Weekend Adventures - 1/13/8

I awoke early Saturday full of "vim and vigor". I had an impossibly long list of things to do this weekend and was intent on doing my best to see it all through.

Fortunately, most of the work was yard work and I can do that sort of thing from dawn to dusk without getting bored or tired.

I pruned the Angel Trumpet tree, the Nectarine tree, the Pine tree, the Grape vine, the Roses, the Wisteria, and the tangle of vines, shrubs and trees that make up the back fence line.

I filled the bird feeders, checked to make sure the tiki torches were full, crawled under the house to make sure the plumbing wasn't leaking, replaced a light bulb or two on the front porch, mowed the lawn, swept up the debris front and back from last week's storm, fertalized the lawn, hosed down the deck, watered the lawn and potted plants, moved the xmas decor to the shed, realized the shed was "all-wrong", hauled everything out and put it back in, which led to the realization that the stuff we are storing in the half-remodeled family room is "all wrong" so I rearranged all that, picked up this and that around the house, cleaned out the BBQ, planted three bowls of snap-dragons, filled in the holes the dawg dug the week before and sprayed all the weeds.

As the sun started to fade Sunday evening, I realized I had still not fixed the shower. Fortunately, I had picked up the new diverter spout when we were running a few errands - so I grabbed some tools and climbed in. I bought the wrong spout, of course.

Loaded up the dawg and headed back to Home Depot because, let's face it, what would a trip to Home Depot be without another trip to Home Depot? Instead of greeters like Wal-Mart, they ought to have someone at the exit with a big smile saying, "See you real soon! We close at 8pm today."

Suffice it to say, if you are walking into a Home Depot at 5pm on a Sunday evening, something has definitely gone wrong.

To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

Things we don't know we don't know. Those are the killers. Very rarely do I make a wrong purchase at Home Depot. My troubles stem from not asking the right questions back at the house. I know I need a faucet for the tub, I head to HD to discover that there is more than one kind of connector. This, I had not thought of. I make the correct purchase based on what I know only to get home and find that I didn't. Know that is.

Anyway, I always take the dawg to HD - people are just as surprised to see him there as they are to see him at the mall, but there are far fewer disapproving looks at HD. I found the right spout, picked up some grass seed and other items, checked out (again), and headed for home.

Amount of time that replacing the shower spout should have taken had I read the directions correctly and not jammed the plastic widget in backwards? 15 min.

Actual time spent replacing the shower spout? 30 min.

Such is life. All in all, a good weekend. The house feels like it is on the "improving" side of the ledger instead of the "deteriorating" side. And that's always good.

Used to be that when I was a child I dreaded Saturdays because all we ever did was chores. Now I dread Mondays and can't wait to get back to the real work the coming weekend.

Funny how things change.