What the Hail

I was smart enough to take a few Advil before going to bed. I slept soundly but woke not fully slept around 730a. I couldn't sleep any longer. I was a little more than groggy so after brushing my teeth and heading downstairs I laid back down on the sofa hoping to snag a few extra winks. It wasn’t long before Eiknarf began scratching at the deck door wanting to head out. At 750a I gave up hope of any more sleep and headed out with the dog.

The walk was beneficial for the both of us. Eiknarf got to relieve herself, and I got the fresh air I needed. Did me wonders. I felt pretty good by the time we were back at home. I started some coffee then played around on the internet until just before 9a when I headed off on a run.

It was nice, about 62 degrees and sunny. I ran the abbreviated weekend trail – just three miles. Felt good getting the run behind me. After my run I washed all the glasses sitting on the counter from last evening's get together. The dishwasher was already full and loaded, though didn’t want to start it until Mindy was up. Speaking of Mindy, she finally got up around 10am, but that only lasted close to an hour. She spent a little time on the deck sipping coffee, but eventually begged off to bed again citing an upset stomach.

I headed out to do a little work in the yard. I filled the bird feeders then painted one of our ordinary orange plastic flower pots purple at Mindy’s request. Before getting into anything else, I decided that I was gonna make a Lowe’s run. I alerted Mindy of my intentions and headed out. At Lowe’s, I bought 60’ feet of high quality 5/8" rope to replace the broken tree swing rope. I also bought two spikes to add to our deck pots, some torch fuel, and a package of bolts and wing nuts to fix the strap on my weedeater.

At home, I readied to address the lawn. I fixed the strap on my weedeater before getting started. For the next 90 minutes I whacked edged, and cut. It got pretty warm, too - close to 90 degrees. I took a brief break after finishing the mowing making myself a big glass of ice water. Ahh!

I was gonna power wash next, but had a sudden change of heart. Instead, I decided to wreck out the old decking boards that once surrounded the hot tub in preparation for the new decking. Having ripped up old decking before, I knew what tools I’d need. Anyone that thinks that decking screws will come up easy is wrong. More often than not the heads simply spin off. I backed out as many as I could with the drill, but that was a scant few. I used my 5lb sledge and mini pry bar to get most of them up.

Mindy was up again around 2-230p. Said she felt a whole lot better. As the afternoon waned, I decided that powerwashing wouldn’t be in Saturday’s cards at all. One of the last tasks I took care of was redoing the tree swing with Kenny’s help. He offered to fetch his 40’ extension ladder to remove the old rope. I declined figuring it not a big deal to leave it there. We used the baseball on kite string to get the new rope up over the same branch roughly 25-30’ up. Worked well. Mindy & Chrissy came out while we did the deed. Made arrangements to hang out and do dinner. Decided it would be salad and pizza, our treat.

I headed in to get a much needed shower. Mindy left to get both the salad and pizza. She was picking up salads from the Big Fat and pizzas from Minelli’s.  I was fully showered by the time Mindy got back home, which was about 30-40 minutes later.

The neighbors said they were on their way, but by the time they arrived I was just about done eating. I washed down my pizza with the Centennial I brought home from Barley’s on Friday night. There were rumbles of thunder through most of the early evening. As they became more numerous I tuned the TV to the weather radar. Wow! Big orange/red blob coming our way. Said to packing high winds, rain, and up to quarter inch sized hail. Uh-oh!

The storm hit around 7p. It was packing strong winds and pea sized hail. Poured rain, too. I’m guessing the brunt of the storm lasted no more than 20 minutes, but it rained on and off for the next couple hours. The main storm brought down lots of foliage.  I worried about Mindy’s Honda in the driveway getting hit with all that hail. I walked out to survey any potential damage. As best I could tell, there was none.  I was relieved. Funny thing is, Pat Shultz and I were talking about hail storms earlier that afternoon when he joked that we needed another one to hit, so he could sell replacements roofs again.

Kenny & Chrissy brought Eesha with them. Said Kapil was stopping by later. He didn’t show for about an hour. We kept Eesha entertained. She’s very cute and also very smart.

Mindy got the pizza and salad back out once Kapil showed up. We hung out together until 10p. Kenny left briefly to go after some Sunday Muirfield tickets. Asked one more time if I wanted to go. Nah, not this year.

Mindy and I stayed up until roughly 11pm. I turned on the bedroom TV thinking we might watch SNL. Nope, didn’t make it. I did, however, convince her to let Eiknarf bed with us. She’s a lot like Bella. She likes to fall asleep before we go upstairs to bed.