Monday - semi early

I had no plans to get up early today and I didn't, beyond waking up to the sound of the pickup taking the kids up to the bus stop.  

Yes, I still plan on going over to the property and seeing if I can knock out the bush hogging. It's hot out, I don't really feel like doing anything, goals are never met sitting in bedrooms watching tv.  

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    Went over, filled the radiator up, fired it up, went over to start bush hogging anddddd.........nothing.  Something is still wrong with the attachment. The blades move around but they are secured in place. So when they hit something, it just gives instead of whacking it down. I think I did this last year after hitting something, the boy thinks the blades are just dull.

They may be, but even dull blades will do some amount of hacking, just not as efficient. This is just running the stuff over with the tractor and nothing at all happening beyond the grass being smashed down from the tires.  

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Many hours later.  I was reading that my brand of riding mower can hack down even tall weeds. I mean, I read a lot of different sites about it and videos before I thought, hmmm, maybe this bad boy can actually do it?  So I went back to the property, got on the zero turn mower and headed over to the offending area.  And sure enough, that thing was plowing down 5-6 foot tall weeds like no one's business.  It was amazing.  2 hours of that and I was done with most if not all of it.  

I took the mower back to it's parking space and then drove the pickup back over to the area and just sat there. And then moved around, all over the place, aligning myself where the intended driveway would go.  That went on for a couple hours. I was trying to figure out how I could stuff 14 lots in there spaciously.  Not crammed together.  It started to fall together after quite some time and I thought, I can actually get 18 lots in this area and they will be nice lots, some of them will be very nice lots!  

The property narrows at the front.  There is a swatch of trees there, some of them mature pines, I am not cutting those trees down this time such as the contractor thought I should last time. That won't ever happen again, actually, I don't care what the contractor thinks, I am the one that has to live with AND pay for the results, not him.  I want my damn trees and that's that.  So I figured it out. At the front on the east side, I can put 2 lots in paralleling the driveway.  These lots will be right next to beautiful trees. I will command a higher price for such luxuries.  

It's the west side, amazingly enough (at least to me) that will accommodate many more lots. As I started looking and counting out in my head, I got up to 18.  I'm going to want the sprinklers for the septic systems moved to the edge of the property.  I really wish the septic around here could be the leach field instead of aeration.  Aeration works well enough, but there is a slight odor to it.  Hence wanting that stuff move further to the west.  Actually, what would be really nice is if the city could add to their water line going through the neighborhood and install sewer lines. 

Actually, I just want all the sprinklers in a small area.  I don't care about the swampish effect, that area will not affect the rest of the operation and well away from lots and people.  It may be a do-it-yourself thing, their hands may be tied, I'm not sure.  I've seen systems with a bunch of sprinklers all in a small area and they just put a fence around it and that was that.  The northwest corner will work.  

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2 days off is over. Time to go to bed.  The incident at the plant? The driver who I'm pretty much friends with said the managers that were up there today hadn't even heard that something happened. Exactly, it was a giant nothing-burger blown out of proportion by my manager.  I only reported it because they want you to report it at that plant, they don't do anything if it's a small spill but they want to know, naturally.  

Speaking of friends, this guy I have been chatting with at church for some time told me yesterday at church that for "some reason, I was thinking about you". No, he isn't gay lol, that's not what I mean, he's actually engaged to be married. I've sort of been wanting church type friends.  I have plenty of non church friends and I have lots and lots of Christian friends - but none of them live anywhere near here where I live.  

So, we are going to go have lunch at some point in time that hasn't been determined.  

But, my mind is full of this expansion now that I have all that weed stuff mowed down.  I'm going to try to get the dozer operator out of his abode tomorrow to come take a look and get his mind filled with precisely what i want done and if he is sure he can do it and if there are any obstacles or things that need to happen first.  I'm not going to pay a thousand dollars for a dozer for one day and whatever his pay, a couple hundred anyway, and not get everything done the way I want it.  In fact, I want to have it be a day off so I can hang out on the tractor in case I need to help him at all.  So, maybe we can do this next week I'm thinking.

Once that dozer work is done, it's going to get the ball rolling a lot faster.  But if it won't be until next week, I can go back over all that I have in  my mind about the layout again.  There's some trees that need to come down, but I'm hoping he'll say he can push them down instead of cutting them. Cutting them would therefore entail stump grinding, an apparatus I don't have and don't want to have to need.  

Actually, it also makes sense to go get 40 feet of 12 inch culvert pipe and get that in place and have him push dirt over that.  Or however that's supposed to work. Now that I think of it, I need to do some research on that.  Do they just cover it with dirt or do they put pea gravel around it and then dirt on top? or what?  And then gravel on top of the dirt.  I wouldn't mind getting the second entrance/exit installed now.  

Do you know that 40 feet of that pipe is probably around a thousand dollars?  Hmmm, $618 plus tax for 40 feet at Lowe's.  Not bad.  

5:20 comes early, time to get offa here.