I'm no pro by any means but I do a lot of home repairs and improvements, and it looks real sharp and sturdy to me right now.  Very nice deck and you're lucky to be working with flat land, haha.  My girl wants a deck in her back yard and I'm not really sure how I'm gonna do it honestly. 

The only flat portion of her back yard is taken up by the pool, so the rest is hillside that encircles and goes above the pool.  I'd have to build like 2 or 3 different decks actually, to do what she wants.  there'd be one that encircles the pool itself and is flush with the rim of the pool.  The next level would be above the pool deck, and then a third level up to a retaining wall from a now unused access road to the hilltop... 

Basically she wants it to cover the hillside so we don't have to maintain said hillside, and honestly I have no clue how to do it.  Never built a deck and only ever installed one that was pre-built and given to us for around the pool. 

Yours, looking outstanding and I wish we had something nice back there but I'm really reluctant to even start what she wants. 

Jesse, when  you get to building a retaining wall, be sure your supports are heavily reinforced into the ground.  I built a retaining wall for the side of my house on a very slight hill (and I do mean slight), and I used wooden stakes and hammered them into the ground, then lined up the cedar boards of the retaining wall on them.  Then I screwed in the stake to the board.  I then drilled a hole through the board at two points and then hammered rebar through those holes into the ground.  This made the base of the wall very, very solid.  Build the retaining wall in a triangular shape, with the base being the widest point.  A triangle is nature's strongest natural shape.    Carpentry lesson there for you.

I hope that makes sense. If you need more help or would like some pics of that particular project, let me know.

As many of you know, my wife Amber and I were supposed to have a little one this month, but for some reason unknown to us she miscarried at 14 weeks back in November.

So, when Amber told me she was pregnant again, we were very excited, but yet extremely cautious for obvious reasons.  Well, yesterday we went in to get a sonogram and she's at 9 weeks and our little one is doing fine!!  The due date is in December, so this year looks like dad won't be getting his usual birthday hookup with "stuff", but instead with a little one.

We are most excited, yet again, cautious and praying that we don't have to go through another miscarriage.

Pretty good episode last night as a few have said.  Keonobi nailed it down on what happened.  I'm just sad that the season was so preempted because of the strike.  I think there were supposed to be something like 22 episodes this season and I'm guessing we got just over half of that.

Tracy, sorry about all the weather warnings, that happened to us a few weeks ago. 

Brians Toys used to have weapons lots.

I can't remember the last modern figure I bought.  So the price increase isn't affecting me at all.

But, I will probably dish out money for my first modern purchase in years when I pick up the MF this summer.  I've got to have one of those.

http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrowse.asp?folder_id=885450

The time has come to sell off my beloved customs.  At the moment I'm selling the TIE/X Ugly that you can see in the link above.  It's made from a vintage TIE Interceptor and vintage X wing.  I've bolted the wings to the top of the fuselage and the TIE solar panels have been bolted to the wings.  You can also see from the pics that I've glued numerous pieces to the ship as well.  I got those pieces from a number of sources, GI Joe, knock off GI Joe (can't remember the name), some vintage Star Wars parts, and modern Star Wars parts.

For this ship, I'm asking for $100 OBO. 


See this link over at RS to view pics of the snowspeeder.

I'm also selling my custom snowspeeder.  This is assembled mainly from a vintage snowspeeder with some various pieces added to it that I had sitting around.  I'm asking $50 for this ship.

All prices include paypal fees.  Shipping for each ship will be $15 for each one.  I will include delivery confirmation and insurance.  I will pack as carefully as possible.  However, I can't guarantee all the pieces will remain glued to each ship through transit. Luckily, I used either model glue or super glue in most cases and it should be easy to reglue any parts that do manage to fall off.

I've got a handful of things that I've kept on the DVR for a very long time.  One of them was a VH1 thing called "When Star Wars Ruled the World." I've also kept the clip from Office Space where they beat up the copier (that's just too funny to me) and that's all I've kept.  I usually watch shows that I've taken off the History channel or Military channel that run during the day, watch them and then delete them.  Of course, sometimes they will sit for a month or two before I get time to watch them.

We don't have kids yet, so no kids stuff is recorded.

I love me some Office.  We have a school district banquet we are going to tonight, so I've got to DVR and watch when we get home.