My entire body is sore right now, but I survived the annual personal Hell that is Mulch Weekend.
What is Mulch Weekend, you ask? Well, every year around this time, my parents buy a large amount of mulch to refresh or tweak the landscaping around their house. Every year, the amount of mulch they get grows larger. And every year, since I only live on the other side of town, I end up helping out. And as I have progessively falled further out of shape, the work has just as progressively gotten tougher to deal with after it's all over.
This year, over two days, 15 cubic yards of mulch was spread, two mulched areas (that I know of) were extended, 4 rotted yet still extremely heavy railroad ties were moved, and we had just enough mulch to cover everything, although the last bit was spread mighty thin. Also, there was much standing around rubbing mulch grain out of the eyes due to the high winds; we quickly learned to stand upwind of the mulch pile(s) and whatever mulch we were pitching. Still, there were a couple of times during the weekend where I wished that my parents had one of those eye wash machines that are installed at my workplace (the ones you go to in case you get chemicals in the eye).
Today I woke up extremely sore and have been sore for most of the day. But I am glad that the mulching is done. For this year, anyway.
Just so you can all take me to task when I don't finish everything, here's the list of what I want to accomplish this week:
- Actually put together 2500 words of non-blog material this week (I knew I was likely to fall behind Review Boy and the Machine but ~300 words is ridiculous, even for me).
- Finish up a design to submit to BlogSkins. I've been dipping into the DOM and a little Javascript for the first time to figure out color and font-size switching, so that's why it's taking longer than normal to produce. Besides, I don't like to churn out skins in bulk like I've seen others do there lately.
- Finish with "Remembering the Hiragana". I've had the book for a couple of months, and I've only gotten through the first two lessons. I know I only agreed to borrow the book on a whim ("Do you want to borrow this book?" "Sure, why not?"), but it's time I get cracking, since I know that the owner wants to let other people borrow it. Or I could go out and buy my own copy. Hmm...
- Start working on nakaithus.net: design, structure (and I don't just mean the (X)HTML, and hosting. I'll probably take Francey's advice and get hosting through SiteFlip, but it never hurts to take a good look around at what's available.
So, let's see if I can actually finish everything on the list!