The wife and I went apeshit over the Thanksgiving because of the leaves that fell into our yard. During the summer, our trees are a glorious thing. They keep the yard and deck 15 degrees cooler and make gatherings a lot better during those paltry DC summers. But damn, when the fall weather arrives, the trees attack our yard like Kilgore.
You look at the yard and the leaves and you think it doesn't seem that bad, just a few hours of labor and all will be well. It's when it's been four hours and you've only cleared the front yard and the driveway that you realize that is why all your neighbors are hiring migrant workers to do this shit instead. But I will not be defeated. A little back ache and sore legs and hands won't deter me from being a good homeowner.
Plus, when you look out over our back yard, it looks like we've buried about 19 zombies in the ground, with one of our dogs providing security.
Four days after an earthquake struck DC and the great east coast, a damn hurricane showed up. The hurricane made landfall on DC at the same time that our fantasy football draft was taking place. Did 50 mph winds, heavy rains and a general sense of areawide panic stop me from grilling a dozen pork chops (including making another batch of homemade delicious mustard BBQ sauce) for the guys who came to the draft? Hell, no. Because I'm a man, dammit. Those are some classy crosshatched grill marks on those chops, if I do say so myself.
So often when talking about work, I've responded, "Man, it was a ton of work this week." But last weekend, the wife and I did a ton of work ... literally.
We've been wanting to make a pizza oven for the backyard, but not a massive permanent installation. Something smaller as a test run to see how it goes and then maybe next year make something more substantial. But our backyard slopes toward the back and the small patio we have at the bottom of our deck stairs is too small and too close to the neighbor's garage, which burning it down would be a bad way to maintain neighborly relations.
We decided to extend the patio by making one that mimics the original in appearance. This turned out to be a little harder than we thought. You'd think it's just a matter of ordering some materials, moving everything into place and BAM a beautiful new patio. Just know that the "moving everything into place" part is just a wee more strenuous than you'd imagine.
How much more strenuous? The railroad ties weigh 250 lbs each. We ordered 10 of em. The fill dirt was 4.5 cubic yards. Looked like an innocent mound in the driveway until we had to shovel and tamp each 2-inch layer of it using manual tampers. And just in case you were wondering, a cubic yard of dirt (according to several sources on the interwebs, so you know it's at least 80% true) weighs between 1,800-2,100 pounds.
Saturday was moving the ties into place one by one and securing them in there as best we could with metal poles driven into the ground. We packed a couple inches of dirt in there, and called it quits for the day when neither of us could barely make it up the deck stairs. Sunday morning we sucked it up, in the pain we were in, and went to Home Depot to rent a powered tamper. In all their classiness, of course, it was broken and couldn't be rented out. Heads lowered in defeat, we headed back home, each downed 5 Advils and went back to shoveling and tamping. By the time we layered all of it in there and made it as waterproof and packed as possible, the two of us had physically moved more than five tons (TONS!) of material. Two people! And one of them was a girl! (yes, I'm throwing that in there just to see if she notices). Without it sounding weird, she definitely gets an honorary Man Card for kicking ass on all that dirt and moving those ties as well.
You can see the progress in the short slideshow below. In a couple weeks we should have the pizza oven made and there's no telling how that building process will go.
It's been a while since I posted a Man Card item, but everyone knows I earn my Man Card every single day. No one doubts that, right? Just in case you needed proof, I got it done again today.
My IT director alerted me to a deal going on with memory upgrades for MacBook Pros, where I could double my memory for just $100. Sweet deal, and you can't pass up a chance to make your machine run smoother and handle the heavy beasts of processing power (I'm looking at you, Adobe). Ran some errands with the wife and hauled her to Micro Center, which is a place that is exactly what it sounds like: a warehouse of computer stuff. And it's not all warmly laid out like a Best Buy; no, this place looks like somewhere you'd find Jim and Malvin hanging out daily.
So I got the memory chips, went home and got into man mode. Got out some tools, took apart my MacBook Pro and replaced the memory. It's like the laptop is happier with me already. I even took a little time to get out the can of compressed air and remove some dust and buildup in the fan and other areas of the interior, which is never a bad thing for a laptop. In all, a good manly experience of taking apart machinery and improving it.
Yeah, I'm a little desperate for a man-style pick-me-up. For weeks I've got all sorts of dudes showing up at 7 a.m. and working all damn day on my house. Some are handling the kitchen remodel. Others did a nice upgrade to our electrical systems. Another group came in and came and redid our HVAC system. Many of these teams of workers are working on Saturdays even. I want to watch TV, play games and veg on Saturdays, and these dudes come in and bang out some great work. So I end up coming in day after day and feeling like a schlub.
So I'm taking a major stretch and giving myself a man card pat on the back for following directions. We got these industrial strength shelves for our laundry machine closet. Nothing special at all. Seriously, I could put 12 of these together in an hour I think. But, damnit, I needed to feel like I can construct something with my hands and drink a beer afterward (which I did). So there you go.
It's long overdue, but I have to at least share the belovedness of the turkey I smoked for Thanksgiving. I wasn't going to talk about it, but Kristin did say that I didn't shut up about how proud I was of myself for about three days at work afterward, so I'm going to post it anyhow. So as you can see, my turkey rocked. And there is nothing manlier than properly smoking meat for 4 hours and getting rave reviews from a household full of friends about how much it kicked ass.
I, have made fire. And I didn't need to make weird man-love to a volleyball to do it, either. The fireplace in the new house is kinda small so it takes some work with the low airflow to get a proper conflagration going, but I got skills people. Need proof? I even shot a quick video of the fire to prove it's not some fluke.
Probably would have been cooler if I had cut the wood Paul Bunyan style, but that wasn't an option. I have no forest nor do I own an axe (well, I do now but, aww, forget it). We paid some people to drop off a ton of wood and so I spent some time last weekend hauling it from one place to the next. One place being the driveway, next being under the deck. Never having stacked wood before, I think I did a mighty fine job, making a couple nice working piles and further cementing my belief that my mom and I could totally kick some ass on the Amazing Race (the 1:20 mark gives you an idea of how we would have conquered Siberia).
My renewing of the Man Card continues. Last night it was getting home in time to mow the lawn for the first time. Two and a half weeks into the new home, and I finally got around to cutting the grass. It wasn't crazy deep or anything like that, but it was still pretty hefty. Then I watered the half of the lawn that needs some fertilizer to keep it growing. Oh, and then I grilled pork chops on the grill with a marinade I made myself. Oh yeah, I kick some ass.
Renewed the man card tonight. No, I didn't get as fancy as some people and replace an entire floor in my house. But I did participate in one of the quintessential American male activities. I put together a grill. And not some basic black thing you get for $20 at K-Mart. No way, people, I went big time. This Weber grill is some serious action. Time to break this sucker in with some steak and a baked potato.
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