My family is on the road (currently stopped in Mitchell, SD, home of the world famous Corn Palace, I’m told a picture was taken, so we’ll have see what all the fuss was about).

In the meantime, I am officially in the new digs (hurray!) and have spent the past couple of days spending large amounts of money at Lowe’s and Home Depot and getting sunburned while doing yard work. I forgot how great it is to own your own home, especially at the beginning when it doesn’t yet feel like home and you get to go through the hours and hours of labor, but in the end it’s all worth it because things are exactly how you want them to be. And I’m really not trying to be facetious. It’s good to have projects to work on. Right now my project list looks something like this:

Done
– Weed whack overgrown backyard and edges of front yard
– Clean out gutters (full of Oak tree debris)
– Scoop up all the dog crap in the backyard from the previous owner’s dog (I nearly filled a 32 gallon trash barrel, quite discourteous indeed)
– Buy and install new fridge
– Buy mower (have not mowed yet)
– Buy some sort of eating table (bought a picnic table that was on sale at Lowe’s, good enough for the immediate, actually, over the past two weeks I’ve eaten all but one of my meals outside with the people I was staying with, seriously, the weather here is unreal)
– Weatherproof backyard deck
– Nail done loose nails in deck
– Find and destroy wasp nests

To be done this weekend
– Assemble picnic table
– Mow yard
– Organize all the junk left behind by previous owner in the garage and along side of house (seriously, for the next house I buy I’m going to include something in the contract about not leaving anything behind with failure to comply cost being some sort of monetary penalty)
– Sweep out garage and rip out some of the shelving that I don’t like
– Trim hedges
– Chop down two evergreens in the backyard (ratty and in terrible locations)

And plenty more to come I’m sure over the next two days. Today’s major project was weatherproofing the deck. Hours and hours first cleaning and prepping the wood and then applying the sealer (sadly, with a brush that was far too small for the job). I made this task priority number one though since the dogs won’t need use of the backyard for the next couple of days and the deck needs at least 48 hours to set. At some point over the next few months there will be loads of landscaping done with at least one major terraforming project (likely grading out some of the backyard, tearing down parts of back fence, and rebuilding). I think we’re also planning on repainting just about every room in the house including the garage interior. New carpet will happen at some point. Some new doors and light fixtures. And I’ve also been throwing out the idea of doing a complete overhaul on the kitchen (this one will be a ways down the road though since we’ll need time to save up some money).

It’s funny how much more satisfying work is when noone is making you do it.