funnystrange.com

As you may know, we didn't get married today. I'll spare you the pity party and get on with what we did do. We started early with a trip to the city dump. We dropped off about half the concrete, and picked up a load of compost. The concrete weighed in at .3 ton, which surprised both of us. It didn't seem like that much while we were tossing it into the dumpster.

The new truck drove great and handled the job really well. It sank visibly with the soil in it, I was a little worried that we had overloaded it, but it never did that fishtailing thing that my friend David's truck would always do. I love my truck!

After the landfill (with a stop to take the truck home of course), we had a nice lunch at Saladelia -- who by the way serve humongous lunches, I got soup and salad and I couldn't begin to eat it all -- and then picked up our wedding rings. Georg's was the store sample but mine had been made to order. They look great and mine fits perfectly, but the price was a bit of a shock. Over 50% more than the estimate! I know, I know, the price of gold has skyrocketed recently. And she did say it was only an estimate. And if they had told me this price in advance, I would have been okay with it. It was just, like I said, a shock to get a final price so much higher than what she had said two weeks ago.

When we got home we got right to work on the hole in the ground. And we got so much done! First Georg knocked out the last concrete blocks from the walls, which I hadn't been able to get on Wednesday. Then we dug out the last of the clay, down to about 2.5 feet. We piled some of the clay up at one end where the path is going to be. And then we unloaded all the compost. I really didn't think we were going to get that whole thing done. But we did! It went pretty fast because we didn't need the wheelbarrow. We just pulled the truck up next to the hole, and shoveled it over the side.

We couldn't quite fill the hole, about 3/4 full or maybe a little more. Over the next few days I'll try to dig out the clay nearby to make the bed bigger. Not so deep as the septic tank, but deep enough for annuals. Maybe a foot deep. We're still going to have extra soil from the next truckload. I guess we'll have to pile it up somewhere until we come up with another place for it.

Now we have reservations at Jibarra, a Mexican restaurant that sounds amazing. Review to follow. I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't rather have been in Las Vegas getting married. But aside from that, I can't think of a better way to spend this day.