NPR Monkeys

Last night, Mrs. tsandhol and I renewed our membership with our local public radio/television station, WILL. After declining the standard member gifts, I entered this into the additional comments section of the donation form:

I would like to forgo the traditional thank-you gifts, but would greatly appreciate a hand-drawn monkey (even a lousy one) on a piece of paper. I can pick this up if necessary.

This morning, I received an email from somebody who handles the pledges saying that the station manager, Jay Pearce, had drawn (and autographed, apparently) one himself. I popped on over to the station that afternoon and was handed this:

Awesome.

Note that this is not the first time that we have asked for a drawing of a monkey.

So Awesome

Mrs. tsandhol came home from grocery shopping with a box of fruit snacks. While she does love including fun snacks in our lunches, I could immediately see why she chose this particular treat:

How can you not love packaging that includes both a shark *and* a dinosaur (complete with pirate hat and vest)?

This one's a winner.

I hurt...

At our new house, we have inherited a neglected vegetable garden. It's roughly 16' x 40', and appears that it hasn't been used in a year or so.

You'll note that there is a good 3' strip of grass along the fence that requires one to push the mower over the garden to reach it. This is because the phone line is buried under that section, and imagine it is risky to rototill that section. Anyhoo, Mrs. tsandhol and I aren't exactly big vegetable gardeners anyway, so we decided to replace the vegetable garden with some raised beds and ornamental plantings. 5 cubic yards of mulch, 144 feet of 2x6 cedar, 16' of aluminum rods, 450' of landscaping fabric, and loads of topsoil and compost later (plus plants), and we have a workable garden for now.

The raised beds are placed in a way that will allow us to either add three more of them if we decide we like doing vegetable gardening, or just have a larger ornamental garden with a path.

Now if I could just get a hold of some muscle relaxers...

Damn Bunnies...

'Tis the season to chase baby bunnies around the lawn with the mower. I swear, bunnies must exist only to be food for other animals, as the babies seem to run *towards* me rather than away when I'm walking around the lawn with some loud-ass equipment.

This evening, I went out to the garage to get a level. As I'm looking around for the tool (no, we haven't yet unpacked the garage), I see what looks like a ball of wool socks on top of a few bags of mulch. Then I realize that the ball of socks has eyes and ears. A baby bunny somehow made its way into the garage when it was open today, and decided to hang out there for a while. After 30 minutes of chasing a bunny with brooms, shovel handles, and a fiberglass wire fish (which it managed to jump over, rather than be driven by it), we got a very scared and most likely tired baby bunny out the door. I hope it finds a safe place to nap for the evening.

Ah, springtime...

MAME Cabinet

If you recall, Mrs. tsandhol and I built a MAME cabinet a few (5) years ago. Well, we've decided that we should actually create a marquee for it, to replace the current "TBA" that is printed on a few pieces of taped-together paper. We are at a loss as to what to name it. So, please choose one or more good names, or feel free to suggest one of your own:

It has been a while

Sorry for a lack of updates. We've moved (just across town), so I've been a bit busy with other things. Now for some pictures of big-ass trucks...

Breakfast of Champions

We had some leftovers from my birthday meals from over the weekend. Among those were some bacon and some chocolate cake. So I had both for breakfast.

Gyaah!

There's nothing quite like sitting in a stall in the bathroom when a giant cockroach comes running straight at you from under the door.

I'm sure those outside of the bathroom enjoyed my exclamations to that fact as well.