Flinstones and Panc-Eggs

It was a wonderful weekend.

Ripped up the front lawn on Friday after work
We rented a 9 hp rototiller from a place down the street from us. 2 hours of Ken pushing this giant machine while I was on my hands and knees picking all the grass and weed clumps from the turned soil. (Note: if you're going to rototill, this step is an initial time investment but it pays for itself in that you don't have clumps of crabgrass coming back forever -- I've done the experiment both ways. The easiest way is to go over the area once with a rototiller and then pick up the big clumps. Then rototill it again and repeat... otherwise you're left with a bejillion pieces of weedy mess rather than just one big clump.) After rototilling, we moved the soil to make space for a retaining wall. Then we decompressed on the couch before going to bed early like the elderly.

Bought 2000 lbs of basalt boulders on Saturday
After the early to bed, I was early to rise. By 11 am I had done three loads of laundry, emptied the dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen, made lemon curd, painted the chair I'm refinishing, and I still had time to drink my coffee and read the paper. Wow, so apparenly my early to rise gave me a shit ton of worms, so to speak. By noon, the fresh pile of rototilled soil was beckoning me. I lured Ken away from the March madness basketball games to help me decide on the kind of rock we wanted for the retaining wall. We went to my favorite bulk mulch-rock-soil-compost place and within 10 seconds, we unanimously decided on the basalt boulders. (If you make a circle with your arms, fingers touching, that's about how big they were... about 35-40 pounds a piece.) We went to price them... they were the cheapest (sweet!) but we learned they don't deliver those -- only the slate and easily stackable or pourable stones. So we decided to load up while we were there and put 750 lbs of hand-picked rock in the back of my car. Then we came back with both Ken's and my cars for the next 1250 pounds. I wasn't expecting to get the stone so soon, so this was a huge bonus for me. For Ken, not so much. But I was excited. We dumped it all in the driveway and Ken started laying stones. He did a couple and then ripped them out. Repeat. After 45 minutes, he had one stone in place. So we called it a day and took our showers to go out for the night.

St. Patrick's Day Pub Golf
People met at our house at 7 and we walked over to the bars on Belmont for the 2nd Annual St. Patrick's Day Pub Golf. I learned my lesson last year and decided not to drink at every hole. That was a good choice. I drank water instead at four of them and felt great about it. Ken finished the course with a 9. I had a 45. A lot of other people got sick, some in bars, some after. I was proud of myself. We had two people spend the night at our place since they weren't about to drive and sleeping in beds is much more comfortable than the back of a Volkswagon Golf.

Panc-Eggs
The next morning, I awoke to no hangover (minus the smoke headache I had from all the bars -- blecht). One of our overnight guests had already left to go skiing up on Mt. Hood when I woke up. Kerry woke up shortly after me. I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Yum. But as the second round was on the griddle, I realized I forgot to add the eggs to the batter. Oops. Note: you don't need eggs for pancakes to set or taste like pancakes. Good to know. They were delicious.

Football and Flinstones
Ken had a flag-football game at one o'clock and dropped Kerry off at his car on the way. I took Kinley for a walk and met our new neighbors down the street (Larry and Jerry -- super nice, and their black lab Rona (?) -- who Kinley went bezerk for). When we got back, I let Kinley sit on the front porch while I tried my hand at laying stone. Even when dogs or people went by, he stayed on the porch... until Brian and Laura came by to pick up his car from the night before and go to breakfast at a place down the street. The minute Kinley saw Brian, he leaped off the front porch and ran to the sidewalk to say hi. He didn't stop when I called him and a car happened to be passing at that very minute. Even though they were on the sidewalk, Laura grabbed him by the collar, just in case, and I scolded Kinley severely. He went back on the front porch and didn't move from his perch when Brian and Laura back after breakfast. Nor did he move when Larry & Jerry came by with Rona to see my progress on the wall. In fact, he didn't even leave the porch when Ken came home from his game. I was proud of the both of us. Lesson learned. Hopefully. By the time Ken got back, I was 2/3 finished with the right side of the wall. Ken helped me finish the rest of the right side. I figured out where they went while he set them in place. We finished around 7, moved ~10 loads of extra dirt to the backyard and ordered a pizza. It was a busy day.

What's next
The wall looks awesome. I still have the left side to do this week. Then I'll run the irrigation lines and plant flowers in the space next weekend. It looks gorgeous. I can't tell you how many people stopped to compliment it. We each took three ibuprofen last night, so I'm not in any pain either. Surprising given how much rock I lifted. I couldn't be more pleased with my weekend. Especially since all the laundry is done, too.