hippos

as you may already know, i am close to completing my first year of grad school. in addition to still working full time. so much for slowing down!

it's been an exhausting, but very positive experience, and i'm incredibly grateful to the school of art at isu for being so flexible in allowing me to pursue this part-time. (and huge kudos to my geek for picking up the slack at home when i'm at class or stressed out over homework)

last night i wrapped up a little foray into writing object-oriented java applications. it was a great learning experience... and the result is kinda fun so i thought i'd share:
Hungry Hippos

note: there is quite the back story to this project involving myself, my geek, and a certain stuffed hippo named Marten.

yards are a lot of work

when we moved into our current home a year and a half ago, it was entirely surrounded by mud.
as you can imagine:

new house + dogs + mud = fail

by the time the weather warmed, we were determined to remedy the problem. of course it turned out to be a much bigger undertaking than either of us anticipated, and ended up taking almost all our free time last summer. it's paid off though, and this year our yard looks... well, like a yard.

we've been looking forward to actually getting to relax outside this year, but there was one final piece to the project that needed to get done. when we put in the fence last summer, we discovered that the grade of the lot away from the house prevented our front gate from opening fully and since our lot is long and narrow there's really no other place to put the gate. we've been putting off dealing with it, but knew we'd need to address the problem at some point this summer. since we're leaving on a trip soon and we're free this weekend we decided it was time to just get it done.

so yesterday i left work at noon and drove out to the landscaping company my brother-in-law works at to select materials. my geek left around the same time and made the always-necessary trip multiple visits to the hardware store for the remaining bits and pieces and ... late in the afternoon the three of us converged on the gate.

as projects go it wasn't too bad. (this may or may not have been because the guys did most of the digging/dirt hauling) and now that it's done we can breathe a sigh of relief and declare our yard project(s) complete.

... at least for this season.


our recently added finishing touch.





the pups have their own door into a dog run area. i'm so glad we did this! it's come in handy so many times that they have a separate yard space.