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For those that don't already know there is a huge BBQ contest this weekended and yours truly will be one of many judges. If you get the opportunity try to come out. Its at the old air force base and it will also have a car show, live music and a movie on the lawn. Ohh yea did I mention a comptive eating contest: BBQ Sandwiches?
Good times all around.
Photos from The Champaign Jam 2007
Song: "Crazy Rock" by Bonneville
If weeds ever get out of control and take over your front yard here is a something you can do about it. It takes a little hard work and a small budget but you can make your house look worthwhile again.
First assess the situation.
Remove all underbrush, weeds and any plants that you don't want to carry to your new look. This takes time and hard work. If you are going to take time to do this do it right the first time so you don't have to do it again.
Pile it all up and get it out of here!
Rake and level out the new area. This is important so you can figure how much "filler" you need. It also gives you an idea of what the finished product will look like.
Go take a break. You deserve it! Go get a newspaper and take off all the old weeds to the dump. While you are out you can go get your filler material as well as any other plants you may want to plant. Your filler material can be pine straw, wood chips or rock. If you figure out how much you need go ahead and add about 25% more. You always seem to under estimate what you will need and nothings sucks more than not being able to finish a job cause you don't have what you need. You will also need a weed guard (black paper cloth) to put down to help stop weeds from growing back.
After your break and when you are done with the newspaper its time to get back to work.
First you will need that newspaper you bought as well as a water hose. Some people skip this step but I don't recommend it. I really hate doing yard work so I try and do it super right the first time. You will lay the newspaper on the area as a blanket to prevent weed growth. I know you just bought a cloth for this as well. Its for double protection. Once you lay down the paper saturate it with water.
Isn't it pretty? From here lay down the cloth on top of the paper and work your filler material on top of that. Divide it into sections so to work faster and you can see your progress.
Continue working this way over the rest of your area. If you are adding new plants do this sections at a time. Make sure you give proper spacing and coverage for each type of plants. I choose evergreen plants because they are easily to manage and take little care.
Once completed hose down your area and marvel at your new masterpiece.
Congratulation. This little amount of work will save you from having to do tons of work in the future. It is also said that it pays for itself 5 tines over on the resell of your house. So have fun and get to work.
FYI
The Basics
7 Man Hours
28 Bags of Crushed Brick
2 Evergreens
1 Newspaper
$165.00
The Tools
Hard Tooth Rake
Fan Rake
Spade
Shovel
Hoe
Pitchfork
Water Hose
Will the 2008 presidential debates do to YouTube what the first Gulf War did for CNN?
Just a thought...
Where are your red, white and blue banners America? Where are your "Made In America" stickers? Where is your pride, your self reliance, your self preservation? Now is your time to take the global market place back.
Buy American! Why? Otherwise you might get lead poising, metal shavings, food poisoning or some other crazy disease, illness or faulty product. With all of the global marketplace in upheaval due to recent recalls on all sorts of products, America should be responding in full force. I want to see tv commercials, billboards, radio commercials, print ads, stickers, grass roots campaigns, online campaigns - everything America can muster to exploit the hell out of the situation.
America now is your time to shine, to show why it does matter, to show why American products are better. America this is probably your last real chance to show people why it is important to keep manufacturing jobs, productions lines and assembly plants here in the sates. America if you don't act now and really take advantage of the situation, the world and the Americn people will pass you by.
So America I strongly urge you to use the media attention to your full advantage. Spend some more to make everybody aware of the crap we are importing. Informed people make informed decisions. Where ya at America? Let's see that ad campaign, lets see you bring it back!
I'm waiting (but I don't think it will happen).
Made In America Links
http://www.madeinusa.com/
http://www.amtacdc.org
http://www.buyamerican.com/
Chinese Poison Train
http://consumerist.com/consumer/chinese-poison-train/?view=full
I don't know what really made me think of this but I came up with a way to market a lawyer who specializes in alcohol and drug related charges. However if a lawyer were to choose to do this he/she would have to be really good at their job and be able to put up with a little banter from fellow lawyers and police force.
I live in a young tourist town, a town that many people come to party at. Some of these people go a little too far and end up getting arrested while on vacation. Since they don't live here its hard for them to find out who to hire to help out. If a lawyer were so inclined to get a few bars or their wait staff or even hotels to hand out little business card type instructions of what to do in case you are arrested, that lawyer could get lots of business. The cards that were handed out would be a little humorous in nature, but with very beneficial information about your rights. It could possibly contain a script that you could say if you were arrested (or if you are too drunk something that could be handed to the officer). Of course these cards would have the lawyers info on them with instructions of how to contact him/her while the person is in jail.
The cards could be laminated or printed on plastic and easily fold to where you can place it in your wallet. The whole point is to mark it novel enough for everyone to take it with them when they leave the bar.
To help drive the message across you could put posters in the bathrooms of the bars. These would be more humorous in nature with a place that you can grab the card from. This would just reinforce the first idea a little more.
The lawyer in turn would get lots of calls from out of town folks. Since they are in a bind in the first place the lawyer can charge a little more for his/her service. They just have to be really good at their job.
