Memorial Day weekend pictures

As usual, I'm several days late posting about the previous weekend, but I'm used to it.

For the long weekend I took an extra day off to make it four days, and it made for a very nice weekend. Friday, Jayson left for Houston for a religious retreat type of trip. It seems like it was a good thing for him, and he also go to spend a little time with my father and step-mother. I spent the rest of Friday catching up on some chores at home.

Saturday Anthony and I took my truck and headed to the mountains. I wanted to do some exploring and found the Mountain Loop Highway outside of Granite Falls. The "highway" is a two-lane road through the Mount Baker - Snoqualmie National Forest. It was definitely a pretty drive, but once we got to the top of the pass we couldn't go any further because the road was close due to snow. Lots of snow. In May. There was a road we could have hiked to the ghost town of Monte Christo but it was four miles and it was also snowy and we weren't prepared, so we headed back to the truck. We wanted to get off the paved road so we started scouting out forest service roads. We found a couple of nice, and muddy, roads. One ended up being snowed over, and the other ended at a bridge that was out. We at least got to do some hiking and getting away from civilization for a while.

Sunday Anthony and I started fixing up the exterior wood on the boat. It's already looking darn good and we started getting momentum on the boat overal. We did more work on Monday, and will hopefully be back over there this coming weekend.

As always, pictures of our trip out to the mountains:

Weekend this and that

Just wanted to drop a few lines here since it's too easy to get into the habit of not writing anything. Well, a "few lines" with me is usually a couple of pages...

There hasn't been too much to report, and that's OK. I'm still obsessing over tires, but when it comes time to buy I'll do what I usually do and go with my gut instinct and end up bring right in the first place. But, it gives me something to do and process so it's OK. I received in the mail the leveling kit I ordered. It will lift the front of the truck so that it's level with the back of the truck. It looks like it's going downhill all the time, so I'm looking forward to having it level. Now the challenge is finding someone local who can do it. I have one place I found but it seems kind of expensive so I need to do a little more digging. Once that is done I'll get the tires put on.

We did some house cleaning this weekend, and it was definitely due. It's amazing how dirty the house can get, and how nice it is when it's clean. I still have to go upstairs and clean the shower in my bathroom, but I'll do that just before I take my shower tonight. Real exciting huh?

Anthony starts school tomorrow...yay! He was able to get approved for "commissioner approved training" through the state which means they play for his tuition the first quarter and then pay him the equivalent of weekly unemployment benefits for the two years he's in school. I think it will be good for him to get more training and be able to do something different when he graduates. It should open up more opportunities for him than he has now. Plus it's not a bad way to ride out the current economy spending it in school.

Sadly I don't have lots more to report, but I guess that's good. I'm hoping we get back over to the boat in the new future and start getting it ready for the summer. We're going to have a lot of cleaning to do outside, and we need to have it hauled out to have new bottom paint put on. Those should all be easily doable. Just more things to do of course, but oh well.

Another weekend < yawn >

After last weekend in San Diego it's been a relatively quiet weekend here. I started off yesterday by doing taxes for Jayson and myself. I didn't run into any problems, but mine are somewhat time consuming. Between the two it took about four hours...fun fun. But, at least it's done. I don't usually wait this late to get them done, but as long as I'm not late (which I'm not) I'm not gonna worry about it.

I've been spending a lot of time lately trying to figure out what new tires I want for my truck. The tires on it are shot, and after only 25,000 miles. I'd like to put it off but I can't any longer. As part of the process I'm going to be raising the front end so that the truck rides level; from the factory these trucks ride with the back higher than the front. I want to get rid of the lower front end and there are several companies that make kits to do that. By doing that I can get slightly larger tires than what's on there. I'm probably obsessing over the new tires but since they're rather expensive and I won't have a chance to change them out for a long time if I don't like them. I've narrowed it down to a couple of different brands and now my only hesitation is the size. I think I've got that narrowed down too. Now that I know I won't have to pay the IRS anything I'm ready to go forward. I'm hoping the truck looks every better once I'm done.

Anthony and I threatened to go to the gym both days this weekend, and then didn't. It's funny how laziness breeds laziness, but it sure did with us this weekend. Instead we took a nap yesterday and then did quick trip to the grocery store. Today I enlisted Anthony's help to remove a dead plant out front. We had a jasmine plant that had almost died in a pot on our balcony at our condo. Once we moved in here it took off after being planted in the ground and had grown up to cover a small fence by the front patio. Sadly it was no match for the snow this winter and it was completely dead down to the roots. So, we cut it off the fence and I pulled it out of the ground. I was sad to see it go since I've had the plant for almost 6 years, and it had such an up and down history. But, such is life so we'll get something else to go there.

So that's it for a boring weekend. We'll maybe get upstairs to fold laundry, and that will most likely be the highlight. I guess I won't complain about a quiet weekend once in a while.