It's In!

Even during all of the crappy weather, my landscaping professional soldiered on. No matter the temperature, the precipitation, or anything else, he's a true professional. Here's a look at his glorious work:

I kid. He did some work, but not much. He dug up some lawn, put down some loam and laid one, count it, one strip of sod. Maybe when I get home from work today something else will be done?

Here's a view of my driveway. I wrote about what's in it yesterday. This morning, the useless wall caps have been replaced by a palate of hopefully useful retaining wall blocks. Also, the red car mentioned yesterday has been replaced by a pile of fresh dirt (which I think runs more smoothly and is safer than my wife's car). I forgot to mention the closet doors and the grill back there...

Hope to get that video up today using stolen wireless. If it doesn't work, it'll be up tomorrow when the Verizon Fios folks come invade my house for hours and hours to give me internet.

Rain.

Not much to report from yesterday, other than my huge driveway is filling up fast. Last night, here's what was sitting in it:

Four palates of rolled up sod
One palate of stacked and useless retaining wall caps
One moldy/putrid old refrigerator
One non-moldy, possibly putrid old dishwasher
The city garbage can
Another garbage can filled with construction waste
A small red convertible
A bigger, but still small, black soccer mom SUV.

That's a lot of stuff for one driveway.

It was too rainy to prep the yard for sod yesterday, so hopefully it's being prepped today? I doubt it. The weather still stinks. because of this, I was stuck inside creating a corner out of joint compound in the bathroom. It's a real pain to get right. I'm on coat number three, with number four awaiting my arrival home tonight.

After that, I started editing some video, now that my computer is set up at home. I hope to have that video done and ready for your viewing pleasure tonight. I'll hopefully have it posted tomorrow.

As an aside, if anyone wants to buy me a computer with 8 gigs of RAM, I'd appreciate it. My measly 2 gigs really chugs along when editing video.

Home Depot

Yesterday, I wrote about getting 200 cement blocks delivered in order to get a retaining wall up. I ordered them on Saturday and scheduled a delivery for yesterday. I got a phone call during the day letting me know that the delivery was on its way and would be waiting in my driveway when I got home.

After work, I drove home, changed clothes, got all my tools out and got ready to dig for, lug around and install a retaining wall. Once ready, I inspected the delivery. F.

Here's what I ordered:

Here's what I got:

The good folks at the ghetto Home Depot delivered 200 rectangular chunks of cement, but the wrong 200 rectangular chunks of cement. Awesome. Instead of the wall pieces, they sent 200 wall caps. I have a palate of wall toppers sitting in my driveway. I was, and remain, nonplussed.

I called the Home Depot back and asked if I could get the things I had ordered, rather than a random product loosely related to what I had ordered. The associate chuckled, and let me know that the next delivery they can do is Thursday. Awesome. I agreed, as I didn't have much a choice, and am stuck with a problem. In order to lay the sod correctly, I need a retaining wall in the front, holding up a bunch of dirt. Here's where the wall will be going (to the right of the driveway):

If sod is laid down in the front yard without that wall, the sod will not reach where it needs to go. In order to make sure that the wall is sturdy, I have to backfill it with dirt. Because of this backfilling, there will be a few inches of new dirt in between the top of the wall and the current lawn. If the sod is laid down before the wall is up, the configuration will be new sod, new dirt, new wall. Not the best look.

I guess I'll keep a strip of sod siting in my driveway and water it daily in hopes of keeping it alive. Once the wall is up, I can lay (plant?) the sod on the new dirt? I have no idea. It definitely won't work.

The sod should be going in today, weather permitting, and the wall isn't up. Hooray.

Recent Happenings.

I spent all of last week getting the yard ready for planting things in it. Basically, Amanda and I chopped up some bushes, dug a bunch of dirt, inhaled a lot of dust and swung an ax around for a few days.

I met up with a few more landscaping fellows and here's how it went. During the third meeting, I was holding the estimate from my second meeting. It was for $2,900. After walking the guy through what he had to do (basically, lay sod everywhere), he started to tally up the estimate. He said, "well, the labor is going to be $2,500."

I stopped him right there and let him know that I appreciated his time, but it wasn't going to work out. He asked what my other estimates were, and I showed him the one in my hand. He hemmed a little, with minimal hawing, and let me know that he'd do it for $2,650. Awesome.

I shook his hand and he was on his way. He started today and should be finished up tomorrow.

Also, over the weekend, I ordered 200 retaining wall blocks. Hopefully, they'll show up today and I'll dig a bunch of crap up and install them.

Yesterday, Mr. and Mrs. Paul and Judith Topham showed up to help out with the gardening. The day previous, Amanda and I spent more money on plants/mulch than I expected to spend total in my whole life a year ago. Paul and Judy came down from their quaint New Hampshire life to join the fast paced world of house flipping. Either that, or Judy loves to garden and was more than happy to help us out in the yard.

After four or so hours, we had planted and watered everything we bought, ate some steak tips, and called it a weekend.

