faster than the speed of dial-up!
This could be a not-so-good thing —I may never get off the computer again. DSL is amazing – I have been lying here on my couch loading up photos to Flickr – unheard of! It seriously seems as fast as our campus connection.
I’m also falling asleep on the couch, because we have had two or three or something veeeeery long days, filled with a lot of family and a lot of hard manual labor which we are most unaccustomed to. (I’ve also just tried to spell "manual", "labor", and "which" with Y’s in the middle. That seems like a bad sign. Or a sign that I need to put away the computer and GO TO BED.)
So in celebration of DSL, wonderful, speedy, not kicking me off-line every three minutes DSL!!! I will just post some pictures. And go to bed.
I know this looks like a hobo strolling around our "front yard", but it is actually Baker B preparing to shovel that three-ton pile of gravel into the ditch in front of the house, in order to create a french drain. And get our house refinanced. That pile of gravel does not look like something that would weigh three tons, but after shoveling it most of the day Monday, it did feel like three tons. And Baker B did most of the shoveling.
Plastic and pipe, prior to having three tons of gravel thrown in on top of them:
My job mostly consisted of standing in the ditch, holding down the pipe with one foot, holding down part of the plastic with the other foot, holding down more of the plastic with one hand, and still more of the plastic with my remaining hand. While having shovelfuls of gravel thrown at my head. It was kind of like playing Twister with very angry opponents. Or a not-so-peaceful yoga session.
Ta da!! Yes, this took ALL DAY LONG Monday. Then we had to rush off to Morganton to Baker B’s Family Christmas Eve Party. We ended up coming back up here at about midnight Monday, then going back to M’ton Tuesday, then I went on to Asheville that evening. THEN I came back up here today, and we finished the french drain. The gravel was the hardest work -the rest was just shoveling dirt back in on top of it. And putting concrete stuff in the big cracks on the side of the house. Which I certainly hope worked, as we had no idea what we were doing. It’s a cosmetic thing, at least. I also forgot to take pictures of that. I was verging on collapse by then.
Christmas, or at least what I remember of it at this point, was fine. I didn’t really see as much of Baker B’s family as I would have liked, especially his niece and the unbelievably adorable Baby Claire.
Who, yes, DOES have a black eye from falling and hitting a coffee table. Well, either that or she’d been playing football. This is my kind of baby – she is ridiculously happy, practically never cries, and is very entertaining.
Baker B teaching Claire to play Rook. They are sitting right beside a little table where the telephone and his mother’s medic alert thing is. Right after I took this picture, they managed to knock the table over, causing the medic alert thing to fall into the floor and set the alarm off. The good news is that they DO call to make sure you’re okay if you knock your medic alert thing into the floor and the alarm goes off.
And of course, what would Christmas be without the annual Weird Distrubing Ornament Gallery?!?
a big *hurrah* for your DSL connection!
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I kept thinking, “severed Santa heads!” ’cause it’s very early in the morning and I can’t sleep.
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A very vigorous game of twister indeed! Congrats on the DSL and getting the drain job done with all that to and fro! Very impressive. For my router installation, apparently it is very simple but one needs a PC in the house to run the program to get it started and I am a Mac user so I am waiting for B-I-L to bring a PC laptop from school on Saturday and then I will be untethered!
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Glad you finished the drain-HEY-YOU FINISHED THE JOB!!!!! Blue ribbon for you and Baker B!! Claire IS adorable. Okay, the first Santa head looks like the moon. Does this mean Santa lives on the moon instead of the North Pole?
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So, I suppose you and Baker B will start a landscaping business soon: E & B’s Dixie French Designs. Baker B is a baby magnet. Most of us have to stand on our heads, talk like Julia Child and bribe them with toys or candy to get babies to even look at us. Baker B walks by a room containing a baby and ZOOM that baby is out of the room and after him like the Pied Piper. Claire needs to be cloned,however keep her away from Social Services until that shiner fades. The high chair evokes fond memories – d and BD wore one out many years ago. I spent untold happy hours fishing Cheerios out of the crevices and picking up stuff hurled off the tray by chubby sticky hands.
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You’re right, those Santa heads are unsettling. BD received a similiar gift last year, a teddy bear head festooned with a stocking cap and scarf proclaiming her name. No trace of a body. She has it hanging on her doorknob but there’s really no place to put it where it looks normal. Makes you wonder what was done with the bodies. Perhaps somewhere there is a warehouse of headless teddy bears waiting for someone to figure out how to decorate with them.
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I love those scary ornaments! I am so looking forward to all the stuff I’m going to make B do once we move. This reminds me that we have downspouts to repair, and by “we” I mean “he.”
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i have always been unsettled by santa claus, but those ornaments seem to depict a santa claus darkly. i’ve always suspected something sinister behind that white beard…and there is santa with a pointy hat. i was right all along! yikes! what a cute little girl!!
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YEA for speedy Internet! Twister with angry opponents – you slay me! Love the pics and that baby is THE cutest.
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OH, my god, you crack me up. Especially when you’re exhausted! LOL I love that. That is disturbing, all right!
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I’ll have a glass of wine to celebrate you getting DSL if that’s okay ……. I’m surprised Claire didn’t have nightmares having to look at these ornaments – I thought my Santa decoration was evil-looking – he ain’t got nothing on these! I just love the first one though even though I’ve seen it before – I’ve never seen a more pissed-off looking Christmas ornament!
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What a cute little girl. Even with the black eye. 🙂
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That baby is so cute. You are right, you had lots of gravel in front of your house.
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Catching up, but had to say Yeah to your DSL!!
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I missed you. Not sure why I quit coming here but you are great as ever. Funny how our friendships waver here – there are people I miss who are gone forever – and ones I don’t see that I could see at a flick of a slow dialup key or seven. Anyway this is a wonderful entry for a million reasons. Funny how things get called French, isn’t it? And all those lovely historical ornaments. I love ’em.
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