What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Every year I try to take a week of Vacation Time to work on/around the house. As a tribute to cheesy back-to-school assignments, here's an overview of my summer vacation.

• Several months ago, I received a classic phone message from my wife. It said something like: "The good news is that the firemen just left and everyone is OK ... the bad news is the stairway banister is broken." Apparently my one-year-old son successfully inserted his head between the stairway banister spindles, and could not extract it. The firemen extracted it for him ... after breaking a spindle. So, After removing the old splintered spindle, purchasing a new spindle, painting it, and cutting it to size, my father and I were able to break the rules of geometry and insert the replacement spindle.
  


• I have a storage room that measures about 15' x 15'. After we moved into the house, this room became the wasteland of stuff we'll rarely use. (Holiday decor, children's crafts, old clothes, antiquated technology stuff, etc.) In a preemptive strike against insect and varmint infestation, I emptied the storage room, and replaced all cardboard storage boxes with plastic storage boxes. Then I built shelving along the wall to house most of the boxes. Thus, the box I need should no longer be the box on the bottom of a 5-box stack.
  


• One morning, I decided to take a break and go fishing with my father. At our old farm, there is a 1.5 acre farm pond which houses an array of bluegill, bass and channel catfish. We often take a small tin-can two-man fishing boat onto the pond. Sitting in this little boat, we each caught about 30 fish. I mention this activity because in the midst of catching bluegill and small-medium sized bass, I happened to hook a 7.5 lb channel catfish. After several minutes of having our boat dragged around the pond, the fish finally wore out, and my father was able to wrestle him into the boat. (Someone neglected to bring the net.) It's officially the largest fish I have ever caught.
  


• The big project for the week was to remove all the mulch in our yard's landscaping, and replace it with decorative rock. The builder of the house did a great job in simply planting a few bushes, and then throwing some mulch around the bushes to look good long enough to sell the house. Of course, minutes after purchasing the house, weeds grew through the mulch, the mulch got kicked all over the yard, etc. After three years, I grew tired of the eyesore. I removed all the mulch. Then I dug trenches and installed plastic edging. Next I installed a weed mat. Finally, I moved three tons of decorative rock. It took about 30 hours (in July) to finish, but it looks great (for now).