Played golf at Elmwood a week ago on a day off work. I was alone, so the clubhouse guy put me together with a mom and her adult son and another guy playing alone — a 60ish-year-old businessman in town for the week from Denver.
Had a good time on the first few holes — everyone friendly, everyone playing well or at least laughing at bad shots.
We hit our tee shots on the fifth hole, a par 3, and set off up the hill to hit our second. The woman’s ball found the trees and she was none too happy. She chipped out near the green.
Meanwhile, the son and I are playing our second shots and the old guy goes to the bathroom while he waits, as his ball was already on the green.
The mom lines up for he third shot and completely shanks it. I mean, she was aimed straight ahead and the ball went straight left. She storms over and grabs the ball, walks over to the cart and just sits there. She’s done with the hole.
By this time, the older guy’s out of the bathroom, so we’re all kinda standing there looking at each other, surprised by the outburst. We finish up the and head over to the next tee.
The mom and son, riding together, hang back a second and then drive over.
“Hey guys, that’s it for us today. We’re gonna head back to the clubhouse,” the son says.
Old guy and I just kinda look at each other and shrug. Who quits after five holes? Plus it was just a couple bad shots. Who cares?
We walk over and shake hands with the son, who’s still sitting in the driver’s seat. Nice to meet you. Thanks for playing.
The entire time the mom is just sitting there in the cart, red in the face and seemingly on the verge of tears. She didn’t say a word. Didn’t shake our hands. Wouldn’t even look at us.
Awkward!
So they drive off. We hit our tee shots on No. 6 and start the walk down the hill. The old guy drives up next to me.
“You know,” he says, “I hope she didn’t take offense to me taking a little break in that Porta Potty to smoke some weed. I think she might have smelled it.”
We spent the rest of the round trying to figure put whether it was the divot or the doobie that made her so mad.
As most of you know by now, I’m spending my weekends building a patio in the back yard. (For anyone that’s just now figuring this out, be happy that you’ve been spared my near-constant project storytelling. It’s seriously, the only thing going on with us right now, aside from Tuesday night drinking.) But trust me, you haven’t missed much yet, mostly “and then I moved across the yard.”
Back story: We haven’t really used the back yard for anything other than lawn-mowing practice and a failed attempt at growing some herbs. And we don’t really have a front-yard space private enough to sit outside and eat a meal or hang out with friends and family. So, we’re building our own little retreat. One that blocks out yipping dogs, car noise and weeds from the south and gives us a flat area on which we can put a picnic table and some chairs. The patio is the first step. As an added bonus, I’ll also be getting rid of most of the back yard grass, which, if you’ve seen the any of the front yard this summer, you’ll agree is probably for the best. (Thanks, fungus!)
So, we decided we want a patio. Now what? I’m not exactly Bob Vila, so it took a couple weeks of talking about a design — this was in April, I think — which led to a couple weeks of thinking about a design that finally gave way to a couple weeks of planning for the design. All so I could put off the actual implementation of the design. We knew we wanted to do it ourselves to save the money and I knew that there were plenty of good tutorials on putting in simple brick patios.
The actual work started with the old “step it off then draw a crude sketch from memory” plan, which you’ll see below. (Note: For a while we entertained the idea of a small firepit. I think we’re skipping that now. But the heated stripper pole option is still in play. Click image for larger version.)
But since I have no imagination, I still worried about how the finished product would look. So, I stayed up late one night teaching myself how to use Google’s 3D modeling program called SketchUp. Too many hours and too many beers later, we had a visual plan.
At this point, there’s really only two options: procrastinate because you’re still terrified, or buy the blocks and start digging. After another week of thinking about it, I chose #2.
As you can see from the pictures in the gallery at the bottom, the yard sloped pretty severely from east to west, which meant there was a fair amount of digging to be done to get the space level enough to put the patio down. So, I went to Lowe’s and bought a couple shovels, a level, a hand tamper, some string and some stakes. I’m pretty sure I remember standing there, staring at the different options, then shrugging, saying “Let’s do this” and walking up to the counter. There’s really no other way to start a project like this except to just jump in.
I decided to cut the digging in half by taking dirt from the high side and adding it to the low side. And by the end of the first weekend of work (Sunday, Aug. 1) I had made pretty good progress with the leveling. Obviously, still much to be done, but I had successfully converted our sledding hill into a mud wrestling pit. Not bad for the first two days.
Next up: the stones. Lowe’s has a sweet little project planning booklet that helps idiots like me figure out how much to buy. And with a retaining wall to build, thanks to the slope of the yard, there was the added complication of getting wall stones and capstones. “What are the dimensions of your patio?” the booklet said. “Insert that number here. Here’s how many stones to get. Here’s how much crushed rock you need as a base. Here’s how much sand to you’ll need.”
I fully expected to get a bunch of questions when we walked in to buy this stuff. I imagined the guy behind the counter staring at me like I was an alien when I asked him for several hundred patio stones. In the end, it was almost TOO easy. I wanted someone do say, “Do you know what you’re doing, little boy?” so I could just give up and hire someone. No such luck, so the show goes on. Final block-purchase tally:
But I figured out quick that big-box home centers aren’t the place to get the dirty stuff — crushed limestone and sand aren’t cheap if you’re buying it in bags you can carry. So I made a couple calls to local landscaping / contracting businesses, which, again, wasn’t as painful an experience as I imagined it would be. They’re well-versed in conversation with guys who call and say, “Uh, hi. I’m putting in a giant stone patio in my yard and I have all the stones. But apparently you have to put rock down under it to help with drainage. So, uh, can you guys help me with that?” Thank you, patient receptionist lady.
By the end of the week, I had six tons of patio blocks AND six tons of raw materials sitting in my driveway.
