1 year!

It is hard to believe that, as of today, we have lived here for a year. Wow...

Pretty in... Pink.

So far so good with the iphone. It has come in handy several times for work when I am out of the office and get a call to add another stop to my trip. Since I still don't know my way around the state very well, I can just use my phone to navigate my way there. I'm still amazed at how far phone technology has come in a relatively short time.

Here is a picture of my phone in it's Griffin Survivor case, along side the iphone clone that Karen gave me for my birthday back in February... we have to give her points for creativity.



My parents were in town a couple weeks ago and my dad and I tackled a new project, building Adirondack chairs for the front porch. Dad and I got all the wood cut for two chairs, but only had time to complete one. I managed to get Karen out in the garage last weekend to help build the second chair. Then the big discussion started, what color to paint the chairs?

White to match the house trim? No... they would get dirty. Green to match the siding? Nope. The colors were narrowed down to yellow or pink. Obviously, judging by the photo below, pink won. One coat of primer and two coats of pepto down, one more to go to get solid coverage. What can I say, I'm secure enough to watch the world roll by while lounging in a pink chair.



Other breaking neighborhood news: A UGA flag has been hoisted at another house in the neighborhood! They just moved in a couple weeks ago, we definitely need to meet these people.

How could I forget...

The one place that I miss on Saturday mornings? ChicK-fil-a! I miss the chicken biscuits more than I probably should. Next time that we are in Athens you can bet I will hit it a few times for breakfast.

In other news, I finally got my birthday gift from Karen, a new iPhone! We had been holding off on the purchase due to financial reasons, but since Verizon announced that they were doing away with the unlimited data plans, the time was right to pull the trigger on it. Of course now I am scared as crap that I am going to break it, so I ordered the most heavy duty case that I could find for it. Video of them chucking it off a 100+ ft high bridge and dragging it behind a scooter at 40 mph sold me on it. I am historically tough on phones (I had to fiberglass my last phone back together twice!) It will take away from the sleek clean lines of the phone, but hopefully it will protect the phone over the next few years.

We have been furniture shopping since we moved into the house. She is tired of her old couch and I have never been a huge fan of it to begin with. We didn't have much luck finding something here in town, so we went out of town to a big store that we see advertised all the time. An interior designer that we met told us that the place was huge and that it could take 4-5 hours to go through the store. Yeah, right I thought. Man, was I wrong... The place was huge and it even has it's own restaurant AND a few rooms where people can spend the night if they end up shopping for too long and don't feel like driving back home to Chicago. The good news is that we found a couch that the two of us could agree on, BUT we didn't place the order quite yet... Anyone want to make a donation to our furniture fund? Didn't think so...

There is an art festival tomorrow in town, that should be interesting... Still haven't sold the house in Athens, that thing is starting to hold us

back a bit.... We might end up renting it, if we could find a tenant that we knew wasn't going to trash the place.

Georgia... what do I miss about the?

Several people have asked me what I miss most about Georgia... here is the current list in no specific order:

1. Friends and Family

2. Being 45 minutes away from the Road Atlanta race track. I did get to catch some of the Mitty historic races at RA when I flew down to GA to get the miata. Until we moved, I didn't realize how nice it was to be so close to a place with world class racing events.

3. DePalma's Italian Cafe in Athens. We've found some good Italian food, but it isn't quite the same...

4. Lots of trees. We only see trees along the hedge rows and in the older neighborhoods, I definitely miss the abundance of tree cover. HOWEVER, since we don't have as many trees, we did not have the couple weeks of "yellow everything" from all the tree pollen.

5. The Grill in downtown Athens, still the best milk shakes around.

6. Football Saturdays in Athens. Need I explain that further?

7. Being a short drive away from the mountains and a not too long drive to the beach. All we have here are little hills and a great lake...

8. Predictable weather. The weather patterns around here are nuts and seem to change at the snap of a finger. The wind will suddenly shift directions and clouds will appear out of no where. However, dark clouds doesn't mean it is going to rain... it sometimes gets really dark only to clear up 10 minutes later without a drop of water. After almost a year, I still can't tell what it is going to do.

9. No front license plates on cars. It may sound stupid, but I hate having to put license plates on the front of our cars. Call me superficial, but I can't stand how cars look with front license plates on them. That being said, I haven't totally caved on this point, the miata's front plate currently resides at the base of the windshield, tucked in between the windshield and the dash board.

10. Crape Myrtles, Hollies and Southern Magnolias. A few plants that I liked in GA that won't grow here.

A bridge to... the compost pile

Once the creek bed extended down past the garden area, I realized that I needed a way to get the wheel barrow across it. I have started a compost pile in the back corner of the lot, and I'll need to be able to haul in material back and forth. I went into amateur carpenter mode one rainy night and built a bridge. Of course I couldn't go with a plain, flat bridge, but I kept it small and not too crazy.




The good news is that the creek bed is pretty much complete. All I have to do is trim back the weed block and finish mulching around the edge. FINALLY! I was getting tired of hauling stone around the house. I guess moving between 5 and 6 TONS of stone by hand will do that to you.

Garden Progress

The warm weather has perked up the plants in our garden and I'm seeing some progress, along with our first tomato of the season. The plant seems too small to support the fruit, we'll see what happens. This is my first time growing Roma's, so perhaps this is how they do it. I bought some standard tomato cages, but the plants aren't big enough to utilize the stability that they would provide.

Here is what we have planted in our raised bed from front to back: zucchini, jalapeno pepper, yellow squash, tomatoes and cucumbers. I have also added some beans along the left side, a second planting of beans will hit the right side this week. I'm trying to spread them out a little, so we have a longer duration of beans. So far, the fencing has kept hungry natives out, hopefully that continues.




As for the baby birds, they have definitely grown. Mama bird stopped to pose for this shot. My question is this, how are dirtying up the beam above the nest?! I thought $#!% always went down hill? I am not sure she built the nest big enough for all of them, hopefully they stay put until they can fly.

Sunrise in IL

Slept with the windows open last night and was woken up very early this morning by the birds. It had the makings for a nice sunrise, so I grabbed the camera and went and stood on the steps of our deck and snapped a few pictures: