SuperSatellite ||

It has been a busy week for me, and I apologize that I haven’t found time to get any thoughts added to the ol’ blog recently.  I did accomplish a lot this week, however.  And I’ll also be gone a chunk of next week, so you can safely predict it’ll be a few days until a new post after this one (unless I get ambitious and inspired tomorrow.  Don’t bet on it).  Luckily, there’s always Twitter!

I started and completed the little task of adding a set of stairs to the side of my porch finally, so that we don’t have to jump up and down it (yes, we have front steps, but we never go that way).  Basically did a task each day (I was going to say a “step each day,” but I think the double meaning would have been too confusing.  For me, not you).  I used my grandparents’ front steps as inspiration, though theirs are done in a half moon shape.  I didn’t want to dig up that much brick to do that.  Click the image to see photos through the process.  All the brick came from around the house.  I think I’ll eventually use some to make a path down to the sidewalk.  I also think I’ll start all the porch railing this month as well, which should finish the porch out nicely.

The bad part is how very much it hurt.  There’s no good reason for that.  When I moved to Pittsburg, I helped dad do construction all over the place, and even found myself doing whole sidewalks of brick without a complaint from my back.  It never mattered.  Finishing that top step all at once today just broke me down though.  I had been subscribing to the “work through the pain, you’re just out of shape” mantra lately.  After this, I’m starting to kind of question that.  It’s not even that what I did was so hard.  Dig up a few brick, wash them, and mix a few buckets of concrete and mortar.  I think more it was the frequent up and down.  A good hot shower seems to have loosened things up, but I still feel like I was in a car wreck.

Random fact I just learned: Stephen Lynch starred in the lead role in The Wedding Singer on Broadway.

I shall be out of town again this week.  I’m headed back to Miami Mon-Wed for some developer boot camp with the folks who created dotCMS (partly in preparation for our user training on campus at the end of this week).  Sadly, I won’t be there long enough to enjoy the Miami scenery, but hey, hooray for company condos.  Also, I get to eat at that good sushi place near CocoWalk, who’s name I now can’t remember.  And why aren’t there any nonstop flights to MIA from MCI?  Joplin also needs to run more shuttles to MCI through the day, that’d be a much more convenient drive.  I really hate the drive to MCI by myself whenever I have to fly somewhere.  Anyway, I’ll try to follow up after the training by sharing some of what I learn (or at least what I understand, heh).

I finally sucked it up and upgraded to a Flickr Pro account.  Having done so, I readily admit I should have done it sooner, and it is well worth the $25 a year, and I’ve only had it about four days.  I have already uploaded what I am pretty sure is my whole photo collection, got them sorted and tagged and everything.  Sorry Picasa.  Not sure what pushed me over the edge, other than scrounging up twenty-five bucks and having enough curiosity to make it worth blowing.  The interface is simple but flexible enough that it really seems like it will serve me well.

My neighbor caught me outside today while I was working.  Apparently he works at Pitt Plastic.  For whatever random reason, he hooked me up with a few rolls of trash bags.  Not complaining, it was just a little out of nowhere (when was the last time your neighbor went out of his way to supply you with trash bags?).  However, now I don’t need to buy more trash bags until I’m 38.