Where did the time go?

So I stepped out for life. This is one of those good examples of how life tends to take you in directions you don’t necessarily expect. I had a goal in mind and actively working but suddenly I realize that it’s been well over a week since I last did anything against that goal. What happened? My last post was made on March 27th. Today is April 8th. That’s 12 days. What has distracted me for 12 days. Let’s go back in time and figure this out.

Visited Mom – I spent a few days with mom. She keeps a list of things she needs help doing. We usually have some standard jobs like running to Lowes and Petsmart for shopping or dropping returns off at UPS. She also keeps a list of handy mad type jobs. The biggest job was mom’s floor project but others have been quick and easy things. This time we had a lot to do. Besides filling Bertha with dirt and mulch we also repaired some PVC piping, removed do dads from the gutters, spread grub killer and some other odd jobs. The fun part came later in the day when we began our little genealogy project. I logged into our family tree to show off what I had found and discovered that behind the scenes our family tree was connected to a deep rich family tree going back to the 900s. Way too much information to process there so we’re going to go back to it next visit. We also started our recording session and mom spoke about 4 different pictures she found in her picture box. I’ll be starting this project soon so I won’t talk about it any more here.

Planter boxes – I have been building raised planter boxes for my vegetable garden. I will have a post covering this project soon. These boxes were hand built using lumber and corrugated metal sheets. Inside the boxes I layered cardboard, logs, limbs and sticks, covered by leaf litter and then covered again with a mix of garden soil and organic material. I put about 30 cubic feet of dirt between these two boxes. That took several days of driving to home depot and back for supplies. I even dug trenches to support the pvc irrigation pipes from the shop to the boxes. On top of the soil or even under the soil I will have my low pressure irrigation system automatically watering my plants. I’ve recently ordered that so it will be a few more days before I can install it. In the meantime I’ll need to hand water.

Here is what I planted: 4 Tomato plants, 5 Pepper plants, 2 Bush Beans, 2 Cucumber plants, 1 Yellow squash, 4 Zinnias for color and bug deterrent and 1 potted rosemary for bug deterrent. I’m going to add to this garden but I have to sprout the seeds. I bought Cantaloupe, Peas, Spinach, Chard, Kale, Carrots, Okra and some Corn. I’ll start those today in a seed nursery box and transplant when they get big enough.

Video Games – I truly enjoy playing video games with my gaming partner Madison. We’ve been playing Diablo IV. It’s a lot of fun. We mostly play in the morning so I can still get some productive stuff done. It’s a small carve out on the weekends or any day she takes off.

That’s about it. Those 12 days have come and gone and now it’s time for me to resume my Python training. I ended up buying a full license for Visual Studio so I can go ahead and learn that tool since it’s very common in the professional space. Looking forward to learning some Python today.