Trench Warfare

Today I dug another trench. Back in the day, I used to be quite a trench digger, but these days, even a little 10 foot long, 9 inch deep, 5 inch wide trench causes my body to ache at the end of the day. I should have used my pick. I forgot completely about the pick, and I used the trenching shovel and the digging bar. The soil here is very hard. The pick would have been the perfect tool. Oh well. I have at least two more trenches to go.

I decided not to do much work today, because it was up in the 90's and blazingly sunny. So, you know, just one little trench. I was adding a sprinkler head to zone C6 as I had this fairly large area (about 20'x4', only it was an arc) that got almost no water from any sprinkler. So the lawn there turns brown and looks like death through the hot days of summer. Then it kinda perks back up a bit in the fall and comes back quite well in the spring. So I added a head in a place that mostly covers the area. I can't completely cover it because with our pathetic water pressure, the longest throw you can get out of a popup is about 10 feet. Even the ones that claim to go 20 only go in my yard.

Adding a sprinkler zone required a trip to Home Despot. Normally, I go to Lowe's instead of Home Despot, but I ended up getting 11 $25 gift cards for Home Despot from work as part of their "kudos" system, but I never redeemed them over the last couple years. Then, the program ended (it was replaced with a centralized system that has a lot more choices and in which you can "let it ride" to get one big gift certificate somewhere instead of a million-billion $25 ones.), and so I had to cash out. Hence, I have a stack of 11 $25 gift cards.

Well, I don't anymore. Now I have only 4. The Mrs. decided to re-pot all her plants with very fancy pots because, "They're free!" Plus, I got some high temperature spray paint and a wire brush for my angle grinder in order to repaint the smoker, which, being a big piece of Chinese crap, rusted through its paint in slightly under a year. I put four coats of RustOleum grill paint on it (that's two whole cans - cans are always best in pairs). Hopefully, that'll hold for a year.

I am now going to soak my sorry, aged body in the hot tub. The ibuprofen is starting to kick in, and there's nothing like some ibuprofen, a soak in the hut tub, and some for of whiskey-base beverage to sooth an aching ego.