New addition

We have a new birthday in the family today or tomorrow...depends on how hard Jackie pushes ;)

Pond Project

So the pond is about 98% complete at this point. I recently finished the upper "waterfall" basin and put the aluminum trim work up.


Everything works well. I connected the plumbing, and after having a few inital leaks everything seems to be patched up and working fine. I like my new filter with UV light, it does make a noticable difference in the clarity of the water.

We have planted some herbs in the lower level including, jalapenos, dill, a cilantro substitute (better in our climate, some arugula, and a spinach substitute.

The fish did like there new home for awhile. It appears that when we bought more of the newbies they brought with them a case of ick. So to date, we have lost 4 fish, including our two eldest, which we are sad about, because they had made it all the way through the construction phase. We have chemicals in the water now to combat that, but I'm not really sure how many more fish we might lose.

America, America where are you?

Most of my chat's stem from things I've seen. Recently, I've seen two rather disturbing articles. One article showcases American spending to that of government spending. To think that Americans spend more on any 1 of the following pizza, alcohol, smoking than we give to NASA. Now some of you might think shooting people into Space is a waste, and I'm not here to argue that point, but abstractly NASA is the epitome of American engineering a science talent...and well..you can see how much we care about that.

http://thelaunchpad.xprize.org/2009/05/comparing-budgets-nasa-v-united-states.htm

The other article, was a Nightline piece outlining "Made in America". Everyone knows this is a problem, so much so that we usually brush it off with a chuckle. This is a seriously sad state of affairs when you start to see the numbers or product lines. If China were to stop sending us import (oh let's say they choose to start a war with us), we'd be dressing our people in fig leaves. 90% of Walmart would be empty.

American's need to wake up and smell the coffee! This is not good people. We waste our talent and money on stupid shit (like drugs, smoking, Social Security) that do NOTHING to advance America. If we redirected a fraction of that money we'd be off foreign oil, still a technology and manufacturing superpower. But for now, like, we have Britney Spears...totally

Who's reading me??

I've had several people comment on reading my blog (or lack thereof with new content) which I was a bit surprised to hear. I thought I was talking to myself, hence, the lack of new posts.

To those of you remaining in the shadows join my blog as a follower. It's painless and it let's me know you care. (and I should keep talking to myself) :)

Who am I?

Was browsing the web trying to figure out what's next in my career path. A thing I find myself doing more and more. Came across this PersonalDNA profiler so I took the test. This isn't the first assessment test I've taken and I usually agree with them. And they usually say the same stuff, but none the less they are still fun to take and to share with friends.


My personalDNA Report

Cloudy Skies

Man it's been a rough past couple of days.

I started off Mothers day weekend with a trip to the ER for stitches after mowing over a rock that decided to puncture my shin. Mothers day was nice, we had a good time with the ladies. Over the weekend I was reviewed on my liquid dynamics courses by leaving the pump off in the pond. A little bit of vacuum later, and my yard was a waterpark of siphoned off pond water. Oh, and i had just bought new fish. For those pet lovers out there, don't worry..the fish are ok, but they ain't exactly staying in the luxury resort that once was.

So anyways..turns out the drain failure was a good thing...one of the support boards in the back came undone under the pressure and needs repair. I used a pocket screw (per the great carpenter Ty's) recommendation...which seems to have pulled through. So...I get to crawl under the patio tonight... yay!

Room to Expand

So yesterday was a very busy day. I posted the pool table on Craigslist, for a steal price of $500, and wound up taking less than that. But I don't care because it's gone!! And man did it open up that space that it was sitting in. We have already rearranged the entire house and it's just great. We were both shocked with how quickly the whole process went down, I posted it Monday by Tuesday the buyer had movers in and everything.

I'm not going to miss it. We pretty much used it for holding mail, car keys and groceries. Now, though we are needing to decor, so I think we are going rug shopping.

Things are ramping up around here getting ready for Jackie's baby shower (another good reason to have the pool table gone.)

On the pond front, I have spent the past couple of days not working on it. Sunday I helped Nick and Reggie on the house hardi-siding. (The house is really starting to take shape. It's going to be a fabulous house when it gets done.) Monday I acquired a 10x13 foot sheet of rubber pond liner. Today I spent about an hour calling around looking for a bulkhead fitting (to run the PVC drain pipe through the liner, without leaking). With that done...waiting for a nice warm day to install the liner so it will be super flexible. Since that is probably not going to happen soon, plan B is to strong arm it into place, my speciality. :)