Unlike Arthur Dent, I won’t be seeing yellow (first) on a Thursday, but on a Monday. The buses start rolling tomorrow: screwing up the traffic, and taking kids to the place where they can practice disrespecting teachers, learning, and each other every day for the next 9 or so months. Actually, for PG County kids, it’s the 7th, 8th, and 9th graders getting accelerated remedial disrespecting tomorrow, then ALL the kids are on the bus come Tuesday.

The weekend was full of chores. Saturday was house cleaning. Today was yard work. I should have roasted coffee today, but fell asleep on the sofa instead.

We watched the Doctor Who season premier this evening on DVR. That was fun. I expect to enjoy this iteration of the Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, very much. It’ll take him a while to settle into the role, and for the fans to settle in to having a new Doctor. But I’m hoping for great things.

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Our condolences to the family and friends of Sgt. 1st Class Matthew I. Leggett, 39, of Ruskin, Florida, who died on Aug. 20, in Kabul, Afghanistan, of injuries received when he was engaged by the enemy.

I’m tired. There’s been a fair bit of unscheduled work over the last few days, leading to sleepus interruptus. But I got done what must be done, and a fair bit else besides. The big project of the weekend was a bit of reconstruction on the front step, which has been sinking away pretty much since the house was built. For some reason, they didn’t rebar the step into the concrete porch.

What I need to do is break that old step out, drill some holes into the porch and epoxy in some rebar, then pour a new step. But I’ve not had the time to take on that project. Sadly, we’ve spent a lot of time this summer telling people to mind the first step, since it sank another inch in the last year or so. What we had was a 7″ rise, then an 11″ rise. That’s a lot.

So yesterday I put in some pavers over the step, so we now have two 9″ rises. Even height risers are much safer.

Better step height

The other fun thing I learned about the original step installation is revealed by the shadow line you see under the pavers. Yeah? Me, too. The underlying, original step is 12″ deep on the left side, and 13″ deep on the right. Sigh.

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Our condolences to the family and friends of Sgt. 1st Class Samuel C. Hairston, 35, of Houston, Texas, who died Aug. 12, in Ghazni, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when his unit was engaged by enemy small-arms fire.

We’re ten days into August, the last (usually) properly hot and humid month of the year … and we’ve only made it up out of the 80’s into the low 90’s ONE day this month. Mind you, I’m not complaining. Our electric bills are lower, the house is more comfortable, etc. But this definitely bodes, eh? If the ice comes in September, I’m going to be upset.

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In other news, like most non-lazy people, my time is defined by the work I do. Yesterday: patching an ESXi host, and mowing the lawns. The latter was a big catch-up, because it’d been at least three weeks since last I mowed (well before the Red Hat course). The one mitigating factor is that even though it hasn’t been super hot, there also has not been a lot of rain. So the lawn stayed mostly dormant. Today, Marcia joined me for the shopping, then I did a bit of around-the-house maintenance before heading into the office to do some patching of Solaris systems. I could do that work remotely, but it’s a lot easier to do on my multi-screen setup at work. All of the patching stuff (both days) went well, and systems are stable, which is good.

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Marcia and I recently started watching a new (to us) show on HGTV called Fixer Upper. The hosts, Joanna & Chip Gaines, have a great chemistry and fun working together on their projects. It makes the show a joy to watch. Recommended!

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Our condolences to the family, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

• Staff Sgt. Girard D. Gass Jr., of Lumber Bridge, North Carolina, died Aug. 3, in Jalalabad Air Field Hospital, Afghanistan, from a non-combat related incident while on patrol that occurred in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.
• Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, 55, of Schenectady, New York, died Aug. 5, in Kabul, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his unit was attacked by small arms fire.