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Due to the seemingly neverending torrential downpours all too commonplace this summer, my yard is completely saturated. You can’t step into my front lawn without sinking slightly as if you’d found the onset of quicksand. The thick black, rich soil below the plush Saint Augustine surges moisture like water from a engorged sponge. Treading off the cement driveway or the pebbled front walk is a mess waiting to happen. My lawn guys came this morning with their oversized mowers and the industrial gear that allows them to finish more lawns per day, improving efficiency and thereby increasing their profit margin for an honest day’s labor. Common sense would dictate waiting for terra firma to actually become firma, but for whatever reason, today was common sense’s day at the spa. This merry band of fellows, who I normally rave about and adore, proceeded to prison rape my lawn in the most horrific way. It looks like a midget in a souped up, motorized Tonka truck went mudding through my lawn with a vengeance. This comes a couple of weeks subsequent to them snapping a sprinkler head off at the base on the other side of the yard. Awesome. If it would stop raining for more than a few hours at a time, I could get out there and do some maintenance.


I fired up the grill last night and burned up some marinated, boneless pork ribs. I grilled cubed sweet potatoes with crushed red pepper and fresh rosemary tossed in E.V.O.O. (except my mom and I were chatting during the prep and we both forgot the rosemary). The recipe is Beth’s and I love it. I have a thriving rosemary bush in my backyard specifically for that recipe… but I love fresh rosemary anyway, so it works out for other schtuff. We enjoyed some nice red wine with dinner and watched DVR’d Californication. Well cast and accurately dysfunctional California. <3 u Sean… hang in there dude. My mom's PC was a lightning strike victim this week, so I had to autopsy the wreckage. At the end of the day, we were able to salvage the HD and transfer the data to an external using another system I have at the house, but she needed to buy a new system for the long term. If you are shopping in the greater than $1000 price range, it is fairly easy to get more bang for the buck building a pieced together hand-built rig. However, when you are pricing sub-$600 systems, one just can't compete with parts bought wholesale by the thousands and put together in third world country sweatshops by 12 year old Malaysian kids out of work from the Nike scandal. So we ordered online. That shit happens sometimes. Seriously.