Today is housework day. Originally I was going to be running a UNIX class today but that ended up getting canceled as it was tough on everyone’s schedules.
Before I knew that we were canceling the class today, I got up and worked on Solaris for two hours. I had meant to sleep in a little more than I did but was paged out by the office at eight in the morning and once I was up I just decided to stay up and to be productive.
I went on to do some serious house cleaning once Dominica and Liesl were awake. There is a lot of cleaning that always needs to be done. We did vacuuming – which alone probably took an hour as there was vacuum maintenance to do as well. And there was at least thirty or forty minutes of down on my hands and knees floor scrubbing with the Little Green. That never seems to end. I wind up doing a full cleaning of at least one portion of the carpet on any given day.
I did a little of the dishes then Dominica jumped in and cleaned the kitchen. The house is looking really good after about two or three hours of solid cleaning. Feels good to get all of that done.
Jen came over at one because we had failed to convey quickly enough that the class was canceled for today so she was just in time to head on over to IHOP with Dominica, Liesl and I. So we got lunch and then Jen went back down to the apartment while the Millers headed out to do some serious shopping. This was our chance to get out and do some shopping that we always need to do and never manage to do.
Our first destination of Academy to try to get some shoes for me. We ended up getting lost because Dominica was navigating and the GPS took us to the right address in the wrong city. So we wound up in a really bad part of Dallas while trying to get out to the suburbs. Oops.
We eventually found Academy and ended up getting quite a haul. I got two pairs of shoes, two pairs of jeans, a new belt, new wallet and both Dominica and I got new UT slippers to wear around the house. I have been pretty desperate for new shoes, jeans and belt for about a year or more now. My old shoes have been in shambles for years now; they are completely falling apart. I’ve been down to a single pair of jeans for months. I have been without a belt since the Daddy Dance Off competition in Grapevine. So this was some important shopping.
We found so much stuff at Academy that we were able to skip going to Casual XL Male on this particular trip which was nice as it was taking us a very long time to get back home. On the way home we also went to Lowe’s as we had a $10 coupon that needed to be used.
At Lowe’s we bought several more plants, planters, potting soil and other associated indoor gardening paraphernalia. We are working hard on getting some serious plant life in the new house.
Once we got home we got to work planting plants into the brick planters that separate the living room from the den area where Liesl plays. We pulled out the ancient, dead whatever plants didn’t make it in there and discovered that the planters are actually incredibly deep, over a foot deep, and full of coil but had had potted plants just sat on top of the soil and some crap and newspapers shoved down in as filler. It was awesome.
We dug out all of the pots, dead plants, moss, newspaper and more and got it cleaned out to just loose soil. Then we added in most of a huge bag of Miracle Grow potting soil and transplanted two houseplants into the planter. That was a bit of work but boy does it look better. Having those planters full of dead grass and moss looked awful. Having two, luscious and vibrant plants in there really shows why someone designed that planter in that way. It looks great.
After doing the first planter we realized that we did not have enough soil to go on to do the second one. So we decided to go back out to Walmart to get more soil since it was seven thirty at that point and Lowe’s was already closed as it is Sunday night.
It took about an hour to get back out of the house. Liesl really didn’t want me to leave so we all decided to go out shopping again. We got what we needed at Walmart and found another plant that we really liked and picked up a movie to watch later. Then, on the way home, we stopped at Jack in the Box and picked up dinner.
Once we got home we ate dinner and watched Hot Tub Time Machine which Francesca had been raving about. I had barely heard of it but it had John Cusack who is normally pretty good so we figured that we couldn’t go too wrong. It was decent. Not amazing but it was an entertaining movie. Unfortunately it was not child friendly so we had to put Liesl to bed earlier than she might have wanted but she was pretty tired and did fall right asleep.
It was pretty late by the time that we were done with the movie and so instead of going back and working on the plants again we just decided to head off to bed.
I need to go to work early tomorrow morning as I am coming home early at lunch to meet with the landscaper who is coming to look at our yard and to work up a quote for us on getting our yard into shape. We are really anxious to make it so that Liesl can actually go outside and play. One of the big reasons that we bought a house was for Liesl to be able to go outside and, as of this point, the back yard has never been accessible to her. It’s been cold, so it has been okay. But pretty soon we are going to be very disappointed if she can’t go outside and play in her enclosed yard.