Last week I tweeted a few times because it kept raining day after day. Today, when a heavy line of storms moved through the area, we didn’t get a drop. I watched the radar loop and as the storm moved East/South-East, a line opened up parallel to the direction of movement. It was like a “dry channel” of air that sat over top of us. The storm just “split” before it got to us and then merged once it was past.
Its not the first time this has happened. Its happened plenty of times before during summer thunderstorms. I’m not sure if there’s some geographical formation that’s causing storms to “split” around us or what. Maybe its just my close proximity to Three Mile Island…
Ryan Personal weather
So lately I’ve been caught up with some other projects. I’ve been trying to develop a new site which should be launching in the near future. I have a domain name and twitter account, which will be released in the near future. I’ll also release some other details as time gets close.
Besides that, it’s just been my normal workload keeping up with my garden outdoors. Speaking of which, I need to go weed it tomorrow.
The only other thing I have which has been keeping me away from what I’d rather be doing is maintaining a friend’s yard while he’s selling his house. It’s about 3/4 of an acre that needs to be cut one to two times a week until the growth slows down. I spent a few hours on that today when I would have rather been working on my new site. Oh well, he sweetened the deal with the $1000 he has invested in a commercial grade mower, blower, and trimmer. I get to keep all of those in return for mowing his grass for a few months.
Ryan Personal
I went to Lowes tonight to pick up a few things. After pricing things at the garden center, then walking to the far end of the store to pick up some rebar, I headed back to the garden center. I got everything I needed there, well, almost everything.
I needed a few landscape timbers, but the ones there were moldy. They weren’t just growing mold spots, they were growing mold worse than a loaf of stale bread. I found two associates standing around talking and asked if they could bring down one of the packs of new landscape timbers that looked really nice and was promptly told no and there were more by the contractor desk… at the other end of the store. The one associate was even sitting on a forklift and could have gotten them down in about 2 minutes. As I walked away, I heard the one associate on the forklift tell the other associate that they had to sell through them and they weren’t going to put any more out until they did. Frankly, they looked like last year’s stock and had been sitting out all winter.
The other associate walked back over to me and told me that before I walk to the other end of the store, that the ones in the new bundles were moldy too. I asked him to show me where, because all the ones I was looking at weren’t moldy. Besides, its treated lumber… it shouldn’t be growing mold.
Rather annoyed, I walked the cart to the front of the garden section and left it there as I walked across the front of the store to the contractor desk. There were no landscape timbers there. After walking back through lumber and finding another associate, he pointed me to what I was looking for… in the back corner of the store. The timbers there looked half decent, and weren’t growing anything. I walked back to my cart, completing my second lap around the store. At this point, after the way I was treated, I was in no mood to grab my cart and make a third lap since my car was parked in front of the garden center and I would have had to walk back there to check out anyway.
I guess I’ll be stopping at Home Depot some other day after work this week. This is not the typical service I receive at Lowes and was quite shocked at how the associate had no desire to even help a customer out. I was half tempted to leave my cart and just walk out of the store.
Ryan Personal customer service, Lowes
Spring is back and in full swing. Sorry for a lack of updates the past two weeks. I’ve been busy outside getting my garden prepped every chance I get. If its decent after work, I’m often out until it gets dark. I took this week off to try and get some more stuff done but the weather didn’t cooperate much.
So far I’ve been able to get two rows of each of my cold weather crops started, last Thursday and yesterday. I’ve also tested the soil and added some fertilizer as well as sulfur to adjust the pH back down to a normal level. Tests showed alkaline around 8.0 and my target is 6.5-7. Hopefully the sulfur I put down today will get washed in with the rain tonight and bring the soil back in line. I’ll have to test again in a few more weeks.
I also got my cold frames outside and moved my seedlings into them. I had started my seedlings inside almost 2 weeks ago and they’re starting to get big. I’ll be trimming them down to one plant in each pot soon. I’m hoping the sunlight will help them grow. Unfortunately, I still need to cover the cold frames with blankets one or two more times according to the latest 10 day forecast.
As usual, its now Friday of my week off and I havent’ accomplished much around the house. I have a few projects to do this weekend and hopefully I’ll be able to cross off one or two major things on my to-do list before I return to work next Monday.
Ryan Personal garden
So my 6 month old Lab puppy and I have been going at it recently. So much, that I feel like I’ve been in a street fight.
Saturday he nailed me in the jaw. It was all swollen and bruised. Sunday he nailed me square in the nose and gave me a nosebleed. Today he hit me in the mouth and gave me a bloody lip… One that’s been bleeding for the past hour. Seriously, when is it goign to stop?
Ryan Personal buddy, dog
I bought an Extra Tall Walk Through Pet Gate from Carlson Pet Products today only to find, that it did not fit my standard 36″ doorway. The box claimed it was supposed to include a 6″ and 12″ extension so that it fit most doors, but without the 6″ extension, the gate was too narrow, and with it, the gate was too wide.
I was left scratching my head for a few minutes until I decided to measure the pieces. Carlson makes extensions in 4″, 6″, 12″, and 24″ widths, but the smaller extension I had was 9″. How could this be? I stopped scratching and decided to give the company a call.
I spoke to a nice gentleman who informed me that they had a bad run at the factory that produced incorrectly sized extensions. He took my name and address and they’re sending the correct 6″ extension for free. Overall it was a plesant experience and I was only on the phone for about 2 minutes.
Ryan Personal customer service
Photo by charlottedallot
I’ve decided I’m going to stop relying to the weather forecast for snow. We’ve had two storms in the past week that “showed up late” (almost 12 hours in both cases) and then amounted to nothing. We were supposed to get snow earlier this week and we got ice, sleet, and freezing rain instead. Today we were supposed to get about 6″ of snow. Now that it’s all said and done, we have a dusting, with an icy crust on top. You’d think with all the fancy computers and predicting technology we have now, they could at least be a little more accurate with what they spew out on the news.
Ryan Personal snow, weather
I’ve been scratching my head since I got this tracking number Wednesday night. I had ordered a new card reader from Amazon.com and paid the $3.99 overnight shipping for Amazon Prime members hoping to receive the package on Friday. Amazon shipped the package Next Day Air Saver from a warehouse about 10 miles from my house. This is where things get strange.
I checked the tracking Thursday morning expecting it to see it in the local sort facility waiting to go out for delivery Friday, but instead, it had been placed on a plane and flown to the UPS hub in Louisville, KY! By Friday morning it had come back to the regional sort facility, but too late to get to my local sort facility to go out today.
Curious about the UPS holiday schedule, I looked it up only to find that as long as my package went out on Wednesday as either international or Next Day Air, it would be delivered on Friday.
Wednesday, Dec. 31, New Year’s Eve
Delivery of air and international packages only. No UPS Ground pickups or deliveries today. Pickup service provided for air and international shipments via UPS On-Call Pickup service, at all UPS Drop Boxes or if prearranged by Tuesday, Dec. 30. (Next Day Air packages picked up today will be delivered on Friday, Jan. 2.)
Friday was originally reflected as the delivery date before it was diverted to Louisville. Friday morning it was showing “On Time” with a delivery date of Monday, January 5th. Oddly enough UPS somehow managed to get the package to my door today. I guess maybe it was just a glitch with their tracking system.
Ryan Personal amazon.com, shipping, ups
Just wanted to wish everybody a Happy New Year. What resolutions or goals have you set for yourself for 2009?
Ryan Personal new years
I was looking through the ads in the newspaper yesterday morning and came across one I didn’t expect to see. The ad is for Value City Furniture and was titled “After Christmas Sale - Starts Today!”
Confused, I looked at my watch, and it was indeed only December 21st, 4 days before Christmas. Just to double check, I looked at the back of the ad and it said that sale prices were “in effect from receipt of circular through January 5th, 2009.”
I’m really not sure if the ad came early by accident or if the furniture companies really are getting that ruthless and have begun a new sort of post-Christmas-sale creep.
Ryan Personal advertisements, christmas