It just seems harder and harder to keep up posts on this site lately. Every time I think of things to post and just feel I’ll get to it later, then later never happens.

April and I are still around and hanging in there. We’ve still been traveling to Claxton every third weekend or so. Next week the power company will be installing there new power pole by our barn. I had an electrician install the service panel and bury the #2 (expensive!) wire from the barn to the service pole I installed. Chuck (April’s Dad) and I dug a 4.5′ hole and picked up the 20′ pressure treated pole and put it in the ground. That wasn’t too easy, it felt like we were install a mini-obelisk or something.

With all that driving back and forth I’ve downloaded a few albums lately and my current favorite is the Zac Brown Band. I’m not really much a country music listener but this band and very good!

Things are pretty decent at work. I’ve been going to a lot of out of town jobsites lately. I’ve been at this site in Knoxville where we are repairing a failed retaining wall. Yesterday I had a meeting with the Mississippi DOT over in Mississippi. Our client (block supplier) has his own single engine plane that he pilots. We took off from Charlie Brown in Fulton Co. and in about 2 hours we were in MS. That was my first time flying in a small four seater plane and I want one! The only down side for the pilot is that you are in constant contact with the ATC. You really aren’t just flying around on your own and going anywhere you want. Our client was explaining all the instrumentation on the plane and the physics involved is very interesting, how the altimeter, air speed gauges work are pretty cool. The best part is just flying so low (7000ft) for such a long way. You’re close enough to the ground to really make out a bunch of things.

Well, that’s about it for this post and I think it’ll be another 2 weeks for my next one.

Don’t you just love the weekends where there isn’t much to do and you just lay around and get caught up on Tivo!? We stayed in town this weekend instead of heading down to Claxton. We spent Friday night doing a little restaurant hopping downtown with our friends that live off of Howell Mill. We went to this one burger place called Flip. Great burgers! A little small on the portions but great tasting food. The place is located at the end of the street that Craig, Eric and Christian lived while at Tech. We then had desert at Crepe Revolutions. This place had larger than normal crepes for a good price. Wonderful evening!

Saturday I split some wood that we brought up from Claxton. It’s live oak and it should burn well. Then we just did a little house cleaning and caught up on Tivo. Today nothing is planned and we love it that way. For a while we’ve been working our butts off in Claxton and when we stay home its some project around here or I’m in the office on the weekends. This weekend is nice in that it actually feels like a winter weekend!

This coming up week at work I’ve got to head to Knoxville on Tuesday/ Wednesday to meet a driller to drill two 40′ bore holes and install the casing for inclinometers. Later we’ll install the inclinometer sensors in the casing that measure the tilt of the ground and upload the data every 2 hours via cell signal to a website. This area we are observing is behind a department store where a retaining wall has failed and is holding up the store. I’m a little nervous about installing all this stuff because I don’t have the slightest clue what I’m doing. I’ve never seen the equipment or the process to install it, I’ll just have to wing it with the drillers once we get up there. I just hope it all goes well. Beside this project, work has been pretty slow. All the erosion problems brought about by the rain in September have been designed and we really aren’t seeing any more work come in from that event. We just hope that the warmer weather comes quick and people start building again. Historically this is a slow time anyway but I hope it picks up when it gets warm.

We got a bunch of snow yesterday and overnight up here in Canton. I tried to get out to work this morning but it was a no go. I left my driveway and noticed footprints in the middle of the road. I thought was weird since it wasn’t a school day and the kids wouldn’t be at the bus stop. I continued driving and got to the small downhill section in the neighborhood and started sliding. At this point I noticed several cars on the side of the road parked. Sometimes people do that since our driveways aren’t that long but in this case they just didn’t seem normal. I slid for about 10 feet and caught traction. I turned the corner and headed up a slight hill. While going about 5mph I shifted into 4×4 and continued up the hill. This hill was about as steep as the one I came down but about 5 times longer. At the top of the hill I noticed about 5-10 cars parked on the side of the road. I continued up the hill a ways before I started to slip and catch on all four wheels. I was able to hobble along for about 50′ before I just couldn’t go any farther. I slowly backed down into a driveway to turn around and go home. I hit more ice on the way back and I ended up just parking my car on the sidewalk behind 5 other cars.
Luckily I’ve been going to jobsites lately so I changed my shoes from dress shoes into the boots I had in the car. I also had two pair of gloves that I put on. I opened the door and slipped and almost fell. I took a picture of all the cars (unless my boss needed proof) and called into work and told them I’d be late. I started the cold walk back to the house. Now I know where all the footprints came from!
Now I’ve been home watching the news and waiting for it to warm up a bit. I just went back to the Jeep about an hour later and it’s still all iced over and I met other neighbors doing the same thing. So I think I’m going to be stuck at the house today. Luckily I don’t have much to do at the office.
How is everyone else fairing in this snow?

I think it’s been a family tradition for I don’t know how long to drive around and look at all the lights people put up for Christmas. Ever since we bought our own house we’ve put a limited amount of lights outside. Usually I put up 3 strings around our 5 front bushes. This year I decided to decorate our front bradford pear as well. I used 400 lights and wrapped up the trunk and wrapped them around several branches up the tree. I’m not a fan of the multicolored lights so I only use the white lights.

That leads me into a list of several my Christmas light pet peeves:

1. Blue lights. Nothing says Christmas like blue lights, right? WRONG. Blue lights have no place at Christmas. There is a person in our neighborhood that ALL THEY HAVE is one strand of blue rope lights around the trunk of their bradford pear. I mean these people actually took the time to wrap this hideous light strand around their tree and then consciously plug them in everyday!

2. Blinking Icicle Lights: I don’t know about you but do real icicles blink where you live? No? So why do your icicle light representations blink?

3. Net Lights: Now this is one of those things that look great when done right or can make you look lazy. Case in point, in our neighborhood a house’s net light strand is longer than their bush row so what is the most logical solution, just haphazardly throw the net lights over the Pompous Grass that ends their bush row. Classy.

4. More than 2 Blow Ups: Seriously, nothing says lazy/tacky like 21347 blow ups in your yard! And why oh why would have a blow up Manger Scene? That’s the sign of a true Christian, Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus blown over in the wind. Great job.

Please follow these easy rules and I won’t have to vandalize your property!