(Word to the wise: When the contractor offers to put the rock in separate one-ton bags, you tell them yes. Even if it’s an extra $10 per bag. It’s definitely a tactic they only use on the home-improvement rookies, but the bags keep the yard (and the neighbors’ yard) from turning into a beach.)
Weekends No. 2 and 3 were more digging in 100-degree weather and the start of the trench around the outside of the patio where the retaining wall would sit. Plenty of sunscreen, sore arms and slow marches inside to ask Stephanie for another beer.
This past weekend was kinda fun. I finally got to put some pieces into place. Even though it takes five or ten minutes to get each stone level on the first layer of blocks, it’s nice have some real progress to describe to people, beyond “Our pile of dirt is larger and smoother.” After four weekends, I’ve spent probably 20 or 25 hours working in the yard and I actually feel pretty good about the progress, especially when you consider I’ve worked alone (which has been by choice — I’ve had plenty of offers of help) and that the extent of my patio-building knowledge came from these two tutorials on the This Old House website:
I’ll continue with the blogging during the rest of the project, so get excited for updates on “My afternoon with a giant rental power tool” and likely one called “Oh shit, my wall fell down, now what?”
In the mean time, check out the full project photo gallery embedded below:
Stephanie has been calling for it for months. And I’m finally giving in. We’re getting rid of cable.
“But SPORTS! I have to watch sports! What about my ESPN?” is what I used to argue. Now that they opened up ESPN3.com, that one’s gone.
“But the DVR! We won’t have the DVR anymore!” A simple check of our recorded programs shows 90% of our lineup is stuff from network TV, which we can still watch live or watch online.
The 100 channels of HD that Cox sends us are pretty nice, too, but are they really worth $100 bucks a month? We’re about to find out.
Here’s some more fuel on the fire. A graphic comparing U.S. adult TV watching to the time it took to create Wikipedia.
Kinda makes you want to turn off those “Design on a Dime” reruns, doesn’t it?
Between the guy in this commercial and watching Phil in episodes of Modern Family, I think I’m getting a pretty solid idea of the kind of dad I want to be some day.
I got excited a couple weeks ago reading about a project in Wired magazine.
“Tie your digital camera to some helium balloons,” it said, “and take aerial pictures of your house.”
So, since I’m about eight years old at heart (it was an article about projects dads can do with their kids, after all), I convinced Stephanie and Quentin to play along last weekend as I tried to make the camera fly.
35 helium party balloons
500 feet of curling ribbon
2 rubber bands
1 digital camera
Simple enough. If we had a little more cooperation from the wind, it might have turned out even better. A stiff breeze and fading daylight made most of the pictures pretty blurry. But we did get a few good ones. Pretty fun way to burn a couple hours on a Sunday.
(UPDATE (5/27): Added some behind-the-scenes photos.)
Today’s theme: small things of beauty
The redesigned Politics page on NYTimes.com: That gray election sidebar is a pretty nice touch, and it’s a really unique navigation feature for an institution like the times. The infographics are just sublime, too. The Senate, House and Governors race pages all make really great use of maps and the interactivity is just icing on the cake. Even the pages for individual races are beautiful. A data nerd’s dream.
NPR’s 404 page: Lots of sites just give you an error message they can’t find the page you’re looking for. NPR’s developers provide some utility with a dash of humor — Links to archive stories about Amelia Earhardt, The Watergate Tapes, Luggage, Jimmy Hoffa and Waldo, with the tagline: “It’s a shame that your page is lost, but at least it’s in good company; stick around to browse through NPR stories about lost people, places and things that still haven’t turned up.”
SketchNotes iPhone app: Mike Rohde is a writer and designer who takes beautiful notes, and app maker Six Voices does the work justice with slick navigation and a beautiful interface. (Download it, it’s free.)
After skipping out on visits to the gym for the past, oh, two months, I finally got off my TV-watching recliner for some exercise.
Some time ago, I downloaded the workout DVDs for P90X, the loud infomercial screamer videos that basically scare you into getting into shape. Then, I promptly ignored them until last night.
The first video is an hour-long arms and back workout. And granted, I the “X” in P90X stands for extreme, but I wasn’t quite ready for 10 million pushups in the first 40 minutes. Yikes. Brutally sore today.
At work, I told someone about the different options for the workouts, which allow you to choose how vigorous of a program you want to follow. Basically, there’s one for “maintaining fitness” and another for “tearing off the sleeves of all your shirts.”
Then I got home and looked in the mirror.
Brilliantly timed coincidence or proof that P90X makes people stronger than the Incredible Hulk on Day 1?
Outdoor projects started last weekend. We took out the fence between our yard and the neighbors. We put it on Craigslist and a guy from York came and picked it up the next day, much to the chagrin of the other 11 people who called wanting to buy it. Who knew there was such a booming market for used fence sections?
This weekend, we’ll get to the planting.
Other changes in store: moving the bed upstairs, the TV downstairs and some more painting.
For those keeping track, this will be the second new color in the kitchen and third new color for the dining room. This time, we’re going with “Golden Fleece” which hopefully turns out a little less “holy crap yellow” than our last attempt.
What? Nobody picked Butler or Michigan State to win the title? Shocking.
Sean gets the gold star for being the only person with Sparty or the Dogs in the Final Four. (Only two brackets even had Butler in the Elite 8.) No love for the 5-seeds, I guess.
With the left side of the bracket completely finished, here’s a look at the scenarios remaining. (Three people have Duke in the final and two people have West Virginia. Championship game outcome doesn’t matter at this point):
Duke beats West Virginia: Tim P. wins with Dirk in second.
West Virginia beats Duke: John P. wins and Andy P. gets second.
Full leaderboard here. And I’m still waiting on money from most of you, so pay up.
