Decked

We spent the weekend tearing our old deck down. It was a lot of work, but I especially had a lot of fun smashing things. Well, everything except one thing. You'll see. Here's the deck as it was originally, except of course for the railing that had been intact at the top. I didn't think about taking pictures until after I'd pulled it off.


And here's some shots of the progress:







And here's what happened when I accidentally threw the claw hammer at my leg. Whoops!



See, my right arm was tired from using the sledgehammer all day and even the claw hammer was proving difficult so I decided to try to use my weaker left hand in order to strengthen it. I was swinging as hard as I could when it slipped right out of my hand and right into my shin. Fortunately, the next day I didn't have any more pain once I walked off the pain I felt the after letting it rest for the night.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

I've been meaning to buy Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords ever since I heard about it. Since I waited until yesterday, though, I've had plenty of time to read about it and get a better consensus of opinion from the web. It really is very fun and the good things that everyone keeps saying about it are entirely true. In fact, I haven't enjoyed a game more than this one in quite a while. I was beginning to think that the only games I really be excited for in the future were music games like DDR and Guitar Hero, but Puzzle Quest is an excellent little diversion. Highly recommended.

Browsers, Decks, and a Cool Surprise

I know I've been quiet for a while and I apologize. Honestly, I can admit that I usually update when I'm not very busy at work or when I get there early, but it's become a real pain in the butt to post from there because I'm still running Mac OS 9.2. The only browsers that will run on that OS are IE 5.5 and Netscape 7.2, neither of which support all of the code here at Blogger. I can't log in via Netscape because the javascript for the login procedure isn't supported. I can't look at my blog in IE because the formatting scripts aren't supported. I have to log in and write the post with IE and then check any formatting or layout errors with Netscape. It's just kind of a pain.

Anyway, one of the coolest things happened this past week: Jen contacted me via my MySpace page. You know, the one I dated in high school. I haven't talked to her in almost 15 years. She might not know it, but I was totally bummed out the morning when I got her message and her short note totally lifted my spirits. I didn't even care that I had to go to work. That's a good day. I wrote her a super long message back which I hope she can forgive me for. I probably went a little overboard. I was just so excited to hear from her that I freaked out and wrote a thesis. I hope she can spare a few cycles to write me back at some point. I'm not a scary freak, Jen, really!!

In other news, Amy and I have started our deck project. We're in the process of tearing the dead bushes out from around the old deck. The hard part has actually been all the stones that are around the deck. They have to be raked up and carted away so for now we've just been putting them around the side of the house. After we get all the roots from the bushes out of the ground, we'll demolish the old deck, clear out the rest of the stones, and have the new deck built.