Memorial Day Weekend - Day 1

I woke up at 5:30 AM again, but sore as hell. I guess I overdid it last night…

I tried out the new coffee maker. They give you a 12-count sample pack (11 different coffees and one tea). So, I went with Green Mountain Coffee’s Dark Magic, described as “Extra Bold – Tres Intense” and was it ever! Jake suggested making a list to keep track of the ones I either like or dislike. This one would go under the dislike column: Way too strong a flavor for me!

But, you should realize, I usually have two types of coffee in the house: Maxwell House Master Blend (that I normally drink and is the same kind they make at work) and, for serious coffee drinkers (like Jeremy) if and when they come over, Eight O’clock Colombian whole beans that I grind and then brew. I had read in some online taste test once that the Eight O’clock was the best tasting Colombian coffee for the money, so I bought it, tried it and like it occasionally.

I watched some of the morning news while eating breakfast and pills. Then I thought, “What the hell, I’ll make another cup of coffee.” So, I still went with the Green Mountain Coffee, but this time the Breakfast Blend. Hmmm... not bad but I don’t think I’ll run out and buy a box of it (the little one-serving cups are expensive!).

I watched some of the Today Show Weekend Edition (enough to get my Jenna Wolfe fix), shaved and then took a l-o-n-g shower. The hot water beating on my back helped some (at least I could finally stand up straight).

I had just dried off and put on my robe when the doorbell rang. Puzzled, I walked into the living room and saw a Fed-Ex van driving away! I "ran" out on the porch to try and flag him down (hoping my robe wouldn’t open), but saw he’d left a huge box leaning up against the garage (blocking me from getting the car out).

So I got dressed and went out to deal with the raised bed planter. It had just started sprinkling, BTW. I tried to slowly tip it over and lower it to the ground, but at one point gravity took control and it fell the last two feet or so. I dragged it in the garage (not as easy as it sounds as it’s a 2 foot x 8 foot heavy carton) and then headed out to my refinance appointment.

I must say that refinancing goes a lot quicker than when you purchase a home. Without the Seller and sometimes the Real estate agent (the folks who bought the house in St. Clair were not only both there but so was their appraiser for example), its just you signing stuff. It still took a half hour, though.

And, because I still wanted to have the payment automatically withdrawn from my other bank each month like before, I needed a voided check (which nobody told me, even though I asked several times exactly what I needed to bring!) So, while the guy was making copies, I ran back home (about a mile and a half) and got one. I gave him the check and he gave me my copies, we shook hands and I left, the proud new/old owner of the same house, but at a much better interest rate.

It was raining then, but I drove up to Home Depot and, with the help of some of the guys, bought 150 self-stick tiles for the kitchen project. I also picked up some hacksaw blades I needed and a blade for the circular saw that can cut concrete. The guys loaded the tile in the trunk and I headed home.

I pulled in the driveway and parked on the other side. The car will have to stay there until the raised bed garden planter is finished. That’s when I noticed a second box, leaning against the porch rail, right by the front door. Puzzled, I walked over and saw it was from the same shipment as the big cardboard box. I must not have noticed it (it would have been behind the storm door) when I "ran" out half naked after the Fed-Ex truck.

After I got it inside, I found I had a voicemail from Michael’s, letting me know the Orion picture frame was ready. Home Depot is in the same shopping center, so I wish I’d known that a tad bit earlier or they had called my cell phone instead of the house!

So, I unloaded the tiles from the car trunk (they were heavy enough I needed to use the hand truck), put the tiles in the back room and headed back out (thankfully the rain had stopped, at least for a while).

Well, I was wrong about that. By the time I got there, I had to sit in the car while the rain poured and the thunder rumbled. When it slacked off a bit, I grabbed my walker and rolled inside. The frame maker showed the frame to me (it looked perfect) and then wrapped it up with shipping paper. I also picked up some plain brown masking tape, a glue stick and some picture hangers. It was still sprinkling when I walked out to the car, but the frame didn’t get too wet (I hope).

