Beautiful Day!

I thought this would be a shorter posting, but it got long, anyway.

I got up early to read the Sunday paper in the sunroom and enjoyed watching the squirrels and male and female cardinal outside the windows flying back and forth from my bushes to the neighbors' trees!  It was a chilly morning, but sunny.

Kim spraywashed the deck and patio this afternoon while I filed bills, financial and insurance statements in the office filing cabinet upstairs and started cleaning up the basement and going through a lot of boxes of my accumulated "Stuff" (thanks to George Carlin for putting a smile on my face).  Actually, Kim has quite a few boxes of stuff down there too, but that will be her burden.

As I shared with you previously, I am a packrat.  I have boxes full of college course notes in the basement, two boxes of bulk photos I haven't done anything with for 20-30 years, and a whole lot more.  I probably have one box from each company I worked at - a total of 7 (9 if you count my 3 different jobs at the Commonwealth of PA).  I made some good progress this afternoon, but lots more to do. 

I have a whole corner full of shelves of "garage sale stuff" that I'm just going to set out by the curb over several Friday mornings.  There are usually a couple of guys in pickups that drive around before the garbage and recycling trucks come, and I'm sure they will take everything I put out.  I have several boxes of books to drop off for next year's annual used book sale at PSU - giving some back for resale that I bought there in the first place.  I believe in recycling - my wife would probably call me a recycling fanatic - she usually asks before she throws something in the garbage to go to the landfill.

It was easier than I thought to part with my old history - I will take some of my old computer books to work to see if anyone wants them and I'll take some of my old travel guidebooks, railroad stuff, and maps to PennDOT to see if anyone will adopt them.  I have one large bag full of papers to go into the curbside recycling bin next Friday.

I was going to tackle the winter damaged bushes and shrubs this afternoon also, but held off.  Kim and I decided we will probably have to cut them down and replant something else - they are just too damaged to recover.  I noticed today that my crepe myrtle hasn't shown any life this spring either.  I need to throw some Holly Tone around the base to shock it this year, apparently.  I didn't have to the last two springs, but it's still dormant after the harsh winter cold and snow.  The smell of the creeping phlox is wonderful, and the clematis is climbing and will bloom next month.  I got the grass cut late afternoon and felt good afterward. 

With the deck and patio cleaned and the grass cut, the back of the house looks great.  Sides still need some work, and I have some other dead bushes out front that will need to be dug up and something else replanted. 

We're going to get an estimate this week for a new roof - had a leaky spot again this winter that was wet after spring rains also.  The house is only thirteen years old, but it's time.  Took three subcontractors to finish it when were building it - not a quality job.  Also have a continuing leak under the bay window in the front of the house I want to get permanently fixed so that the basement will finally be dry - I am so tired of having to clean up after every hard rain!  We've tried to patch it several times with no success.  We are going to have to dig it all up, take off some of the stone work, and waterproof it properly so that it doesn't leak in around the sill and damage the drywall in the garage - I've had Lamar repair that 2 times already and it needs it again.

I made the time this afternoon/evening to send a personal message back to all of the friends who reached out to me this past week.  I was truly touched and blessed by the outpouring of emotional and spiritual support, friendship, hope, energy, thoughts and prayers, encouragement, and love.  Thank you to each of you that touched me this week.  I return your blessings and love to each of you also.

A little work to do yet tonight so that I am prepared tomorrow morning.  The developer we have on the PennDOT project starts his second development sprint tomorrow and I have to write 8 more validation scripts for him so that he has everything he needs from me and I don't hold up his progress.  I'll write and compile the skeleton for each of the new Oracle Stored Procedures so that he can program against them and call them.  I can modify them to work properly when I have more time later this week.  We only have him for 2 weeks, so every day counts!  I hope to finish validating the state highway mileage tomorrow, then will populate the production table the HPMS Console application uses with the 2M records so that the business analyst and developer can start testing with this year's data.

Art Stephens, the State CIO (my former boss) told his staff in 2005 that we should tell those who are important to us what they mean to us on a daily basis, so I send my love to each one of you and hope that you enjoy a good night's sleep, a wonderful day tomorrow, and that you don't take any of it for granted, as I am learning to do.  

Thanks for reading!