No this is not a post about the Beatles song, although I have been learning some interesting Beatles stuff since I have been working on my giant music project that I will describe when it is done.

Yesterday Erin and I had the day off and we worked on house stuff. Now that might not sound so bad, but I put on two coats of stain on the dresser and the desk that I am refinishing. The dresser is turning out pretty good, I will have some before and after pictures so that you all can see the results.

Now normally, I just like to do one project at a time and then use the down time to play some video games or something. Well not yesterday. We have a new computer on the way, courtesy of a swapping deal with Nate & Erica so in an effort to make room for the G5 I tore apart my office (which is actually now shared with Erin) to rewire everything from the ground up and to reorganize papers. So far so good. I think it has turned out pretty well but it is a work in progress. I have only maxed out one of my four power strips…

So I got most of that stuff dome yesterday. Spent some of the best $20 ever on a sprayer for my weed issues and it was borderline miraculous how easy it was to spray our whole property. It would have taken probably 4-5 hours before but it only took 50 minutes.

So where have I been and why haven’t I been writing stuff down? I don’t know honestly. I have been working alot. I have been doing all kinds of stuff with the high school boys. I have not had much down time since we got back from Jamaica and I feel like now that the school year is starting for Erin again we might stand a chance at getting back into a regular routine.

All that being said, one of the highlights of the last couple weeks was getting to see one of my oldest and dearest friends, Patrick Rice who was out here in Phoenix with his wife Amy. Erin and I had a great time hanging out with them and honestly a request of his is one of the reasons that I have not posted. 

When the Rices were here we did not have time to have them over to our house and so a request was put forth for a video tour of our house. Any of you who may be like us, working from 7-5 and then going out with either a church function or friends from 7-11pm know that it can be difficult to keep a house clean and functional, so that is a reason for the delay. I simply cannot bear the thought of how mad Erin would be if I put a video up on the internet of a messy house. Also, there has been a significant change to our house that I would like to have in the video and the dust from that even is finally settling down so you may be closer to getting that tour than you think Patrick.

In closing I would like to remind you that if you are interested in what I am looking at or doing on the internet you should check out my activity feeds in either of these places:

FriendFeed

Swurl – Timeline

Also of note, I got a haircut. There are pictures on Flickr or on Swurl.

Well I wanted to always take pride in thought out complete sentence and idea style posts but in light of my current level of busyness (interesting note that busyness and business are only one letter different) I am going to do a Mark Artrip style list update on lots of things at once.

• I am in the middle of a three week period where we will have 14 client meetings in 15 days. There is prep work and follow up work for each of these. Also I have moved my desk three times in the last 10 days as we transition through the final parts of the punch list at the new building. Bottom line is I am tired and ready for a change of pace.
• Our grass is growing! The back yard now has a green tint. I will post pictures someday.
• I am working with five of the high school boys on making a rules video for Hume Lake camp this summer that is shot entirely in Halo 3. Both aspects of that are a challenge since I am not allowed by the rules (student produced) to run the production of it.
• Erin has had a difficult week with some of the things going on at work. You could pray for peace for her if you get a chance.
• We are going to see Prince Caspian tomorrow with friends. Looking forward to it although not as much as Ironman.
• Holy Crap! Ironman was amazing! The announcement of that sequel took 48 hours too long for me!
• The Office is back! The season finale was sick! Those last 30 seconds after the last commercial break made my day!
• I talked to my brother today. He called from Afghanistan. I do not know details of what he is doing since he was selected for a classified operation but he is at least safe and wants everyone to know he is fine.

So there are some good things and bad things about owning a house just like my good friend Mark Artrip is discovering with his recent posts about his to do list. At the top of my to do list for probably the next couple of months is cleaning up and renovating the back yard for really cheap. Those of you who have not seen our house at all can check out those pictures here.

So the inside has gotten most if not all of the loving as far as time and money is concerned and justifiably so since that is where we spend most of our time. But as swimming season approaches we and presumably our friends and associates are going to be spending more time outside and this means that we need to have our act together so that people are not traipsing through wondering what kind of trailer trash leave their yard like this.

So the process has begun to transform it. This album on Facebook shows a combination of three weekends worth of work so far. The first pictures are from when we started and highlight the weed problem that developed almost overnight. Turns out that rocks block pretty much nothing in the way of weeds. The second pictures depict the struggle to take out tree stumps and level out that rise that goes up towards our back fence. So this topic of yard work will probably be one that gets updated frequently if not every weekend. I will do my best to share the things that I learn about planting grass, swimming pools and sprinklers or whatever unforseen issues come up.