Looking Brighter on Darwin Day

Things are looking brighter in a lot of ways, which is always good.

But first, let me wish everyone a Happy Darwin Day! It's the 200th birthday of a pretty interesting naturalist and geneticist! I guess he was right there among the first geneticists. His work sure has made a lot of the mysteries of the universe more clear. But, he's not like a fairy, where you have to clap and prove you believe in him. The dude found out a lot about how life works. It's not something you have faith in. It's facts. I sure wish they had used a word less easy to misunderstand than "theory" when describing evolution.

As a digression, it really, really worries me that so many people find something there's NO proof of (some deity) to decide not to believe in facts. Saying, "La la la la la" in your head doesn't stop reality. Oh well. I have to remember we had a President for eight years who sincerely believed his God was going to come down and fetch him and his buddies pretty durned soon, so it was fine to use up the world's resources, kill off endangered species and ignore signs of planetary changes. His God didn't care about Earth, so why should he? Great, now he's just my neighbor.

Wait, wait. I didn't need to write any of this. Please go here and read what Roger Ebert, our Wednesday Wonder of the week has to say about Darwin! He's so good!

Off tangent now. I realize Lee already posted this picture on his blog, but I wanted to show you the patio furniture we put in front of the house. Doesn't it look inviting? And coordinated? Of course, it started to rain like the second the last piece was finished, so we haven't had a chance to enjoy it much yet, but we will! It's actually all wet in the photo. I'll try to get photos in nicer light at some point. We hope there will be fewer mosquitoes in the front, because even after getting rid of the pond, it is pretty bad in the back. Plus there's no grass. I'd hoped we would have funds to get the one big tree that's over the house and probably inviting critters into our attic cut down this year. Who knows. But the furniture's a bright spot.

Another nice bright spot is that Tuba Boy has been hanging around in the media room with us some the last couple of evenings. He's watched some TV with us, and we've been playing Scrabble on Facebook. He's good, too! That's just so nice and familial. Most nights lately we have at least one boy in the room chatting with us for a while. I like that. It's so easy for them to go in their rooms and type/play guitar all evening.

We are getting a few more positive leads on jobs, too. In this economy, that is all to the good!

By the way, it's birthday season for people other than Darwin, too, so happy birthday to all my wonderful February and early March friends. There, does that cover it? It seems like nearly everyone I know was born in mid-February through mid-March. I know it isn't true, but there sure are a lot of them!

Lawn Furniture Fun

So, what are we doing this weekend other than refrigerating? I may have mentioned last week that Lee got some older wooden lawn furniture at an estate sale last week (we found out that the sale was of things belonging to a family who all died in a plane crash--how sad--I hope we can do them an honor by fixing it up and giving it new life).

So, here's a picture of what the patio looked like yesterday, with grumpy morning Lee and a tangle of dogs in it. There's wooden furniture and black wrought-iron furniture we've had since the house in Illinois. Lee got the idea of repainting the wooden stuff AND the wrought-iron stuff and making a festive patio. We got paint in many happy bright colors, and are going to have all sorts of different colorations going. We're also going to paint the wall hangings that are metal, and perhaps some of the plant pots (what the heck).

Yesterday I painted four of the metal items. Three chairs and a small table. Green, red and yellow. Well, doing it in the garage was a pain. Paint everywhere. And no way to keep colors off each other. Plus, the cute little trigger thing we got stopped working, so I ended up having my finger all numbed from pressing the nozzle. Argh. And I still have a blue chair and an orange table and glider to paint! Worse, today is just supposed to be partly cloudy, but it is drizzling!

The wooden chairs and loungers need to be sanded, primed, then painted, so they will take longer. I got us a sander, and one chair is done. Looks good. We also have to repair the chairs a bit--tightening their bolts and such--they are old. They will be pink, purple, yellow, blue and something else. Red...the idea is we will have two of every color once we are done.

I must say that, though it was a lot of work and mess, the ones I painted yesterday look spectacular and the patio already looks more cheery. I think it will be a fun look. Why be boring in the back yard, right?