Manly-Man Weekend....

It was a quality manly-man weekend, the kind that puts hair on your chest, thkind that would make The Art of Manliness guys proud. I started landscaping the backyard, which is a sprawling giant of a hill. I am in the process of putting in railroad tie steps so we can journey down to stream that runs through our property. It's my hope we can have streamside meals with riparian entertainments this summer. It surprises me how incredibly heavy the railroad ties are. Still, I chainsawed them into usable chunks and set about carving the first setting into the hillside with a pick and shovel. Needless to say, the assorted plants, trees and other detritus that have built up over the course of years has made that task quite challenging. In between the roots and leaves, I uncovered old Ball Mason jar pieces, unspent shotgun shells (plural), a snake and even a gigantic frog (thing scared the carp out of me because I thought it was a hopping alligator at first).

Still, the foundation of gravel was laid, the rock dust smoothed over top of that then tamped down to set it, and the first step was laid out. I was ready to finalize setting it with rebar today when I found the blade I bought to cut the rebar does not fit my mitre saw. I realized this by the St. Vitus Dance it went into when I activated the saw. I'm not the world's greatest tool guy, but that did NOT look right to me, so I stopped, examined it, and found out what it was wrong. And, it was a good thing I did that before losing a limb or an eye. Who knew this project would be so fraught with peril.

In between all of this, as a rest and reward to myself, I put Li'l Fish's bike together and we went cruising around the neighborhood and beyond. On Sunday, we took a spin over to the local Giant, but it was closed for Easter so we ended up going to the only convenience store in America with no Slushy/Slurpee/Squishy machine. Iced tea was the order of the day, and it was awfully good, even though it was only half as cold as a Slushy/Slurpee/Squishy.

Somewhere along the line, I also managed to vacuum out the basement, tune up the lawnmower (new plug, new blade, spring cleaning), sweep out the garage and, today, mow the lawn and hit the weed whacking. Now I have to go grunt some more and manscape my chest....or maybe not.