Darn Groundhog

I know it's the midwest and today is actually a relativey nice day for this time of year, but Tom Skilling is saying we could get hit with more snow.

Is anyone else ready for Spring or is it just me?

Stimulus Package

I would just like to say that we Broke Homeowners have been doing our part to stimulate the economy. We have been all along, but as of late we've made a few rather large ticket purchases. There's an entire story about how the Wii that Santa brought us would only work in black and white on the TV, but the important part is we purchased a 40" LCD TV from Circuit City to get the Wii to work and support the economy. Like two weeks later, Circuit City announces they're closing their doors...

Then there's this carousel DVD player that doesn't seem to want to stay open to allow us to swap disks that we finally got fed up enough to replace. Off to, you guessed it, Circuit City to look for a new "home theater in a box." At least we got a decent deal at the going out of business sale...

Anyway, we've done our part...

Live Illinois Lottery Drawing

As you might expect, this particular broke homeowner has a few quirks. Some are specific to what screwdriver or ladder I like to use for certain jobs, others are in regard to eating (one of my favorite pastimes), and one is that I enjoy watching the live Illinois Lottery drawing at 9:22pm each night on WGN TV. Strange, I know, if you're here for home improvement-related fodder, now might be a good time to move on. :)

Still here, huh? Can't wait to see where this goes, can you? Before I go any further, there are a couple of things you should know...

First, one of the hosts for the lottery drawings is Linda Kollmeyer and for some reason, she makes me smile. She is an attractive lady but her biggest draw is her personality - she's always happy (on TV, anyway) and almost always has some little spunky well-wish for the evening. Keep in mind, there are two other lottery hosts, so when Linda's on, it's already a good day.

Second, as I've mentioned before (in a Vacation post), I have a bit of a thing for leather. So, you can imagine my excitement when Linda did the Live Illinois Lottery drawing in a leather outfit last night. *gasp* I know! Seriously, how lucky can a guy get?

So, for your viewing pleasure (and mine), here's last night's drawing.

If you're interested, you can peruse the Illinois Lottery gallery for yourself. I, of course, recommend you do.

UPDATE
The luck continues... While not head-to-toe, Linda wore more leather for today's mid-day drawing.

PTUA

While cleaning bathrooms the other day, I stumbled across an obvious sign that someone in the family needs some serious improvement with their PTUA. By definition, I'm able to eliminate female family members and visitors and, since it was the second-floor hall bathroom where the evidence was found, I'm able to eliminate "casual" guests.

Now, I've had this discussion with my son on several occasions and made it clear that if the PTUA isn't there, you need to sit down. To my pleasure (and surprise), he's actaully taken this to heart and has been pretty good about heeding the warning so it was with a bit of mystery that I discovered the evidence to this poor PTUA.

While cleaning up the aftermath, I gave it some thought and it suddenly occured to me... he recently had a friend spend the night! Could it be that this failure of PTUA was the work of his friend? At this point, I decide to give my son the benefit of the doubt and "pin it" on his friend. Now, I just have to figure out how to talk to his friend's Dad about it...

Oh, what's PTUA, you ask? OK, we're all adults here, right? PTAU stands for Penis to Toliet Uniary Accuracy.

Jimmy Buffett - Broke Homeowners Style

It's been a while since we've been to a concert and even longer since we partook one at and outdoor venue. We joined up with some neighbors and paid a visit to Margaritaville to spend some quality "hanging out" time with Mr. Buffett himself. As you can see from the picture below, we didn't get very close.

Still good times. There's nothing quite like being in "the lawn" for Buffett concert. It's fun and... interesting all at the same time.

Fins up!

Japanese Beetles

These things better be found to cure cancer or something else spectacular because they are a pain in the butt!

How many tons have you moved?

As a do-it-yourselfer, I've moved a lot of materials over the course of my life. Sod, dirt, mulch, lumber, tile, bricks, brick pavers, cinder blocks, concrete, bags of grass seed and fertilizer, trees, shrubs, rocks, granite counter tops, toilets, appliances, furniture, water, etc. Even a hot tub. Twice.

Yesterday, while relaxing, I started to wonder how many tons of stuff I've moved. Consider this example - when we built our most recent house, we transported all the tile ourselves. At 55 pounds a box, it "only" took 37 boxes of tile to add up to more than 2,000 pounds or one ton. Now, consider we moved 50 boxes of tile three times (once onto carts in the store, once off the carts into the trailer, once out of the trailer into the house) just getting it to the house, you can see how quickly this can add up. That tile alone accounted for moving more than 4 tons (50 boxes X 3 moves X 55 pounds = 8,250 pounds).

Think about how much stuff you've moved - it adds up quicker than you might think!

Relaxing? What's that?

Yesterday was the first time in a long time we did not have any events or projects planned. In the morning, I asked my wife, "So, what's the plan for the day?" and she responded, "Nothing."

"Huh? Nothing? Well... Hmm... What are we going to do?" I responded. "I thought we'd sit on the deck and watch the kids play in the yard - maybe read a book," she stated.

Relaxing... hmm, what a concept.

Analytics Fun

There's a lot of you out there interested in "hicks yews" and "leather pants." Especially from Google and Yahoo's image search pages. The leather pants I get, but hicks yews? Not decks or fences or berms, but hicks yews? Specifically hicks yews?

You're an interesting lot - perhaps that's why we get along so well...

Bridges in their natural habitat

A while back, I posted about the bridges we purchased at Sam's Club. While I was out taking pictures in the yard for some of the other projects we've been working on, I took one of the bridges. You can see one front and center while the other is tucked a way "upstream" in the background. Like I said originally, they look much nicer in their natural habitat.