It is that time of year, baseball, sunshine, golf (for some lucky folks) and time to get the backyard ready for Summer. I have used a stain concentrate made by Smiths on the deck for years and the results were generally good. You end up mixing the concentrate 1:4 with ionized water. I decided to change it up this year as the results last year were poor. I bought 3 gallons of Behr Cement Stain which has a coverage of 400 square feet per gallon. I thought the color I picked was a darker brown, but we ended up with a really nice "terra cotta" color. I power washed the concrete after moving all of the plants and furniture off of the deck. The power washing strips the old sealant and cleans the surface. I then used Prep & Etch, a product that helps open the pores of the cement for better adhesion of the stain. I let all of that dry and then got to work on the stain. Darla was off to an event and I worked about 6 hours on the stain. Darla had asked me to be kind to my back and to use a sprayer. I've used them in the past and prefer the hand painting, but "happy wife, happy life." The airless sprayer (hand pump) seemed to give me poor coverage and I was using my 3rd gallon of stain and only about 50% done. I ran out at about the 60% mark and Darla came home about then. I sent her out to get more stain and told her to get me three gallons. She decided to get 4 gallons to be safe. I did some cutting round the edges of the pool and the house while I waited.
The first Home Depot (in Antelope) only had one gallon of the tint base and he made up the gallon. She dropped that off and headed to the other Roseville store and I set to work. The wait had dried up the stain in the sprayer nozzle and I had to take it apart and clean it. I kept trying to get it working, but there was a clog in the nozzle that was not coming loose. I finally gave up and resorted to hand staining the deck. That one gallon finished the other 40% of the patio! I put on a second coat today on about 70% of the deck, but stopped about 4:30 as the sun was on the portion of the deck I had to finish and I thought going to get a biopsy on my basil cell carcinoma tomorrow and showing up with a sunburn was probably not a good idea. It was about 85 degrees today. I still have a little bit in the gallon I used today and 2 more gallons. I should end up with most of two gallons left when I'm done. Darla said for me to take the extra gallon back for a refund, but it is a mixed product. By the way, my back is a little sore tonight.
You can see the new hot tub cover in the photos above. The old one was saturated with water and weighs about 150 pounds. I decided to have a hauling service come and pick that up along with some chairs, building materials, old patio umbrellas, pool toys and assorted junk that accumulates when you've lived in the same house for 19 years. We got back from church at 10 this morning and I began building a large pile of detritus on the driveway for the guy to pick up. I had called 1-800-Got Junk?, but they wanted $400 for a truckload. I could rent a truck and haul it myself for about $120 including the dump fee. I found a guy in the Christian Yellow Pages that would do it for $150 and set up the gig. The side yard was overwhelmed with old pool equipment, building supplies (the extra baseboards from our remodel), as well as closet doors from when we had a bookcase built into Darla's office, and a couple of doors from the garage shelving units. All of that went bye-bye and the side yard is so nice and neat. I have shelving units on the fence and those are now mostly empty save for some pool equipment and supplies and a small amount of firewood and kindling. I find myself walking out there just to see how nice and neat it looks. Purging is a good thing unless you are bulimic.
We had one of our first ball games at the River Cats this year on Tuesday. Burns and Wilcox has season tickets. I invited Phil and Carmen. Phil is one of Pete's agents and has become a good friend of mine. Darla set he and Carmen up about 7 months ago and they are still together. We had a nice lunch at the ballpark and watched the hometown team win 11-1. One of the SF Giants is rehabbing an injury with the AAA club and he hit a grand slam in the game. It was a nice afternoon.
I took the staff out this week to celebrate the windfall that we received in March and put us over budget through three months. We went to the Macaroni Grill and had a great team building lunch. You can see the picture above.
Darla and I will be leaving for Maine in two weeks. This is the annual conference with the Insurance Group that I am the Vice Chairman for. We will fly out to York Harbor through Boston on the Tuesday the 16th which is Darla's birthday and stay with the group for the conference until Thursday night. We then move to a bed and breakfast in Kennebunk Port, Maine which is the home town of the Presidential retreat of Bush Senior. Darla and I will travel the coast on Friday and Saturday seeing the sights and visiting the local lighthouses as we travel with my friend, Jeff and his wife Linda. Jeff is the Chairman of the group and brought me in as a board member two years ago. We will stay in a hotel on Saturday night as we fly out fairly early on Sunday. Last year we visited Washington, DC. I look forward to the trip and some time away with Darla for her birthday week. The only downside is that David turns 30 the same week, but as I told Darla, he won't be hanging out with us anyway. We will all get together this coming weekend to celebrate the birthdays. Darla's sister Alicia shares a birthday with her.
Work is going well and the numbers are trending up. We will be hosting a Continuing Education seminar next Tuesday and then a Customer Appreciation party that night. It will have a sports theme and we are encouraging our agents to wear their favorite sports gear. We will have a hosted bar put on by a restoration company that partners with us on these events to get close to the agency plant. I also have a windshield replacement company, Safelight, that will host a nacho bar. We will have pizza and sliders as well as Cracker Jacks. The Giant game will be on in both conference rooms as they play the Mets starting at 4:30 PM. The CE course will again be taught by one of our carrier partners' VPs. He is about 65 and a very entertaining speaker and educator. We have almost 70 attendees already and the invitations were just sent out on Monday. We did send out a Save the Date postcard about a month ago.
Well, dinner is on so I will bring this to a close. I hope you are all hale and hearty and living life well. Ciao
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