Cherries!!!!

There's a very pretty cherry tree right off of the corner of our porch. It gets beautiful blossoms on it in the spring, but last year we didn't see any fruit. This summer, there's a whole bunch of little red cherries growing on the branches within reach! Oh boy!


I was really excited to see cherries growing, and even more excited to be close enough to pick one. I'm a cherry fiend in the summer (I get really excited about road-side fruit stands with fresh cherries), so I brought one in to try. OH CRAP...SOUR. Extremely sour cherries. I'm a bigger fan of sweet cherries, so I think I'll let the crows have these.

I also got a few funny pictures of the stupid cat this week. Here's a very satisfied Jingle in her basket (close-up on those fuzzy paws).


And here she is freaking out over a crow's feather I found while on a walk.

New Phone

Decided to finally trade in our 5-year old phone for a new model. Here's the old one. People like to make fun of the fact that I still have to pull up the antennae to get reception.



Here's the shiny new one. Went with a virgin mobile pay-as-you-go plan, because I really don't talk on my cell phone too much and I have a home phone plan. Good for just using it for emergencies, pretty crappy for a real cell phone plan. Customer service over the phone was pretty annoying too. Oh well, as least I have a phone that doesn't lose all battery power after being unplugged for 15 minutes.

Deck refinishing, day 13

Got the chance to stain the floorboards of the deck this weekend. Gave it a nice orange-y cedar finish.


I like the results, but since the floorboards look so great I think the railing is going to have to be done as well. They at least were stained, so we don't need to strip anything off of them, but a good sanding is probably in order.

In other silliness, I took this picture of Jingle the other day:



And thought she looked remarkably like a walrus:



Fun photoshop projects ensue:

Deck refinishing, day....12?

After a week long break from the deck troubles, the guy we hired (Tony, handyman extrordinaire) came by this morning to start work on the porch. Joe stopped at home on his lunch break to see it in progress. While they were talking, Tony understated, "Man, that paint is really hard to get off!"

But, here's what it looked like when I got home tonight:

Much, much MUCH better. He's coming by tomorrow to finish some sanding and smooth out the roughness, and by this weekend I can start staining. Hooray for calling in the professionals!

Deck refinishing, day 04

After 3 trips to Home Depot (good thing we live really close) I finally got the right connection for the pressure washer to make it work. I'm not sure why the hose-to-machine connection had to be so specific, but glad I could finally make water come out of it.



Well....the stubborn paint still didn't want to let go. When the paint stayed there and the wood around it started to splinter up I decided it was time to scratch the pressure washer off of my list of options. So with day 5 approaching and problems still looming I did what any self-sufficient person would do.

I looked up a handyman service online to do it for me.

Deck refinishing, day 03

Got the pressure washer today, can't get it to work. The water is going thru the hose, the machine is running, but nothing is going to the pressure nozzle. Somebody kill me.