Catching up....

So, I haven't blogged for a few days, life hasn't been that interesting, until yesterday...

Chapter 1: For the love of cheap pavers!!!

So, I saw this ad in the paper for this place in Salisbury that was moving locations. They want to sell their bricks so they don't have to move them. The sale started at 8 on Saturday. Laura wants a patio that goes here:

notice the half taken down deck that requires way too much maintenance to keep it looking wooden? yeah. Don't want that anymore. So, we call our good friend JC because we know he has a huge trailer and we know that we'll get a better deal on pavers if we take them with us rather than asking to have them delivered. He drops off the trailer Friday night and we're ready to go! We decided to hook my Yukon up to the trailer because it's wired for trailer brakes already and we're thinking that by the time we get our pavers, this rig is going to be kinda heavy. JC points out that one of his tires on the trailer is leaky so check it before we leave. Okey Dokey! Checked for lights before we pulled out, there weren't any, but if you've pulled a trailer, you know that happens because the lights get their ground from the hitch ball sliding around on the trailer tongue.

So, we get to the place shortly after 8 and after about 6 calls from my place of employment, we get to some lookin. Find just what we want! And the guy says that there's plenty more at his new place that he'll sell us for the same price, sweet! They are normally close to $4 a square foot but he's sellin them to us at like $1.80 a square foot. That's WAY cheaper than anywhere else. So we get 3 pallets which is just over 300 square foot for like $650. Total total deal! (note to Karen: total Cowboy sighting down there, lookin good! apparently his wife wants a patio too!)

So, since we're taking them with us, we pull around to their new location to load up. Pavers are fucking heavy by the way! This is a car trailer that we borrowed. The guy drops the first pallet on the trailer and I decide to step out of the truck, because it jerked me around worse than a car accident. The second pallet was even worse. Then we can't decide if it's better to put the third pallet at the very front of the trailer, or the back. We try the front, my truck drops about a foot. We try the back, at that point we figure out which tire JC is talking about when the weight of the pavers drops the rim of the tire onto the asphalt parking lot. Oh, and this raises the ass of my truck about a foot in the air. We go for the front option because dragging ass is better than a flat tire. We immediately head out in search of air. I bust out the calculator and figure out that each pallet weighs about 2400 lbs and so that means we have 7200 pounds of brick on probably a 1500 pound trailer. Yeah, my owners manual says my truck is rated for 6000 pounds. That means we need to avoid weigh stations on the way home. Jump out on 50 and thank you Valero for being right there when we needed you! It's scary the way the trailer was squirrelling around with a goofy tire (tandem axle so at least one was good on that side). After that we were fairly home free. We knew where the weigh stations were to avoid them and even though it took like a mile for my truck to get up to 50 mph, she made it the rest of the way without incident. This picture was taken after we jacked the front of the trailer up so as not to ruin my shocks.

Chapter 2: Rush Concert

For John's birthday in May, I got him tickets to see his favorite band everrrr. The concert was last night at Nissan Pavilion. This was my first concert at Nissan and I loved it! If it wasn't a 2 1/2 hour drive from here, we'd be going every weekend. You can get lawn seats for like $10 a ticket to see awesome shows. We had actual seats because I wasn't familiar with the lawn, if I were to go back, I'd have no problem with the lawn though. Took the pos honda up there (complete with new CV joints thanks to Moe) and everything went completely as planned. The show was awesome, we left after 3 hours because we wanted to beat traffic home, but for old guys, they totally rocked it out! The tour was called the 'Snakes & Arrows' tour, but it could've been called the 'white and nerdy' tour. The group that sat down beside us all had mowhawks, cutoff jeans and acid washed sleeveless jackets (and no deodorant!) and they totally fit in with the rest of the crowd. I was surprised at how many college age kids there were there, most people my age have never heard of Rush, I think their heyday was in the late 70's.

Here's us: yes, we're extra sweaty because, well... it was 90 degrees out yesterday and it was a pavillion... I didn't even bother with the makeup. Oh, and did I mention that Nissan Pavillion has like 8 bazillion stairs???

Random picture from the show. If you LOVE Rush, I can send you more.

Chapter 3: Sunday morning randoms.

So this morning, John wasn't sure whether to do windows or chairs. It was freakin hot outside, so he opted for chairs because at least then he can work in the shade. So we put together another chair first thing and John built a foot rest for this one. I sat in it to try it out and said: go get my book.

Chair 2.0

Starsky, lovin the chairs!

A chair in progress and a photo op for my 4th of July pedi. Cute, no?

Chapter 4: Sunday afternoon/evening.

So our buddy JC told us not to bother unloading the pavers, he has another trailer to bring his bobcat over and he has forks for the bobcat so he can just drop them off for us. Sweet! That saves us from unloading them by hand! So just when John was finishing up his most recent chair, I threw some burgers on the grill and started boiling some corn. Just as we were finishing up our burgers, here comes JC and his dad with the bobcat. Well, remember that calculation way back at the beginning of this post, about how much each pallet weighs? Yeah, bobcats only pick up like 1200 pounds. Even with people hanging on the back of them trying to weigh them down. I swear the back wheels of that bobcat were like 2 feet off the ground. So we started unloading. Got a few rows of bricks off and the bobcat, she did struggle, but the pallets were safely on the ground. So, John said he'd follow JC back to his house with his trailer that we'd borrowed, oh, and did I mention he never ate his corn? Yeah, in the meantime, he let the dogs out. Who'da thought?

Oh, and my new siding was delivered last week, here's what it's gonna look like. I'm lovin the gray so much more than the white! The beaded is a nice detail.