillow and she's asleep. So I should just not worry about her feelings (on this matter only...) and keep the damned door closed. Which is now the current policy on the matter.
So I woke up at 05:30. Got up at 05:45. Started working... oh, somewhere after the first pot of coffee. Or maybe it was the second one... Anyway, Karen went off to watch Patrick play soccer, and Tyler and I started disassembling the windows on the front deck. And about the first thing I do is slice open the fleshy part of my pinky finger on my right hand with a rusty staple. A very sharp rusty staple... like a quarter-inch deep paper cut. Hurt, and bleed! I cussed a little too, and put a bandaid on it and started being more careful.
Strangely enough, though, things did not continue to get worse. In fact, it was a very successful and productive day... we got the dumpster filled up, anyway, and got the hedges cut completely down, and myriad other smaller things, too numerous to mention...
And I was running in and out, ripping CDs in between jobs. And I found that my 8X CDR is four (4) times faster than my 24XCD drive... isn't that curious. And maddening, because I've got most of my collection ripped before I realize this little-known mathematical fact...
Speaking of CDs, Tyler made CDs of two of my favorite Vinyl Albums... The Wichita Freight Train Whistle and Larry Young's War and Peace neither of which are likely to ever show up on a commercial CD. Hell, they weren't even popular when they were made, but I'm still impressed by them. They bring back memories of lying in my bunk in Ft. Stewart, GA, smoking grass and listening to music... anyway...
Matt cam over about 10:30 or so... Once Matt starts working, it's hard to get him to stop, which is really OK with me, I'm not competitive that way at all... I like to watch other people work. Especially if it's work being done on my yard...
Tyler helped for quite a while, but Chris came over and then they disappeared, right before we started on the hedges. Last time that I cut the hedges back, I punctured my eyeball with a branch... I had that icky thick eyeball fluid running out of my eye... that was really scary, and I decided to try and not do that again, and I was successful in that effort.
So, the dumpster is full, the yard looks a lot better, and Karen and I are absolutely exhausted... she had to run after kids all day, it seems... and she got some work done too.
Right now, everyone is gone but Drew, and he was going to be gone, but he fell asleep, so Andy and Karla went bowling without him. They'll pick him up pretty quickly now, I think.
Karen's fixing some eggs and bacon and toast for supper, then I'm going to bed... she'll have to stay up and wait for them to pick up Drew, if there's any waiting to be done.