Home redemption

We just signed the sale contract yesterday to buy the home we've been renting for the last year. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!! More important than no longer throwing money down the drain as rent, I'm no longer throwing money down the drain as improvements. I like to fix things, and tinker. That's no great secret. My wife, my credit card, and Home Depot know that all too well. I've invested quite a bit into this house over the last year in improvements that I never claimed to the owners. Mainly, because they weren't required. They were gracious enough to allow me to tinker as much as I liked on this old house as long as it was an improvement. I added and replaced several lights, added GFCI protected receptacles in the garage, front and back yards, and in the eves for Christmas lighting. I networked the home with RG6 and CAT5e for TV and internet, and set up a network center in the utility room. My wife and I have both done quite a bit of yard work, too.

Suddenly all of that time and money is no longer wasted, and that felt good. We celebrated by ripping up a bunch of the old concrete burms that made up the property lines 50 years ago and hauling them away. Imagine concrete about the size and shape of those parking lot tire stops. These things were poured-in-place and ran the entire length from the street to the back fence - about 120 feet. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but my poor little truck scraped the mud flaps as I drove off to the dump with about 1500 pounds of old concrete in the bed. I had to air up all four tires before I left, and then let air back out before I left the dump. Although the rear springs strained, my happy V6 thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and pulled it all with no complaints.

One more happy Danger Ranger memory, and one more reason to be sad if we have another kid. Unfortunately, you can't (properly) fit 2 car seats into a Ranger, and while everyone else sees fit to make midsize crew cab 4 door pickups, Ford makes that bastard bobbed-tail Explorer called the Sport Trac. Other countries like Australia, South Africa, and South America get one, though. I don't want a modified sport utility, I want a truck!

But I regress. Now that all of our work will pay off in some fashon or another, there is suddenly a metric buttload more work to be done.....