As Mr Miyagi said... "Paint the Fence"

Last weekend we embarked on what has to be one of the most awful jobs you could plan during the Texas summer heat... restaining the fence around our back yard. As you can see from the pictures, below, however, the fence sorely needed it.




Jenn has been asking me to help her with this job for about three years and now that school is over I was unable to summon up any equally worthwhile excuses... "It's going to be a huge pain in the butt" turned out not to be nearly convincing enough.

Jenn actually did the lion's share of the power washing work during her summer break, and then last weekend we embarked together on a two-day quest to apply the new stain and get the job done.

The next picture below is the final version of the fence shown above. Below that is another set of "before and afters." It was a miserable weekend, but I have to admit, the final product looks pretty good.

I don't know why we didn't do this two years ago... :-)

Glasses, I bid thee adieu!

In an effort to forego staining the fence for as long as possible, two weeks ago, I finally went in for LASIK surgery. I've worn glasses since grade school and have been considering the surgery for years, but couldn't ever bring myself to actually do it. (Those of you who know me well know my relatively low tolerance for pain...)

Despite that, I put the money for the surgery into a flex spending account when I started my new job, and once it is there, it is use it or lose it, so there was no turning back. The results are truly nothing short of totally amazing. The day after surgery, I was seeing 20/15, and a week after, I was actually as good as 20/10 vision. Unfortunately, I regressed back to 20/15 in my appointment last Friday, but considering I was somewhere around 20/1600 (i.e. completely blind without my glasses), 20/15 suits me just fine. If you've been considering LASIK and have questions, let me know. It was an amazingly easy experience with almost no pain and incredible, immediate results.