Howzit goin', hot stuff?

July has been scorchingly hot for us this year.  My tan lines can attest, since I've spent a whole bunch of it outside.  As my wife recently mentioned, we're getting big into the home improvements this year.  We hope to have a livable basement before the snow flies, which will stave off the cabin fever a little longer once the January doldrums make their annual migration to our house.

Other than getting somebody else to finish our basement for us, We're giving our front garden a good face-lift.  No longer is it the wasteland of discarded birdseed and the ensuing wild grasses that grow under the feeder, annoyingly lush and more vibrant than the nearby lawn.  We've stripped off the top layer of dirt, nearly finished a low retaining wall by the house, and the garden will be covered in a thick layer of two-inch limestone.  I don't think it's possible to know how much two cubic yards of limestone really is until you've shovelled all 5,200 pounds of it out of the back of your pickup truck onto the driveway.  The bobcat loader at the landscaping place makes it look so easy!

It's been so consistently warm this month that the glass jar of semi-sweet chocolate chips in our cupboard, reserved mostly for my peanut butter toast and Sunday pancakes, has largely fused together.  The jar needs a good shaking before a furtive handful can be secured while one's wife is not looking.  (It's not like she scolds me for eating chocolate chips, it's just more fun to sneak them.)

I came home on Sunday afternoon with a couple of this year's first road hockey injuries.  As a Canadian, I am ashamed to admit that I can hardly skate to save my life, but pickup games of road hockey -- I'm all over those.  One of my group of Superfriends lives near some seldom-used tennis courts, and there is nothing that makes for a better game of road hockey than a nicely enclosed tennis court.  The concrete is good for a few scuffed knees though (bloody injuries are cool!), and I took the hard, orange ball once off the forehead and again off my right bicep.  I flexed manfully when I showed the latter welt to my wife, but her stoic mien proved that she remained unimpressed.  She's a hard nut to crack sometimes, my darling Amy.

One fringe benefit of the hot weather has been some consistent thunder storms.  Almost always in the evenings and into the night, so they haven't interrupted our outdoor activities yet.  Everybody else is mentioning it, so I may as well chime in that I started the new Harry Potter last night 'midst the peals of thunder and flashes of light in the foreboding skies.  An ominous beginning, to be sure.  (Sorry Moksha, I shelved Hyperion for a few days...)

For the rest of the week: more shovelling.

Comments

[Mark]

Sounds like some hard, hot work going on in and around the Simian household. I hope there's some play with the same modifiers going on to provide some balance.

You know, even after all this time, I still haven't tried peanut butter toast with chocolate chips. I did, however, have some peanut butter and banana toast for breakfast one day when I was out of cereal and milk (I should run out of those more often!).

[Simon]

Mark, odd as it may sound, I love the chances I get to sweat it out with some hard labour out of doors. shovelling, chopping wood, lifting heavy things... it's a sort of zen focus distilled down to sweat for me. I love it, not least because I spend so much of each day on my ass in front of a computer.

You really oughta try PB & choc chips on toast. To DIE for!

[Moksha Gren]

You read my mind, sir. My opening comment would have been to ask about Hyperion. Even I can't hold it agains tyou that you paused for Potter. It's time-sensitive, ya know. However, are you at least enjoying it enough to return after Potter's done?

I'm with you on the manual labor thing. Don't get me wrong...I'm procrastinate it and avoid it...but once I start, I almost always enjoy the oppertunity to work hard and see actual physical results. Sure...a new employee manual or a cool spreadsheet is work well done...but you just don't get quite the same "I did this" vibe that you do when you had to sweat for it.