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Paul is finally getting the hang of using a spoon. |
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...kind of. |
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This day I beat Maria and Paul over to Gardner
Field's playground. I took this series just sort of to get a good look at
the playground equipment without the kids in the shots.
This is such a great place for toddlers. |
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Paul's undisputed favorite is this swing. |
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Kids from just walking through 10 years old or so can all find something age-appropriate to play on. |
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Even the drinking fountain has different levels. |
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So, here come the revelers! |
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Paul can really move now. It's pretty scary being in a semi-urban area, knowing how quickly he could be in the street. Luckily, this park is well fenced and has but a single entrance. |
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The swing seats have rubber bumpers on the base with relief cuts to soften any potential impact with unlucky passersby. |
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Paul will sometimes ride the swing for most of the time we are at the playground. |
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Hydration is important for any athlete. |
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After the Memorial Day picnic, I decided the old slab outside the back door was just too dangerous. The big flat stones were loose and wobbly. As I started to remove them I discovered a hollow cavity beneath the thin concrete veneer below the stones. |
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Jim Irven tells me it was common practice to sink a foundation wall around an intended slab, lay on a piece of plywood and pour right over it. As you can see, over the years the wood disintegrated and roots from surrounding plants infiltrated the remaining material. It's a miracle someone didn't fall through! |
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I planned on doing the same thing, but with the plywood only coming about an inch or so onto the block walls. This would insure a solid locking bond with the blocks. I broke up a lot of the old concrete to fill the blocks. The more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of plywood underneath. |
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So, I broke up all the stones I had removed and put them back in the hole as tightly as possible. |
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I then added about 300 lbs of crushed stone to fill the remainder of the hole to grade level. I also filled this with water several times to give a nice, moist setting for the concrete. The longer concrete takes to dry, the harder it sets. |
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I built the forms out of scrap plywood and mixed 6 bags of QuikCrete (sp?) and poured it into the form. I did the initial troweling also. |
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About a half hour later (after most of the water had resorbed) I retroweled and used a brush to put a non-skid texture on the surface. |
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The last step was to cut in the edging. |
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I did all the with just a simple margin trowel, but really I should have used a Magnesium float, a wood float and an edging tool. Oh well, it still worked out fine. The forms came off the next day. |
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Lastly, here's a cool thing I discovered recently. These are port extenders for generic PCs. They come with a front panel (seen below), a slot plate with a single large connecter and a medusa-like cable that comes out to tie into all the standard ports on the rear of the PC. |
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The result is front panel access to a Firewire port, two USB ports, Midi/game port, headphpone, line in and Mic. It even has a volume control! These are common on eBay now. There's a company called FrontX (www.frontx.com) that makes really nice ones that are customizable by mixing and matching your own choice of elements. The clone ones are cheap but effective. |
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On to Late July! |
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