Best. Noozle. Ever.

My garden wand/water sprinkling thingie broke Monday night. It was a cheap-o one that Trevor got for me a year ago at Princess Auto (aka, Man Store). Well it snapped right where the head connects to the extender-thingie (wand), and I was left with a spray that resembled a gimpy sprinkler (all SPSHHHHHTTTTTT all over the place). This just would not do as the water now sprayed more of me than the plants. So off to Crappy Tire we went yesterday afternoon and stumbled upon the Gardena brand of watering utensils (? just guessing at the utensils part). WOW. WOW, wow, wow! I bought a new 'Comfort Multi-Function Spray Lance' and it is the last watering wand I will ever own. EVER. (Plus it has a lifetime warranty so I will use it forever - thank you German engineering!)

I know this is a boring post, but I just had to blah blah about my awesome new purchase.

We can all learn a thing or two from Mr. Safety (aka Trevor)

Yesterday was another evening o' construction, and I learned a few lessons. Earlier in the day I stumbled across a video on the internet of a guy who cut his thumb off with a TABLESAW. Disturbing, to say the least. Don't ask me how I managed to find this, because one minute I was watching a video of these guys who exploded a tin can of 30,000 match heads (don't try that at home), and the next I'm watching a guy who's set up a camera to film himself making a gift for his wife so he can prove to her that he made it. Well I thought it was a joke to begin with, because the guy clearly had his hand right in the way of the blade (one of those, 'how could he not see that coming???' sort of things), and zing! the thumb was gone and my thought was he had a fake thumb on just to freak his wife out in the video. Wow was I wrong. That was a really horrible accident and seeing how the guy freaked out kind of made me want to be sick. (Note to self: no more watching videos online.) At the same time, I thought this would be a good video to show kids who are taking shop in high school, because when I took that class we just had an old fart telling us to tie our hair back and telling horror stories like you would an old wives tale, and no one really listened. Imagine if we had watched that, safety would have been scared into us!

Well, it worked for me, last night while I was using the cutoff saw that's all I could think of -- keep fingers attached to body, don't rush and pay attention. Too bad it didn't work for my head. My poor, poor head.While I was measuring a stud, sorry, cripple, placement below the electrical panel (which you frame in just like a window, for all of you needing to know!), I went to stand up and BANG! noggin meet edge of electrical panel meet goose egg and birdies with stars. Wow, did that hurt. A LOT. No blood, but I felt like I reverted to back when I was a kid, and you really hurt yourself and have a good cry. Well mine was more like, 'OW, ow, OW, OW! I'm okay...I'm okay...it hurts...*lip twinge*...it really hurts...*chin wobble*', then Trevor, 'are you okay?' and then me, 'I think so...*twinge, wobble*...no...*blubber*, no...it HURTS!!! *blubber, blubber*'. And then it was pretty much a time out for me. Constructing was done for me for the night.

I think this is quite accurate...

See what it all means here, and test yourself!

My personalDNA Report

Make it right!

Well, this weekend was spent wheeling and dealing at our yard sale on Saturday morning and then constructing away the rest of the time. The yard sale was quite a success -- and I thought it was all going to go pear-shaped because I had missed the deadline for submitting an ad to the paper. Not so! I posted on a bunch of online classified sites and made a few signs and put them up on Thursday. Well, that did the trick. We started at 7am (people came at 6:30) and went until 1pm. I think the next time I would only have it go to 12pm, the last hour was a bit painful and slow. (Plus so much of our stuff had been purged, it looked quite sad on our lawn.) We packed everything else up and donated it to the Langley Hospice and took what they didn't want to the Salvation Army. (Oh! And we made $300!!!)

And it's official! We've started to put studs in the basement! Very exciting. And I am proud to say that I am actually HELPING. YES. Using power tools. I had a lesson on how to use a compound cut off saw yesterday and I've been compounding and cutting off ever since. In fact, I am the one cutting the studs (yes, imagine that!). The next lesson is going to be with a big framing nailer. We'll see how that goes, it's gigantic.

But we're on schedule pretty much with the timeline that we've set out for the basement. With some luck, the framing will be done next week, we'll have the drywall guy come by and measure and give us a quote and then it will be on to plumbing and electrical.

(And we bought our flooring this weekend as well! Homo Delepot was having a sale and we squeaked over their $1999 cut-off and got a $250 gift card. That will be handy for buying doors and the rest of the bathroom goodies.)

RaaaAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Yes, it is me, WWF champion and studly champion, or champion of moving studs! We had our homo delepot delivery come yesterday (of course, AM when we asked for PM, and 15 minutes to arrive instead of the 40 we were told). We had 210 studs delivered, 18 bags of R-12 insulation, 3 rollsof vapour barrier and a bathtub. Since I ran home from work (literally, I was driving up the street and saw the guy starting to move our stuff off the truck with a forklift, gunned it up the alley, parked on the street in front of the house and SPRINTED through the yard to beat the guy to the back - a la Ferris Bueler I might add), I figured I might as well stay and unload the delivery into the basement.

Which was just as much work as it looked. Moving 220 studs is not easy, especially by yourself. But I thought of this as a challenge, something along the lines of a character-building exercise (like folding 1000 paper cranes), a test of mental and physical agility if you will. Well, it was just WORK. Hot, sweaty, long (that's what she said - AHAHAHAHA!) work.

But I did it. I totally did it. Me and the studs rocked the house.Trevor did the insulation moving later on that evening. He got the easy part.

You know it's time to purge when...

I came across this box of Uncle Ben 'Classic Recipe' (so 'classic' it's 12 years old!!!). You know it's time to throw it away when it sports a Forrest Gump promo sticker. I think this was a hand-me-down pantry item from my mom (the queen of vintage pantry foods...love you mom!!!).

12 years ago I was in grade 10. I didn't eat it then and I'm not going to eat it now!

Maybe I should have put it up on eBay!

Busy bees

This weekend was all work and not too much fun (but there was a little). On Saturday we had a lot of zip and tackled the basement and the backyard (no dinner at Mike and Cynthia's due to a plague hitting their fam, boo!). I initially woke up at 5am and thought about getting up and getting a jump on things, then came to my senses a few minutes later and went back to sleep. I got up around 7:30 and was at the big 30% sale at Cedar Rim nursery by 8:30. That place is HUGE, and a lot of fun to walk around in (more like hike the place is so big). Picked up a nice big lavender plant, some tall flowery blue thing and some african daisies (so cool!). I did some more errands and was back home with lunch by 11am. The rest of the day was spent tidying up and organizing the basement crap. *whew* lots of work there. I'm proud to say that we actually accomplished a few things though -- the backyard is SO close to being finished, so I've decided to post the photos and high five myself *whoa-psht!*.

Before:After:Before: After:

I was also loving my lilies this weekend as well, they're huge!A little dianthus (aren't I fancy knowing the name of this!? LOL!)And a deformed strawberry. Not sure why it's all gremlin-like: