Another week of mostly great stuff

This week offered a nice mix of fun and productivity. I'll start with the put-you-to-sleep content--up until now my backyard has been a malaise of dirt and poor choices made by the previous home owners. I spent the better part of a year tearing out a forest of trees, bushes and shrubs, all of which were in sad shape from a four month period where the house was vacant. Earlier this summer I installed a new sprinkler system in the backyard in preparation for a small 150 sqft lawn area. I am not a huge fan of grass but having a little bit in the backyard is nice. After my travels this summer I borrowed a friend's trailer and picked up a load of soil amendment and sod and got finished off another area of the backyard. So the sod is in, the sprinkler system works great and the hammock I brought home from Corsica is now hanging between the backyard redwood and maple trees. Later this year I hope to become involved in a City of Roseville program that will convert my corner lot sideyard from grass to native vegetation. This will cut my water and fertilizer use and the amount of time I spend mowing a sideyard that I do not use. The backyard is far from done but at least it shows signs of progress.

Now the bad. Friday one of my credit card transactions was declined. Turns out someone duplicated my credit card and is trying to use it in North Carolina. Thursday night they charged $3 worth of food on the card (it is typical to start with a small charge to make sure the card works, then move on to the big stuff), then early Friday morning I used my charge card to buy breakfast, then apparently 15 minutes later a $330 charge was requested at Game Stop in North Carolina. The credit card fraud department recognized that two charges thousands of miles apart in less than 15 minutes is suspicious so the card was locked down before they got anything major. I normally run all of my expenses through my credit card and then pay it off every month, so I have my work cut out for me in re-establishing autopayment for virtually everything with my new card.

Labor Day weekend I packed-in the activities. Two bbq's with friends, an overnight "camping" trip with my Dad, sister and Joe and two days of waterskiing on New Melones Lake. Our group had two legitimate tournament ski boats, a Ski Sanger and an MB Sports for you boat people, and it was a real treat to ski behind boats designed specifically for waterskiing.

Here's a not a very flattering picture of me getting up on the ski:


And of course having two ski boats meant we had to have a race. We won. :)


Considering what state I was in this time last year I was simply *elated* to get up on a slalom ski. Seriously, I don't think anything could have made me feel as great as I did at that moment.