This week, I'm going to try to pry some more money out of the loan fellow, get the yard squared away, build a retaining wall and do some other super fun stuff in and around the house.

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I'm busy at work and at home, as one could imagine. I'll have, and I mean it this time, pictures and video for you this week. I promise.

Bones and Insects.

After work yesterday, I kept doing yard work, trying to get it ready to plant some things. While lugging the free patio stone from beside the garage to the driveway (next to where it will ultimately end up), Amanda and I noticed some things.

First, we noticed that there were a lot of big black spiders. I have no idea what kind, but I do know that there are a lot of them. We saw probably 20 or so crawling around. It was unnerving. Here's one of them that crawled up the side of the garage. I have a Canon brand lens cap that I use for scale, not for monetizing this blog with ad revenue:

Secondly, when getting down to the bottom of the rock pile, I uncovered a few bones. Larger than chicken, but smaller than midget human:

I found a few more bones, pretty much identical to the ones pictured. They look like leg bones of some sort.

Also underneath the bottom rocks is a white, chalk like substance. I have no idea what it is, but I can only assume it was spread around with a specific purpose.

Amanda and I have two theories about the above findings:

1. The family that lived here buried a dog or something, but didn't dig very deeply. Instead of doing a little bit of hard labor (which the craftsmanship throughout the house proves they had an aversion to), they just piled a bunch of flagstone on top of the critter.

That makes sense, but what about the white substance? It is sidewalk chalk that the dumb kids who lived there tried to color the dirt with, before the dog was crushed under the flagstone. Duh.

2. The creepy and annoying next door neighbors have their basement lights on most nights. It's kind of scary. We can only postulate that the loudmouth and handshaking neighbors use their significant people skills to lure kids into their lit basement in the evening to skin them. Amanda and I believe that the bones in the yard are from an earlier, possibly failed skinning attempt. Unhappy with the results of the filleting, they dumped some of the kid in their neighbors' yards, using my current yard as the grounds for the child's legs. The white substance we can only assume was used to hide the stench of decaying child.

It's quite obvious that number two is the choice.

As for work at the house, I'm still getting estimates on the sod and door work in the house. No commitments yet.

Weekend in NJ.

Updates are coming slower. I stink. Also, the work at the house isn't all that interesting.

On Friday, I went home after work and got cracking with the yard work. It was the first nice day in a few weeks, so I figured it might be my last chance to rake something. Four hours and 11 paper yard waste bags later, and I had three quarters of the back yard raked. Slow going.

The rest of the weekend I spent driving to and from New Jersey for Amanda's sister's college graduation. We drove back to RI on Sunday and went to bed. See? Uninteresting.

Yesterday, I met with a landscaper to get a quote for laying sod in the yards. She was one of the uglier women I've ever seen. Really very ugly. I mentioned to Amanda that I think I'd rather make out with my mother for 45 seconds than this kiss woman/troll. Looks aside, I hope she gives me a good quote for lawn and garden needs.

During the measuring of the yard, I heard my crazy neighbor yelling my name from inside of her house. Posture sagging, I turned and said hello.

Crazy Neighbor - "Let me tell you something about that yard. Let me tell you a story. I've got a story for you about that back yard."

Ryan - "Ok."

CN - "There used to be a pool back there. And let me tell you something about that pool."

R - "Ok."

CN - "In that yard there, there used to be a pool. Right in the back there. One year, way back, one of the neighbors was driving into their garage, smashed through their garage and do you know where their car landed?"

R - "I can tak..."

CN - "Right in that swimming pool!"

R - "...e a guess..."

CN - *horrid witch cackle* "So that's a story about the back yard!" *cackle*

Here's a photo of the back yard (from last year some time) to give you an idea of how a car can fill a swimming pool. The big blue building is the neighbors garage/stunt track:

After that, she retreated into the depths of her old home (which never has the blinds up, thankfully) and I was left to deal with the landscapers.

On the Ron Costa front, I've been playing phone tag with someone that will supposedly help me file a complaint against him. No progress there, and still no check (gasp!).

This week I plan on getting the yard ready for some plantings so they can be a little grown in when it's time to sell (in 18 months or so). Looking forward to the long weekend.

Ronald

Not much going on that's newsworthy, and thus, no post yesterday.

On the Ron the Electrician front, not much there either. No check yet. No call back yet.

I did contact someone at the RI Department of Labor and Training and he'll help me file a formal and legal complaint against good old Ron. Should prove to be a boring and drawn out process.

When I was looking around for info on Ron and his license number and whatnot, I cam across a fantastic site. It's Ron's profile on jobvana. Here it is:

http://www.jobvana.com/electrical-contracting/#member_aboutus

It's fantastic. His profile picture is of two, apparently identical dogs, with what appear to be bows on their heads.

If you take a look at his profile, it's full of awesomeness. Various misspellings, an awesome about section, random capitalization, etc. I'm sure you can look through and find your favorite unintentional comedy (a misspelling right before his "Intelligent" strength), but here is my favorite:

Weaknesses: Big Heart.

Yes. That's his weakness. He cares too much.

He's tops.