Control

So, our new neighbors are having a baby tomorrow (scheduled c-section), and as a way to show our kindness as neighborinos, my lovely wife offered to organize bringing them dinner for a week or so after their daughter joins their family. They were humbled, as I would certainly be.

This was all going great until some other neighbors (who they have met once) informed them they were doing the same for them. Great! Right?

Sure, it is nice and all, but here is the rub...

My lovely wife was subtly informed by the other neighbor that there is a group of "moms" that handle this sort of thing around here, and that she need not be concerned about it, but thanks for the thought.

Maybe you're wondering what the big deal is?

Well, the problem is that it's fairly well-known that we are adopting (due to fertility problems), so the statement about the "group of moms" is *highly* offensive. The other thing is that perhaps these "moms" should have consulted with neighbors that actually live nearby, instead of assuming that they control all events related to new babies, as they claim.

To make a long story short, like the *concern* about what we are doing in our backyard, there is a fair amount of extremely odd controlling behavior being exhibited by people around here who have too much time on their hands.

Pathetic...

Progress! Yeah, but...

As you can see, there has been some significant progress on our backyard tear-down/re-do. Our fine friends at L&J&R are putting in some work and making things happen!

This is all great, right?

For us, it is great. Yes, it is. However, as usually goes in our hood, there has been "talk" about what *we* are *doing*.

My real feelings about it...who gives a F^&$!!?!!

What this really shows you though is how truly pathetic the burbs can be when people fret over a few weeds getting smashed while my yard is redone, or the fact that we are doing something *different*.

Thinking back to my youth, I seem to recall a similar phenomenon. I was a punk rocker, my hair looked different, etc. The *normal* people (jocks, cheerleaders, future frat/sorority folks) were aghast!! How could you do what other people aren't doing, how could you infringe on my world with your original ideas??

My friends, this sort of mentality prevails in so-called mature adults.

Snap!

I mentioned in an earlier post about a critter that decided to take up residence in my Rover.

Well, the story is, I had a Power Bar in the glove box left by the previous owner (currently on safari in Africa). I was too lazy to remove it, and while the painters were hanging around, the Rover slept in the garage for a couple of weeks.

Anyway, a little rodent decided to help him/herself to the Power Bar, much to Rachelle's shock and awe when I asked her to retrieve the tire gauge from the glove box!

So, I cleaned the Rover real nice, and then we installed a sonic rodent annoyance thingy in the garage in addition to a couple of peanut butter laden "traps".

Two days later, SNAP!!!

R.I.P. my little rodent friend.

Gone With The Chin...

While on our visit to the Magic Kingdom, a short jaunt to "little Hollywood" revealed an exhibit dedicated to my friend "The Chin".

I wonder if "The Chin" knows about this? Hmmmm....

Is That an African or European Swallow?

I don't know, but the &$^(*#( is trying to nest in my dryer vent!!

Yeah, nature is taking over here at the Castleberry compound. It feels like Animal Farm or something. First we had the killdeer nesting off our backyard (they hatched and then they were Audi 5000), the coyotes cruising down the street, the deer eating our heather, etc. Hmmmm...the "Deer in the Heather...". Wasn't that a Sonic Youth song?

Nah! I think they were singing about a bull or something.

Oh, and there is always our friend the pheasant and his woman. And did I mention the little critters that decided to take up residence in my Rover? Yeah, let's just say they might get "trapped" in there soon.

Magic Kingdom

OK, so I am posting a bit out of order here, but this is just how the thoughts are flowing at the moment.

Just under two weeks ago, Rachelle and I went on a mini-vacation/biznazz trip to SoCal. Shell had some meetings with Disney peoples regarding risk management, and stuff. This resulted in us having a few days to tour the parks (yes, there are two now!), and to meet up with the G-Man and Miss Debbie.

Along with our tour of the Disney parks, Shell and I were treated to a nice little backstage tour of the Old Skool Disney park. We got to cut in line at Space Mountain, and we had the opportunity to see the preparation for the daily main street parade. Pretty cool stuff, and apparently a rare opportunity.

We enjoyed our time at both parks, including this nice shot with the "C" of the California Adventure Park. If you are ever there, check out Soaring over California!

I Can Dig it, She Can Dig it....

Painting was completed Sunday evening, and then it's on to the backyard re-do!!

We came home this evening to find our landscaping artist, Luis tearing the *&%$ out of our backyard!! It was in the plan, so, that's cool.

Anyway, Luis and his trusty sidekick (name unknown) were hard at work carving a base for our new retaining wall, and puttin' the hurt on our former aggregate patio (see the left side of this photo). That's Shell workin' the Bobcat there; a real natural.

According to Luis, he will first destroy and then rebuild our backyard into masterpiece (thanks to the plans designed by a Mr. Goss). To Luis, I am Christ (pronounced Creest), and that's OK.

Hopefully, in a matter of a month or two we will have a beautiful (and usable) backyard.

It Ain't Easy Being Green

Just as Kermit the Frog used to say, being green ain't easy.

Now you're asking yourself, "Self, wtf does that have to do with the picture of this house?". Allow me to answer this for you...

The trim on our 2 year old house was looking like grated cheese, so we decided to paint the whole thing. Cool, right? Yeah, well...I chose some colors I thought would look killer, and that's where the trouble started.

One of the colors I picked was supposed to be a nice maroon, but instead it ended up looking PURPLE on the side of our house!!! The neighbors cringed, the birds flew away, we (OK, I) FREAKED!!

After a short period of WTF are we going to do, we bit the bullet and augmented the color scheme. Then the neighborhood association balked at the fact that we changed our "approved" colors. Yeah, it's that kind of hood. You think they care about that crap in Compton? Hell nah!!!

So, to make this long story shorter, we went with the new scheme, and now (after 3 weeks) it is DONE!!!

The backyard chaos began today, but I'll save that for a separate post.

Time

Bottom line...I need more of it.

I have several posts queued up in my head, but I barely have the time to write this one. I am currently working as I type (waiting for some source code to build on my Seattle machines), and listenting to the TV in the background.

Once I locate some extra cycles (aka time) I will post about our recent trip to the Magic Kingdom, our house painting project (no, they are not quite finished), my *evil* speech class, my new snare drum (it really was a special find!), our neighbor's unfortunate surprise this morning, and our next project, the back yard re-do.

I have some other things to blog about too...Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Don't worry, you'll understand that reference later.

Later,

- Chris

Filler

Don't have much to say tonight, but I do have a lot of home improvement projects going on at the moment so I will be unveiling our new house colors soon. Also, the house painting experience warrants its own separate series of entries which I will compose soon.

In the meantime, here's a nice filler pic we took over at the Valdez residence this evening. The Valdez are our super cool neighborinos from around the way (awww yeah!).

This here is our NTW gangsta pose.