Did you think I was kidding? If you want to see pictures of the Land Cruiser, you might want to join Facebook :-)

http://www.facebook.com

Use your real name when you sign up so it's easier to find each other. Search for "Serena Rockey" and you'll find me. Poke me, or request to add me as a friend, and then you'll be able to see all my pictures and everything.

Ok! See you there!

Back to school!

So, I have to admit, Blogger isn't really doing it for me anymore. There is this great little place out in cyberspace called FaceBook. Have you heard of it? It's cozy, and out of the way, and all your favorite people are there.

I'd like to invite you to meet me there, though I'll still drop in here for the really important updates, like Jackson's First Day of Grade One!!!

You can click to see the pictures here.

And see a funny little video here:



When you register on FaceBook, just look for me by name :)

Let me dazzle you with my amazing powers.

Which Super Hero am I? I just took the test - I guess I'd agree, though it may have been determined in the first two questions. Do I like to fly? Yes. Do I like to wear a cape? No.

Your results:
You are Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman 82% Iron Man 65% Hulk 65% Supergirl 62% Spider-Man 60% The Flash 60% Robin 55% Catwoman 55% Green Lantern 50% Superman 45% Batman 35%

You are a beautiful princess with great strength of character.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

The people asked, and so the people shall receive.

Darren is all moved in...

and he likes it...

it's got room for everything!

My new office space. The walls will be changing color! (and that mobile is coming down)

The playroom is in the old office...

and where the rug is will be a little day bed.

All my tools have their own space now...

and the bikes will stay dry in the rain. It's not an ideal space, but until we have a garage it will have to do.

Doot doo doo!!

Just a couple little touch-ups left, and another coat on the door, but only about another half hour and I'm done! Then it's all up to Darren to set up his office stuff in there and settle in. Might have to sew a couple curtains but that can come later.

Pretty nice, huh? :-) My dad helped me put the floor down this morning so that went fast. And he gave me a compressor and two nail guns for my birthday so the baseboard went up in about 3 minutes! I LOVE NAIL GUNS.

Today's progress

Sanded and primed two coats.

Shed conversion

Ok! So a man needs his space, right? And so does the rest of the family ;-) Therefore, I am converting our cute little 82 sq ft. shed into a perfect office space for Darren. Here are some pictures for all of you following along at home.

I started two days ago. First, there was all the crap shoved in the shed. Too much stuff to let me in at the same time to take a picture, so here it is after it's mostly emptied out. Big work tables and shelves attached to every wall.


All this stuff had to be pulled out and put in a throw-away pile outside. The window on the left here opens, while the other one shown above does not.


Another view, taken from the door.


So I pulled out all the shelves and tables, and vacuumed up all the dust and cobwebs.


Yesterday I mudded and taped. My first time ever, and it went pretty well! These pictures are from today, after the second coat of mud.


Tomorrow I'll start sanding, if my back has had enough rest. It's screaming for an epsom salt bath right now, so if you'll excuse me ...

more to come!

The fence! The gates!

Ok, so it's not quite totally done, but it's so close! The entire backyard is fenced and gated now, thanks to the brother-in-law, and the only bit that's left is to do the pickets around the front yard. They'll be in the same pattern as the bits by the gates now. It is already such a relief to be in the back with the kids and not have to worry about them running into the street, or strange dogs coming into the back which has happened a few times.

Unfortunately, nothing has helped get rid of this one F#*&^@ING cat who continues to find new and exciting places to leave big stinky piles for me to step in/clean up. I HATE CATS!!!!!!! HATE THEM!

Right gate:


Left gate:


Right back fence:


Left back fence:

Getting out

I had a dinner date with my friend Tonicha last night. I wore a skirt that I got at Value Village (Maia and I went together on Sunday), and was feeling so cute I made Darren take some pictures of me. :-)

It was a really fun evening and the only slightly creepy part was this old man, who smelled like cigarettes, kept coming over to us and alternately hitting on us and telling us how much we ate. WEIRD.







Of course, Frannie had to get in at least one picture too.

Our weekend

We enjoyed the pleasure of the company of some friends from Piedmont, California this weekend. We had dinner with Paul and Maia at their home in the spring, and now they are visiting Canada and were able to spend time with us. We knew they would be coming over for dinner at some point, but were so happy when it ended up being Saturday night, which turned into a sleep over in the living room. They are such a really delightful bunch of fun people!! I'm looking forward to staying with them next time we go down to California.

Here are some pics of their daughters, Mimi and Lucia, with Jackson and Frances.

Getting it sorted

Ok, just came back in from playing with the camera on my phone a bit more and I think I figured out how to correct the settings. There are a couple manual controls for brightness and color value. The first one of the dalias is just the regular setting, and the second one decreased both the white value and the brightness.


The first one is way too blue/green, but the second is much closer. The petals are not quite as yellow as they should be, but the leaves are pretty true.


