Just dropping in for a few

I'm sitting at a coffee shop with Wi-Fi right now, enjoying some iced coffee and the wonderful weather up here. The 4th of July was outstanding. The Marine Corps League led the parade with the US Flag, and they were followed by the 25th Army Band. Loved it.

I've been working pretty hard despite trying to relax. Seems that my parents have infected me with a disease called "can't-sit-on-my-ass-itis" or something like that. So far I've helped my dad split about four cords of wood, and I'm redoing some steps that my mom had put in a while ago. The guy to did the steps just didn't know as much as he thought he knew, and so there have been some problems. End result is that I'm having to dig the steps out and redo them properly. That's halfway done so far. Actually, all the digging is done, and that was the hard part. All the rest is hauling the fill and tamping it down. Weed-block, gravel, coarse sand, and then the paving stones and fine sand to set them in place. I figure that I'll be done with it by Thursday around noon.

I've been taking flaming assloads of photos and shaking my head at all the buildings and houses that have sprung up. Seems that while there has been a lot of growth around here, it's been done with such a lack of class that you just wince and wonder what idiot bought THAT pile of crap. I mean, doesn't anyone ever think about that that particular color, or shape, or texture is going to look like in twenty years? The only analogy I have is someone buying a hot-pink polyester leisure suit back in the early 70's and saying "Yeah baby, that's HOT!" Yeah. Now translate that into these people up here buying a house. You can just see people driving by in twenty, hell, TEN years and asking "What the hell were those people thinking?" I blame the influx of Californians.

And the most distressing thing is the fact that there are huge developments going up on the Rathdrum Aquifer, the main water supply for hundreds of thousands of people. When it was farmland, water was able to be filtered by the ground before it made it's way into the aquifer. Now, it's all houses and roads, which means that the water is polluted from the get-go with oil, and pesticides, and fertilizer, and can't get filtered because the surface area just isn't there any more. So I wonder how long it's going to be before people downstream start having massive problems with their water supply.

Anyways, I'm not going to spend too much time online. I have a wife that's happy to see me (if ya know what I mean!) and a beautiful lake to swim in. I'll check in later.