Posted by Matthew
Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:53:00 GMT
Our land line phone hasn’t worked since Tropical depression Ernesto hit over Labor day weekend. The line was dead when we returned from vacation. It came back for a day or two then went dead again. K. called Verizon and they sent a guy yesterday. But, miraculously it started working before the repairman arrived. Then when we awoke this morning, the line was dead again. Fun!
So I decided to get with the program and buy a VoIP enabling device called PhoneGnome. It uses your broadband connection to make a VoIP call. You can choose one of their plans or a plan from a provider that supports SIP (there are many). If your broadband is down or you are calling 911, it uses your regular phone line. Hopefully it will not care much about us not having a working phone line most days. We’ll see.
Posted in Neighborhood, Modern amenities | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Matthew
Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:38:00 GMT
Our neighbors decided it was time to upgrade their fence so we decided to hop on board that train. Now we have a fence! I spent some time this past weekend moving the concrete blocks I dug up over into the corner by the back gate. This is where the trash can and recycling go. The blocks are almost level! There is going to be a little corral back there with another gate on the south side. I dug the hole a bit deep so now there is soil along the north wall which is the start of a flower bed.
The fence really makes the backyard a more useful space. We want to put down some stone so we can put out our meager lawn furniture. We also plan on disguising the heat pump with some shrubs. The current thinking is for a Japanese maple in the front yard as the backyard won’t really accommodate even a small tree.
My folks bought us a mower:
The mower comes from the fine people at Clean air gardening. It works fairly well but, our yard is very uneven and full of concrete bits from the crumbling path that needs to be dug up. Perhaps that is this weekend’s task. But, the folks are visiting next week so I’ll probably be indoors tracking down cat hair-dust bunnies that blow around our hardwood floors like tumbleweeds.
Posted in Remodeling: Landscape | 1 comment | no trackbacks
