Second-Grade Math Comprehension

Our next-door neighbor is a hoarder.  I don't know how bad it is inside Franz' house, but he spends a lot of time in his white van.  He has a brown van, too, but it's so full of stuff, he cannot sit in it, so he sits in his white van, in the driver's seat, usually reading and smoking a cigarette.  He's a very nice fellow who doesn't have much money.  When The Boy bought this house, he used to run a long, heavy-duty extension cord from the house to Franz' house.  We don't give away the electricity anymore, but they do have an arrangement where Franz borrows our lawnmower and mows both our lawns.  I don't know how much of a fair trade that is, but they seem cool with it.

Franz mowed the yard yesterday.  He took out some wildflowers that I had planted at one corner of the house--however, I do admit they looked more like weeds than something that should be saved.  Late this morning, I took ET out front, and we spent hours outside.  I attempted to rough sketch my mosaic.  It ended up too large, and I tried to make my feeble brain do some math involving fractions and percentages.  Oh my god, when did I end up so stupid?  Horribly stupid.  Do not ask me to take a 5.5" x 3.75" picture and enlarge it to 24" x 18".  After some schooling from Wikus, I now have a vague handle on it, but I cannot promise I can do it again. After grumbling on FB for awhile on what a dumbfuck I am, my hero DJ MC swung by with the longest ruler in the world and a T-square.  Those are going to be invaluable to me during the project.  As far as the drawing, in the end, Wikus drew the whole thing for me.  He did an excellent job.

The weather was absolutely phenomenal.  He drew in the sun, and I lazed on a beach towel taking pictures of my surroundings and myself (so damn vain) with my Hipstamatic.  ET insisted on going over to Phil's side of the yard, or directly in to the road.  I felt like one of those flustered mom's you see running after children in a park.  I looked away for two seconds, and poof, he was out in the middle of the road, poking out his little head and staring up at the sky.  I don't even know how many times I picked him up and put him by the house, just for him to turnaround and head right back to the road.  That little bastard.

It was such a lovely five hours.  Then I took a nap.  I really couldn't ask for a better Saturday.

Yesterday afternoon was equally as delightful.  After work I read outside by the creek.  It's amazing how peaceful it can be right in the middle of downtown Austin, 1.5 blocks from the interstate.  I used to spend every work day out there during lunch, and gave it up for an hour of more sleep.  I may have to reassess my need for that much sleep.  As long as the weather is clement, I should really spend more time outside reading (or what have you). 

I did try to convince CSP to play hooky from work, and have a picnic with me.  He could get the fried chicken and I could get the doughnuts.  While he felt it was "very tempting," he did not acquiesce; even when I explained I was the boss of him.  It's offensive when people pick work over a picnic!

The Boy is in some kind of nightmare work situation (too many jobs and projects), and we haven't been able to really hang out in quite some time.  I did manage to persuade him to get an iPhone 4 earlier in the week, and he just managed to get it turned on yesterday.  Since I am such an awesome person, I downloaded many applications for him, and manually typed in over 100 contacts from his very old phone (it didn't have a SIM card to transfer the information electronically).  I also made sure to put racy photos of myself on his phone.  It's important that every time I call him, people can see what a hotty he dates.  Of course I put some kitten photos on there, too.  To show how he is also a family man.

Tomorrow I start cutting glass.  I have one month (just like last year) to finish the mosaic.  This is how it starts.