----
Cops get away with a lot because people don't know the law. Maybe thats what got me think of this in the first place: as a way for the general populous to become better informed about their rights.
Just remember every law passed (supposedly to protect you from terror or whatever) is another freedom lost.
We're back!!!!
We had such a great time in such a short period. Good friends, food, music and adventure all rolled into such a short period. Lets recap.
Friends:
Got to see Ali and Mark for the first time since the wedding! It is always a pleasure to see friends that are doing so well for themselves. We had a good time just hanging out and meeting significant others.
Food:
Great BBQ was to be had at Fat Matt's BBQ. It is on my top 5 list of BBQ joints. Ribs and chicken is what you get and boy is it tasty. I am working on a review for the new Pit Masters site, so you will get all the tasty details when that site goes live.
Music:
Our special event was going to see Michael Buble in concert. He is not a musician but an entertainer. It was a really great show at the Fox Theater. About 2 hours of music and dance and comedy all rolled into one. It was a perfect event for our 2 year anniversary. If you ever have the opportunity to go see him, GO!
Adventure:
We tried to pack as much as possible into our short trip. With the Atlanta City Pass we went everywhere that we could.
Georgia Aquarium - It is one of the largest in the world and there were tons of people there to prove it. To be honest its much like the Ripley's Aquarium just with larger stuff. Three items of note: Beluga whales, Giant Japaneses Crabs and Whale Sharks.
World Of Coke: The updated version of a staple of Atlanta, this is one of our favorite attractions. The opening movie was great along with coke ads through time and over 21 different coke products to try from all over the globe.
CNN Backstage Tour: We got to see how the largest cable news channel is ran inside and out
Zoo Atlanta: Mark another zoo off our list. We got to see the new baby panda as well as new baby gorillas. Really fun.
Fernbank Natural History Museum: Large dinosaurs and the history of man. It was good but far down on the list.
Geocaching: To top it all off while we were out and about Heidi did a little geocaching. It was loads of fun doing it in the city. We got to see a lot of stuff we would have missed otherwise.
Heidi and I leave today to go to Atlanta for our 2 year anniversary. I am pretty excited. We haven't been to Atlanta since my friends, Tony & Jill, got married over three years ago. It should be a good trip with us going to the Georgia Accurainum, Zoo Atlanta and a lot more. To top it off I have something special planned for Heidi and I on the 14th. (Its a surprise).
TTFN
I will be starting up a BBQ consumer report type blog sometime in the near future. The plan is to get it up and running then use some of my BBQ contacts to find a few writers to help contribute to the blog. But before I kick this off I need to go ahead and start working on some content and some base criteria of how to write a review for restaurants, sauces, history etc. So right now I am in the planning stages.
Thanks to everybody for their input with the naming of the blog. I am still not 100% sure yet but I am leaning towards Pit Masters. We shall see. Here is the logo that I am thinking of going with.
My wife and I are Caching In. We had to fork some cash out to chache in, but so far it has been totally worth it. Last weekended marked our very first Geocache hunt.
Geocaching is just like treasure hunting. The catch is you use the internet and a GPS unit to help you find the little treasure placed all around. And little do "muggles" know, but there are geocahces everywhere. (In my zip code alone there are over 150 geocahces! ) It is loads of fun, changeling and educational all at the same time.
Due to my Apple set-up it took a little longer to get the GPS set up and runnin We decided to go with a Garmin 60CSx for our GPS. It is a little on the high end but hopefully we can grow into it. For our Geocache software setup we went with the Mac based program, MacCaching. Its is free program and so far it looks like it is going to do the trick. From there it was a matter of getting each of the software and hardware to talk to each other, and about four hours latter (and the use of a PC) we were off for our first hunt.
Searching high and low we found 4 out of 6 geocaches we were looking for. Heidi is really good at figuring out the clues while navigating using the GPS, while I go blindly into the woods looking for the treasure. All in all it is really fun and I look forward to going out again soon.
Click on the above links to find out more about Geocaching or if you want to go out with us sometime just him me up. It is a little overwhelming to get started, but once you have you will find out that it is worth it.
Here are a few pictures out our hunts.
Jut wanted to say congrats to Talwin & Karla! They welcomed their new baby girl, Kari Simone Davis, on Aug. 2nd, 2007.
Everybody has an opinion. Some choose to voice it while other do not. People who choose to voice their opinion do so in many different ways.
One individual that I hold some respect for in voicing his opinion is Henry Rollins. I have to admit that I pretty much agree with everything he has to say. He is well versed and it all comes form real world experience. I admire Henry Rolling being able to talk about real life experiences and translating them into action. He has used his qusi-social status to gain himself a podium to speak his mind from. While it seems as if a lot of his former music background counterparts have gone off in other directions, Henry Rolling is still out there on the front lines trying to make a difference or a least trying to get other people off the asses and take a stand. I admit we are all lazy, the country is going backwards and all we care about is what the next color iPhone is going to be. So I just wanted to say s "Thanks Henry Rollins for giving a damn. I wish we could all be a little more like you."
BTW
Henry Rollins is on a spoken word tour. If he is playing around your town go check him out even if you don't agree with him. Its worth a listen.