Scattered Thoughts . . .

New grill placed in the backyard in its temporary home... a new grilling kitchen area is being built off the backside of this log shed... you can see some blocks out marking locations of posts for the roof. It was a busy and productive morning today! First, I added much needed RAM to my desktop computer as well as my laptop computer. Getting that task done is a huge relief especially after the difficulties I had with the laptop computer ( see my previous post ). After accomplishing those tasks with my computers, I headed outdoors to see if I could make some headway in getting our new grill out of our living room. The grill was still sitting in the living room after assembling it a few days ago because I had no place outdoors to set it. The old grill was located in a place where we are building an outdoor kitchen grilling area under cover. If I set the new grill there, then it would be in my way while working on building this outdoor area. I first had to find a level area nearb...

I had just finished adding a new additional 8gb memory card to my desktop computer and now it was time to swap out the RAM on my laptop computer for a new 8gb memory card. I use this little laptop whenever we are on the road or at the lake house for music, editing photos, updating my blog, and any other internet activities. Because I use this laptop for editing photos, I needed more RAM than the stock 4gb's.  Wow... this 'little' task which was a piece of cake on my desktop computer was significantly more complicated on this little laptop!  I had to dismantle the entire laptop to gain access to the RAM card. To say this made me nervous is a gross understatement. First off... just figuring out how to open the case was a pain in the butt! There are about 17 tiny screws holding this thing together... most plainly visible but some were hidden under rubber feet and flush covers. Next... everything on this little laptop is miniscule and I have big hands and rather poor eyes...

I bought a new desktop computer almost a year ago after an unknown component in my old computer stopped functioning rendering the computer useless. I couldn't figure out which component went bad and didn't want to start buying parts and swapping out parts hoping to get lucky so I just bought a new computer.  That new computer came with 8gb's of RAM installed which is more than enough for most people. I, however, use my desktop computer for editing photos, creating video, and various other graphics intensive programs so I knew that I would want to install more RAM before long. Fortunately, installing RAM in a desktop computer is a piece of cake...  Open the big side panel by sliding it off...  Push open the two clips in the next empty RAM card slot... Then insert the new RAM until the clips lock in place.   Slide the side panel of the desktop tower back into place... Boot up the computer... Done!   So, I added another 8gb's of RAM last night. ...

It seems that most years we have difficulty finding wildflower seed so we end up a little bit behind schedule.  This year I didn't even bother wasting my time and energy by searching for seed locally and instead ordered it from Amazon the moment I realized it was that time of year.  I couldn't find any seed locally last year and I really wasted a lot of time so I eventually had to order it online from Amazon. It was such a painless, quick and easy way to purchase that I went right to Amazon this year. Now we have the seed... we just need to get out of the freezing nighttime temperatures so we can plant. In the meantime, we need to clean out the flowerbeds all around the house in preparation of this new short growing season. We could probably use some top soil and peat moss as well... I'll have to grab some of that the next time we are at Lowes or Home Depot. So far, however, we are on track for some nice wildflowers this season!

Our old grill finally bit the dust. I had rebuilt the grill a couple of years ago just to buy us another year or two and we clearly managed to get another couple of years out of it but now that old grill sits in the yard as a pile of rusted out metal. We have some really nice plans for the yard and those plans always included a nice area under cover for a little kitchen/grill area. On the positive side, what started out as vague ideas for our yard had already turned into specific plans before our grill bit the dust so we already had a pretty good idea of what we wanted. It had been a frigid winter here this year so we didn't use the grill much in the past six months or so. The temperatures finally moved close to freezing a few weeks ago so we fired up the grill to cook some steaks... I went outside to check on the steaks and noticed the fire was not hot and the grill sounded like a jet plane! I knew what that meant... leaking gas... there was a little flame-thrower-action go...