traxis on the run

Man - I will do just about anything to avoid transcribing minutes from the conference. I've changed the formating from a lame-ass transcription paragraph style to something lovely, clean, super readable and organized. But it's a hell of a lot of work.

Similarly, we spent the whole weekend working on the garden and lawn. We started on Saturday afternoon after a morning of useless "assisting" at the club site that Chris is a part of - their construction project was a total mess and I didn't feel like we were helping at all. We stayed for like 2.5 hours and not once did people there ask who I was... stupid. Anyhow, we went and got some supplies and then starte gardening; we pulled out all the weeds and grass that had grown in the garden area, by hand, then tilled the soil. We prunned my raspberry plants and watered them - they look so happy now! Yesterday we finished the project by putting manure on the soil, tilling it in, and then picking all the leftover weeds out of the soil. The shaddy part of the yard has tons of worms in it - even one huge one I was freaked out by! We also got rid of dandelions in the backyard (there weren't many compared to our neighbours homes, but there are only a few left now). We pruned the trees and killed the stupid peonies that keep growing in the middle of our lawn, and weed-whacked the edge of the garden.

So much work, but it looks lovely now. We're expectiing thunderstorms for the next 48 hours, so that should really soak the soil and prep it for seeds and seedlings.

Other cleaning-y stuff we did included going to the bottle depot and returning stuff to Chris' club, I did laundry and Chris started cleaning up his stuff from the main floor of the house.

In other news, after all the work we've been doing to the house, we've not gotten a rent freeze on first negotiation with our landlords - they are such poopieheads. Chris is going to call them tonight to figure things out - we are willing to sign a 2-year lease if they give us a reasonable rate (e.g. no rent increase). They truly have no appreciation for the work we do - I sat down and wrote out each little/big project we did around the house to improve it; and literally I filled up a page. Anyhow, hopefully things will work out.

Also, we are working on getting a dog sooner rather than later. My work is flexible enough to allow me to work from home sometimes and Chris' classes are over, so he too can stay at home to look after a puppy. One of our friends had a great suggestion of adding a special "dog damage deposit" of $200 or so with our landlords - we'll see if this is something they'll be friendly on AFTER we secure our lease.

posted by traxis @ 8:52 a.m.