Welcome to a new week, last one of the month! Your year is nearly 1/12th over. I propose we get serious about these last few days of January and actually get something done. Somehow, this month hasn't amounted to much as far as Accomplishing Anything At All. I've spent a lot of time in front of the computer, but you wouldn't know it by the frequency and quality of the blogs. In a year we'll have a new president, and the country can't seem to get it together to decide on the candidates. And my race training has suffered, as well.

These are indecisive times, I guess. Take the weather. I awoke this morning with rain slamming the bedroom window, trees blowing over sideways in some odd January wind. I thought the storm had finished up yesterday morning when the clouds drifted off and the sun came out. The Little Ditchman and I had gone outside, seeds in hand, to plant the garden in the moist, turned loam I'd prepared last month. Then she went in for a nap, I put a pot a coffee on, and the winds were off the ropes! They came out swinging! Water blasted the side of the house like we lived in hurricane country and I raised an eyebrow and went back to my computer. An hour later the rains ceased, and there was much rejoicing. And then they came out swinging again this morning. It's Southern California, after all.

So if I've been a bit distant lately, it's because I've been moonlighting on another blog. Yes, I know, how could you? Well, it's all in the name of bringing home a satiating pork-product I enjoy using symbolically as income. You see, the customers love seeing pictures of their patio covers on the slideshows, in the portfolios, and on the Internet. They drop by the Home Show all day long and look for their renovated yard in the display albums, pointing proudly, stopping passersby and showing them and selling us. Fine with me, I say, good for business! I haven't registered the domain name yet, but I was thinking Alumablog.com, or YourDailyAluminum.com, or something clever and alluring like that. Your suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

For now, it's just http://www.hawkinspatiocovers.com/Recently_Completed/Recently_Completed.html which may be a little hard to remember, let alone pronounce.

We had something of a marketing push these past few weeks in Ditchman Family Construction. Remember that nice patio cover I built for you and how you loved our attentive and reliable work? Leave us a review on Kudzu.com! Profits are on the annual winter downswing, so as Mrs. Ditchman goes into overdrive I get to hang with the kid -which is my dumbfounded pleasure. I can't seem to find anything in the kitchen or understand half the stuff the Little Ditchman says, but hey Snacks and TV seem to do the trick. Come naptime, I work, and it has left me gasping for a breath in the tumultuous seas of HTML code and File Transfer Protocol -but I'd been meaning to learn all that anyway. Let me know what you think about the new site. I'm still working out the bugs, and have discovered that it works differently on all the browsers. "Browsers". The word alone implies such easygoing and hapless non-work, and yet it is quite the contrary. Strangely, though I built most of the new site on the Mac and using the Mac web design software, it doesn't seem to display properly on the Mac "Safari" browser. Whatever. Cyber-woes do not make for compelling blogging, so I will leave it at that.

But the garden is planted, and the rains came to dampen the seeds forthwith. Excellent! Even put a couple of fish in the pond. I expect a hearty season of growth this year, as I spent a lot of time tilling the soil in an attempt to re-invigorate the lifeless clay boneyard that I was lucklessly trying to fertilize last year. Many of the plants grew through last summer with the thick-skinned, dry fruit you'd expect on the lawn of Hades, and I presume this year to be able to change all that. This weather could be a good sign, when you consider the fact that we've had more rain in the past couple weeks that we had all last year.


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