I need a hoe

Over the past two weeks, we've been on somewhat of a home-improvement/cleaning adventure. First we cleaned off the computer desk area and the refrigerator. Then this past weekend we worked in the yard and washed her new car.

The flower bed, which I'm guessing at one point contained actual flowers, is now a weed bed. I had jokingly mentioned to Jawana that I was going to douse it with gasoline and set it on fire. At the time she seemed ok with that idea.

After I got done mowing the grass, I went into the garage and got the gas can out, but I didn't have a lighter on me. So I put it back and grabbed the hoe from the trunk of the car and figured I would proceed to de-weed the flower bed with that. I thought, "It's just some weeds, how difficult could it be to use this hoe and like break up the ground?"

Well let me tell you, it's a lot more difficult than one would imagine. I've never done any kind of yard work like that, so it was all new to me. I am sure I sounded like I was in the Ultimate Fighting Championship as I raised the razor sharp hoe above my head and swung it into the earth with a hearty and incredibly masculine, "Huhhhh!". Maybe I should have done a "Hi-Ya!"

Either way, after about 45 seconds of "hoeing", I came to the realization that, "This is just too much hard work." And at that point, decided to employ the chemical warfare technique.

Jawana had just gotten home, so we hopped in the car and headed up to Wal-Mart to get some Round-Up. Much much better. Just squirt it over the weeds, wait a couple days, and voila! Dead weeds!

Look at the size of that crack!
Still on the house subject, over the past several months, about a dozen 45 degree cracks have propagated from the corner of the door frames to the ceiling in Jawana's house. They are all occurring on the right-hand side of the house. They can be found in the opening from the foyer into the living room, her master bedroom, the guest room, and her daughter's room. Now, even some of the doors will not close.

She had a home inspector come out last week and he said it's definitely a foundation problem. Now the next step is to bring in an engineer with some type of sonar or x-ray equipment to look into the slab itself and see what's going on and look for problems there.

It's really a bummer because the house is only about 1.5 years old, and is falling apart at the seams. The builder says it's normal for the house to settle and for cracks to grow from the door frames like that. I did an informal survey of 6 or 7 people who have built houses and they all say that 45 degree cracks are a sign of a foundation problem, and to have so many is definitely a bad sign.

All I know is, we have to get this fixed the proper way before she sells it, so there is no liability on her part. Because I don't want to be involved in a lawsuit for non-disclosure sometime down the road.

Vacation Planning
They do vacation like really weird where she works. You get to pick two one-week periods to have off, and then you get a few extra days you can scatter about during the year, but you like can't take any time off the last quarter of the year.

What kind of vacation system is that?

I want to take vacation when I want to take vacation. I don't like the idea of being locked in to a specific time frame so far in advance. I guess I'm more spontaneous.

Personally, I don't like taking off more than a few days at the time, because with my kind of work, what happens is, it gets piled up. Thus, when I return from time off, there is a big fat stack of work to do, and I have to work like overtime to get everything done.

The whole point of vacation is to be able to get away from everything. How can you get away from everything when you know in the back of your mind, there is going to be a ton of work waiting for you when you get back?

Up until last year when I went to Hawaii for two weeks, I hadn't taken any real vacation in 4 or 5 years. Believe me, I'm not a workaholic, but I prefer the 3 or 4 day weekend kind of a thing as opposed to the 7 or 10 day thing.

Ok that's all I got.