Patio Construction continues today, the third day of work. Saturday and Sunday I worked from Can See to Can't See, along with my wife. Michael and his friend Ryan worked through most of the day on Saturday as well, hauling gravel.

Adelfa Passing BricksThe circles and fans consumed a lot more time than we realized. They look really cool, but they added a day to the construction.

Weather permitting, we're scheduled to start building our patio this weekend. Materials are delivered on Friday. Saturday morning from can see to can't see we'll be outside hauling and compacting gravel.

Those of you who are regular visitors may have noticed that not all is right with the world of our site. The most noticeable issue is the crazy giant pictures appearing everywhere. There's also a good chance that you are getting funny red error messages sometimes when you press a button. If you get that, please copy the text and email it to me (click the Contact link at the left). I've tried to get the most common of those messages, but there are still a few that I haven't caught up with.

For Christmas I bought the family a new video card, so that we could actually use the full resolution of our existing monitor. Joke was on me though, because the new video card used a new kind of video cable that our existing monitor couldn't connect to. So I had to wait a little while to get a new monitor.

I've been going through the wishlist and cleaning up some of the entries. This is a really good time to check your entries and make sure that a) the description you've entered is correct and b) the items you have entered are actually on your list. This is doubly important for those of you who share a computer, since there are some items on lists that appear to be on the wrong list. If you don't, you have only yourself to blame if you get an item that was intended for somebody else.

I'm in the middle of building a deck. If you've built a deck before, you know that it's a fair amount of work. Being an over-achiever of course I can't do a simple rectangular deck that's bolted to the house on one side. Mine is a free standing 14 foot square, which requires a central beam in addition to the beams on the edges, built into a corner of the house. The corner opposite the corner of the house is cut at a 45 degree angle, making each of the legs leading to that corner 7 feet, and that face 10 feet long.

Let me be the first to send electronic congratulations (at least via this site) to Michele and Dale Lingar, and hope that they're took busy enjoying their honeymoon to be reading this until it's been up for a week or two. I wish the two of you a long lifetime of happiness together.

When I first thought of the idea to make t-shirts, the Nature Lover shirts were designed with my daughter firmly in mind. And I have to tell you it's been a success. I bought this: http://www.printfection.com/dowlingshirts/Nature-Lover-Nadia-Hooded-Swea... for her, and it arrived this week. That night, I woke up to let the cat out around 3:30 and found my daughter had fallen asleep on the couch, clutching the sweatshirt like a comforter. I think that's a sure sign of a successful design.