Using the same corrections I took this on the deck. Obviously there aren't any focus controls but the colors are really good here.


If only it would remember the settings!

It's baaaaack!

It's summer again! Isn't that lucky? Nobody wants to take pictures of the cold, windy rain in the summer time, but believe me, that's how it's been for over a week. So cold I didn't think it would warm up again, but it has.

Unfortunately, I really don't care as much for the Samsung phone camera as I did the Sony. Look how washed out these are compared to the other beach picture.







Doesn't take anything away from what a great day it was though!

That was fast.

Remember the summer of 2007?

No?

That's because it only lasted for two weeks!

Luckily I was able to make the very most of it, and even captured rare proof of its existence.



I'm really impressed with the quality of mobile phone cameras these days! This one of the kids was taken with my Sony Ericsson Z550a, but I've just switched to a Samsung SPH-a900 and I like it too. I used it to take a new Facebook profile picture, though I'll have to play more with the light settings. This was by a window with a lot of diffuse light coming through:



It's about the same res as our first digital camera. 1.3 megapixels. Our current camera is 7, I think. The Samsung came with a data cable though which will make me much more likely to start taking mobile pics.

Ta-da!

Well ... I should save the fan fair for when the little plants are in and the grass grows back (and the fence is finished), but it's otherwise done!


The boring old walkway, back when there was also a pine planted strangely in the middle of the front yard (on the left).

New-to-you.

This chair is a good example of why I never want to have friends over for dinner. Would you want to sit in this crusty chair? Even my father-in-law gave it a second look and he was wearing his overalls.



Wouldn't you rather sit in a nice chair like this?


It's not a hard choice.


We're having dinner guests over on Saturday and I refuse to make them sit in the ancient hand-me-down chairs from my mother-in-law that were ugly to begin with, before the kids dumped a year and a half of dinners on them.

It's not hard to recover a seat chair. I went down to a leather shop and bought a couple 1/2 hides, graded for motorcycle chaps. COOL. Made a pattern out of an old sheet, and loaded up the staple gun.


Six chairs in total but I'm already 1/2 way done. I'm loving them!

Filling in.

So today I put down more of the dried up hunks of sod and watered it all down, and then covered it all with a layer of dirt and watered all that really well. This is an experiment, and I'm hoping that the wet dirt will bring the grass back to life, which will then grow up through the dirt layer and look all green and pretty.



Jackson is back in swim lessons now and THANK GOD his instructor Daniel is back. That guy is such a fantastic teacher! Jackson will have him three days a week all summer long and I can tell it won't take long to undo the lazy habits his previous teacher instilled in him.

Finally finished my flash animation project. Darren has the file now and will be composing some dope beats for it.

The weather is so fantastic. It's truly summer. I've got funny tan lines on my wrists from wearing my work gloves.

Not a bust after all.

I didn't do the family thing. It's too satisfying to stay home and work and I didn't want today to go by without a little more dirt-work. I didn't get away from the computer until 3 pm but I still got some done here. I leveled and filled the second row for the tires, and even made sure there was still a bit of a slope so there won't be big messy puddles when it starts to rain again.

I'm not sure if the turf that's been sitting around all week is dead and gone, but grass dies off in the winter and comes back so I'm going to try to revive it. I'm back-filling with dirt in the big empty patches now and will pack the sod back on it. I did a little patch up near the sidewalk between the tire rows, and then dumped some more dirt on top to even it off.

Hopefully the grass will grow up through, or maybe we'll have to throw some seed down - that wouldn't be a big deal.

A bit more today.

I was inside working on a flash intro for OpenSourceLife.net today until 2 pm so I didn't get a lot done outside, but I managed to finish placing the blocks for the tire rows, and got the far one leveled and mostly packed in with dirt. I had just enough pieces left at the end to make some stepping stones for getting in and out of the car.

We're visiting with some of Darren's family from Arizona tomorrow, and I'll have to finish that flash animation, so tomorrow will probably be a bust.

Nearly done.

Josh drove his Prado over today so I could mark how far apart the tires are, and how wide the door opens to make sure it won't hit the fence. I didn't get all the stones laid out yet but I am so close, I can taste it!

Oh wait, that's actually dirt in my mouth.

I'm done with the walkway part and will have just enough pieces left to wrap some stepping stones around from the driver's side door to the path. I keep forgetting that it's going to be a right-hand drive!

Tomorrow it's more laying out of stones and then back-filling with dirt until it's all done. Then the planting begins. As I get farther along, more and more people stop to chat about it. So far all the comments have been positive and nobody has asked if I've got a permit, which I actually believe I am supposed to have since, technically, I am going to be parking there. Hmmm...



Oh, and I decided not to do the grass pavers. I've got just enough concrete to do it this way, and so far this entire project, including the beginnings of the fence, hasn't cost me a dime! I like it like that. My biggest expense will be the plants, and for that I don't mind splurging.