Excuses, excuses

On Sunday night I wrote up a lovely post updating what was happening with the front porch, and the progress that's been made. I saved it to add some "Teaser Pictures" later when the light was better for photo-taking.

Today, I went outside to take some pictures for all of you, got a few and then...something bad happened.

My camera died.

I dropped it a while back, which wasn't the first time I dropped it, believe me, but it did do some damage this time. It was having some focus problems and the zoom lens wasn't moving like it was supposed to. But I was getting it to work okay. And then today, something happened, I don't know what, and the lens jammed and now the camera won't even start up.

I've been looking into buying a new camera anyway, and I was just kind of stalling, but the time has come and I'll be ordering a new one as soon as a minor glitch with my PayPal account is cleaned up.

In the meantime, I have this for you, since I've been very light on the pictures lately.  I imagine Adam feels I talk like this all the time. (Click to "Embiggen" it)

from Wondermark

 And because I'm excited about the little bit left to do on the porch, here's the remaining to do list.

- hang pots planted with sweet potato vine
- install new door knob on screen door
- install new light fixture
- paint and install screen trim
- paint garden stool

My original plan to hang something on one of the walls isn't going to work out, so I'm going to have to come up with something else on the fly.

On keeping cool and heating a house

Well, needless to say I did NOT get the front porch painted when it was 87 outside the other day. What can I say, I've never been one to jump the gun. It's been in the mid 90s outside since.

I did buy the paint, and I'm just waiting for the gods of summertime to get the temperatures down below 90. A quick peek on weather.com says it will be 80 on Thursday. 80! Did you read that (of course you did). Let me stress it one more time...aaaaaay-tee. It's hard to ask for anything much more pleasant than that in July in Maryland.

And what am I doing Thursday? I'm probably working. ::sigh:: Ain't it always the way?

I can see that what I'm going to end up doing is A) painting in the heat and being generally miserable while doing it or B) busting out the work lights and painting after the sun goes down, when it's cooler, but of course making the house look like the Starship Painter-prise from the outside. I can just see my neighbors now; looking out their windows thinking "what on earth is going on over at THAT house? Weirdos..."

Get used to it Neighbors, we are pretty weird.

Although, on the subject of weird neighbors, there's a pretty awesome feud going on between two houses in the neighborhood. One house has a huge banner (that they clearly had professionally printed) saying "CHIMNEY SMOKE KILLS NEIGHBORS" while the guy across the street from him has spray painted "PAY MY HEATING BILL AND WE STOP BURNING" on a sheet of plywood and propped it up in his yard. This has been going on for nearly a year now. Personally, I'm on the side of the guy burning wood in his fireplace. But then I like the smell of woodsmoke when the weather gets cool.