Instead of turning onto San Jose, I turned into the Coney Island that’s just before it. Once a year, a pit master comes with a big trailer and grills ribs and chicken in the parking lot. Then, they sell them inside. Last year, the smell drove me crazy, but when I finally walked over for some dinner, everything was gone!

So, this year, I stopped in for lunch (it was already 1:30 PM). Since I’d just made those ribs, I ordered the chicken to go. I got a half of barbequed chicken, mashed potatoes and some mixed vegetables for $8.00. I took it home and left the car outside again. I treated the cats and then treated myself. I ate all I wanted and still had enough for dinner. I rested up for a while after eating, watching some of an old John Wayne movie, “The Angel and the Badman.”

The sun had come out, so it was time to check out the raised bed planter. As soon as I opened it, I knew I was in deep trouble. Instead of loose boards that slip into ends, the boards I needed to cut down were already installed and screwed together on the ends and with aluminum braces and aluminum shelf supports. So, I’ll have to disassemble them, cut the boards and the aluminum down and reassemble them and finally put everything together. And, unfortunately, the two air holes will both be inside the six foot length, so I can’t reposition them so they are equidistant from the ends (being German, these things bother me).

Damn! I really, really don’t feel up to doing all that ciphering, wood sawing and hack sawing today!

But, I got started at 4:00 PM. I figured I’d work as long as I could hold out and then give up, take a shower and go to bed. But, we’ll see...

I dug out the sawhorses and the Skill saw (the garage is a total mess). The one thing that saved me was the Ryobi cordless drill I’d bought on sale a while back. I set the one 8-foot side on the saw horses and took off the aluminum angle piece that holds up the false bottom. Then I used the hacksaw with a fresh blade and my vise to cut two feet off it (check out the picture and you can see what I mean about a total mess, lol!). Then I measured the two holes that were in the end of it and drilled them in the proper place on the cut-down piece.

I unscrewed the end piece and cut two feet off the cedar boards, using my saw stands as an extra pair of hands (I really could have used a helper today). I cleaned up both the aluminum and the wood cuts with a flat file and reassembled it. Note: there were 16 screws that I had to remove and then put back per side. See what I mean about the cordless drill saving me?

I took that side outside and did the same thing on side number two. Once that was done and outside, I took a break and had a pain pill and another cup of coffee (Somebody's Hazelnut this time and tasty).

Back outside, I used a rubber hammer to pound the two end sections down into their channels. There were 20 screws that had to go in to secure each end and I had to climb inside it to do it. Then I tapped in the black end caps and climbed back out.

Next came installing the aluminum braces to the long aluminum rails that hold up the false bottom. The false bottom is ten inches from the top of the planter so you don’t have to fill the whole thing full of dirt.

I put in the now three 2-foot by 2-foot plywood bottoms and of course, they didn’t quite fit. So, I marked one and took it back inside, cut it about an inch shorter and installed it.

The plywood had holes in it for drainage (you should be able to see them on the photos) but I was worried about the dirt eventually just falling through. So I cut a piece of landscape fabric a little oversize and put that it. I secured it with some broken pieces of concrete for the night (they will come out when the dirt goes in).

You may be wondering why I didn’t go ahead and use the few bags garden soil and potting soil I still have in the garage. Well, because I want to fill around the bottom edges of the planter with river rocks and I may need to remove the false bottom to do it right. And, since I don’t have any more bags of river rocks, I’ll have to get them from Home Depot and do that Sunday morning.

Then I can use what dirt I have and that should allow me to calculate how much more dirt I’ll need to buy on my second Sunday trip to Home Depot (sigh). I buttoned up the house and put away the tools and was finished by 8:00 PM.

I started to process (re-size) the many photos I took so I can post them easier in the morning. One thing I noticed was the mold on my siding. Does anybody know a good way to get that off without me having to rent a power-sprayer? Maybe bleach and a scrub brush?

I also noticed I don’t like the planter being leveled to the patio. It looks tilted. I may change that in the morning before I add the dirt and can’t move it. But, right then that seemed like a lot of work.

Since I was sitting at the computer anyway, I filled in the lengthy Blog post. I noticed it was almost 9:30 PM. So, as beat as I was, I figured there probably wouldn’t be much more to write.

And, there wasn’t.