Yep, I’m moving to Ballard. I’ve decided I’m going to rent the house out for a year, and see how that goes. I think it’s a fine house, the location just doesn’t work for me any more.

The place in Ballard is about 5 miles from work. It’s freshly updated inside, and it looks like it’s in a nice suburban-type area — that is, there aren’t giant towering buildings, but there’s also a bus route right outside and businesses somewhat near by.

It’s also a good opportunity for me to get a fresh start on my “stuff” issue. The issue being that I have way too much stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years. I think I would benefit from living a much more simple life. Not to mention that all of this stuff collecting costs money, money I don’t really need to spend.

PS: I think this may be the first time someone’s said “Woo Ballard!” Woo!

Updated: Nah. I’m going to sell it. That will lead to a simpler life.

So far I’ve managed to a) destroy my front lawn and b) spill part of a load on top of the Bobcat itself.

Turning these things is a bit tricky. They have really, really knobby tires of course, and you drive them like a tank (with one lever for the left side and one for the right side). To turn you’re supposed to push one forward and one backwards. That causes the machine to wobble around when on pavement, and it gets really bad if you go too fast (not that I am going crazy with it. In this case “too fast” is just a small amount above “not moving”). On grass, it doesn’t wobble, but it just wrecks everything underneath it.

The foot controls are taking getting used to as well. I’m not exactly sure why I ended up with the bucket up over the Bobcat — I wonder if I was just trying to “hit the brakes” with my left foot, stupidly, instead of just letting go of the foot controls — but it sure made a mess.

I’m enjoying using it, however. The suck part is I have to stop every 3 or 4 loads so I can spread the dirt I’m dumping — I can’t use the Bobcat for that because of the walls. :)

I’m still working on that yard project I started in May. In my sort-of defense I spent most of that time not working on the project. I decided to take this entire week off to “finish” it, or at least complete enough of it, and do whatever else is necessary to make it appear finished.

You can see the back of part of one section of the wall. You can also see the tree I planted today (this shot is from a day or two ago, I don’t remember, heh), still in its pot, on the right leaning up against the downspout.

14 yards of dirt. I originally ordered 20, but when I saw how big the first load was (it was to be delivered in 3 separate loads) I reduced the order. Some of it spilled in to my neighbor’s yard; not the driver’s fault (there’s only so much room) and lucky for me my neighbors are cool about it.

Here’s a full view of the project from the front “deck”. You can also see my neighbor’s yard and the work they’ve done — the caps they put on top of the blocks were all cut exactly to shape using a circular saw. They look great.

I had to make a compromise part way through the driveway wall part of the project. The project called for this entire wall to be made level, which required moving it back about a foot (so the blocks would not be resting on the driveway material). It isn’t “hard” work, it’s just really time consuming getting the base blocks level. I don’t think I have enough time to finish this part of the project before the week is out, and moving the dirt is a higher priority (before it starts growing shit) so I just made it look as good as I could.

I’m renting a Bobcat for tomorrow, to finish moving the 13.7 yards of dirt that remain on the driveway. I decided the compromise mentioned above before I decided to rent the Bobcat, so who knows, maybe I can finish that wall stage of the project after all.

I’m a week late for Native Plant Appreciation Week (404 now for some inexplicable reason), but I am hoping I can still participate, with my minor contribution:

Left to right, that is generic bark (boring), Physocarpus Opulifolius – Gold’s Common, and Ribes Sanguineum Alba – White Flowering Currant. I’m going to plant these in the front yard, around the start of the downward slope that is such a bitch to mow. I hope to eventually replace the entire slope with tiers of plants that require infrequent maintenance, instead of this hell-that-is-grass. Heh.

Edit: May 14:

I just finished installing and setting up Gallery (unfortunately hosted by Sourceforge), to host images taken of my house at closing, and images taken after much of the interior was repainted.

The color is coming in great. Of course, this photo, taken from my camera phone, doesn’t do a good job of showing the difference between old and new. I expect to finish up the second coat in the entryway today. Tomorrow, I’ll be pulling up all of the masking. Then it’s off to the bedrooms. They should be far less complicated — I expect to finish them Sunday evening.

Oh yeah, here’s a shot from the front:

This is all gonna take a while, heh.

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…in his house.

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