Where has February gone?

Wow, has it been a month already!?!  The past thirty days has pretty much consisted entirely of visiting with friends, something I obviously enjoy very much.  I had yet another birthday this month as did Rose and Michael.  I have also been pretty consistent about making it to the gym three days per week. 

Aside from good times, I finally made time to do the big repair that the Volvo needed to pass smog.  The intake manifold had to come off so I could replace the oil trap, part of the crankcase ventilation system.  The little black box straight down and to the left of the oil filler cap needed to be replaced, along with all of the associated hoses.

In the photo above you will note I was able to swing the intake manifold over to the driver's side with most everything still connected (throttle body, injectors, fuel rail, etc,) which made the job much simpler.

For anyone that knows engines, take a look at the intake valves in the pic below?  I didn't touch them, they were simply spotless!  I got lucky, this engine is in great shape.

Here it is all clean and back together.

Is now smogged and registered--no more ghetto-looking temporary tags for me.  The car is running great and I love squeezing it into the tightest parking spaces and not worrying about door dents or anything else for that matter.

Not much has been accomplished on the house, aside from dropping a couple of plants in the ground next to the entryway:

I added a GFCI outlet to the side of the house for landscape lighting.  Had I not done this I would have had the ugly low voltage transformer and photo eye in my entryway by the front door.  Now it's behind a gate and hidden from view.  The pipe coming from the transformer routes the cable under the walkway and toward the front. I plan to shorten the power cord to make it more presentable.

And finally, here is the front of the house with four LED path lights and two LED spot lights illuminating the front yard trees.  There isn't much to see right now since the Chinese Pistache is deciduous and currently has no leaves, but it should look great the rest of the year, and particularly in the fall when this tree is bright red.

I have received more complements on the lighting than any other aspect of the home improvement I have done, and quite frankly, it was probably the easiest project to-date.