We wento to the Mohegan Sun
casino yesterday. We didn’t leave here until after 3pm, and it’s about
an hour to get there, so it was a bit of a late start. We didn’t leave
until around 11pm. I’ve never been to a casino so it was interesting to
go. The place is huge, it has over 6000 slot machines in it, along with
the usual table games, and a giant hotel, conference center, arena,
shops, etc. One of the reasons we went was because yesterday was free
scoop day at Ben and Jerry’s icecream stores, and that was the nearest
one. We had been talking about going for a few weeks now anyway, so it
was a good time to go.

We had alot of fun. There are 2 diffent gaming areas with the shops
in the middle, and an upstairs that is mostly just restaurants. We ate
at Johnny Rockets, which
is like a 50s style hamburger joint. They even give you 2 nickles to
put in the little juke-box on the table. It plays overhead, rather than
at the table, so it takes a while to get to your song. It was really
good though.

We didn’t play any of the table games. They’re pretty expensive, and
there aren’t any that we really cared to play. We decided to dedicate
$10 to playing slot machines and video-poker though. We ended up doing
really well. We signed up for the little player’s club card, which
gives you bonus points every time you play something that you can
redeem for food or whatever else. We didn’t build up many points, but
that’s ok. The first thing we tried was one of the slot machines, and
Sabrina won a few pulls in a row, so we had a good start. We did more
slots off and on, but never really won anything else. We did do well at
video poker though. We played for quite a while, and did well enough to
start having more than we started with, so we cashed out with $12
before we went to eat. So from our $10, we made $2 more. Then after
dinner we went back to play some more, and did even better. We lost for
a while, but started winning again, and put aside $10 in quarters so we
would know that we would at least break-even for the day, and used the
leftovers to play more. I was on a losing streak for a while, and on my
last $0.50 I got a really good hand, and won $12.50 back. After that I
did pretty well for a while, and so did Sabrina (she also got a $12.50
hand) and by the time we called it quits, we had $33.25. So we had a
profit of $25.25 once we took out the $10 we started with, and included
the $2 we won earlier. We were both pretty pleased.

It’s pretty unlikely that we would do so well repeatedly, but it’s
certainly a nice way to start off the first time we try going. The best
you can hope for usually is to not-quite break even. We’ll probably go
again in a month or so, or go to the other casino, which is not far
from this one, called Foxwoods.

The only other thing new is that we did manage to catch the
stray cat we were after. We got him this afternoon and took him to the
vet that the no-kill shelter said to go to. He’s very friendly, and
obviously likes people. He just rolled around on the ground with us and
then went right in the carrier when we put it down with some tuna in it
as a lure. We’ll probably never know what happens to it, but hopefully
he’ll find a new home.

It’s been a slow week. It rained quite a bit over the weekend
though, and now I’ve got a bunch of sprouts in the garden. The rows are
really full now. The cucumbers are the only things that haven’t
sprouted now. There may be one sprout so far, but it’s hard to tell for
sure. By the end of the week it should be going pretty well though.
Pretty soon I’ll have to start thining it out. I’m not really looking
forward to that, but it won’t be too bad.

We all went to the track yesterday to do laps. It’s only the second
time we’ve gone down, but it was another nice day so we decided to go.
It’s very different to run on a nice track, compared to a treadmill.
It’s hard to tell how fast you are going on the treadmill too, since
they are never really calibrated correctly. I measured about 1mph
faster on the track than the treadmill, and felt like I was doing less
work. Having a breeze helps too, you don’t get tired quite as quickly.
Overall its nice to go to the track, but you never know until you get
there if there will be a bunch of people, or the school using it or
something.

Not much new today. I checked my garden and there’s already one
sprout from a radish. I don’t see signs of anything else, but that’s
pretty quick, considering its less than a week since I planted. I also
helped sabrina put together a bench we got at Target for her garden
area. It’s an iron fire-bench, meant to go with a set that has a fire
pit, but we just liked the bench. It even came with its own tools with
which to assemble it. It was still hard to put together because some of
it was a very tight fit to get it into position, but it was ok, and
looks nice now.

We’ve dropped immediate plans to bring the cat to the shelter
because it hasn’t been around at a time we could bring it. It’s been by
late at night, but that doesn’t help any. We did see it briefly today,
but it just ate and ran off again. The shelter called to see if it
could give the spot to another cat, and we said yes. They said to just
call anytime we manage to catch it, so we’ll keep trying. It seems to
be better in general, so hopefully it didn’t suffer any permanent
injury.

The last couple days has mainly consisted of eating Easter candy. We
had chocolate of various sorts, ham, and hard boiled eggs. I certainly
enjoyed it. The ham was really good, it was Corando, which was on sale
this week in honor of Easter. We decorated the eggs Easter night, then
started right in eating them. I had one with dinner tonight, with
leftover ham, and also some leftover sausage from grilling the other
night. We also had our egg hunt sunday afternoon, and got a bunch of
candy out of that. Sabrina gave me a basket with some Mounds eggs
(chocolate covered coconut) which are very good, and also a giant
hollow chocolate egg from Nestle, which is made out of the same
chocolate as a Crunch bar, complete with the crispy bits, filled with
wrapped up mini-crunch bars. I ate about half of it today. I dont want
to think of how many calories of junk food I have had the last couple
days, but I’m still counting it in my holiday break, and pretending
I’ll go back to my diet after I finish the candy.

We’re planning to try to bring one of the stray cats we’ve been
feeding to a shelter. It got in a fight, or had an accident of some
sort, and there’s a chunk of fur missing from it’s head, and a pretty
deep open wound. There’s a no-kill shelter that Sabrina called and said
they would take it. We still have to catch it though, at a time when we
can bring it to the vet that the shelter said to go to. So of course
today it didn’t come by at all during the day. We saw it around 10
tonight and gave it some food. Hopefully it’ll be by again tomorrow
during the day. It’s a very friendly cat, and will come up to us to be
pet and roll around on the ground in front of us, so we’re pretty sure
we can get it into a carrier. None of the other cats are really willing
to let us touch them, so it’s very unlikely we could bring them
anywhere. If one of them is going to be injured, its good in a way it
was that one since we can take care of it better than the others. I’m
pretty sure someone will adopt it since it is so friendly. It’s a good
enough looking cat, and probably belonged to someone at some point and
was abandoned for some reason. It’s too willing to come to us to have
been born wild. In any case, hopefully we’ll get it to the vet
tomorrow.

Happy Easter

Today was a slow day. We dug out where Sabrina is going to put more
plants in her garden. She has a plot in front of the house, next to the
driveway. She has some seeds that she is going to put in the new area,
the old garden had herbs that had already been started and she
replanted. We’re looking for some edging that will fit in there, but
its hard because it is an odd shape and size. Once we do, we’ll plant
the seeds for more herbs.

We also tried out a new-ish icecream place on the way home from Home
Depot today. It’s right along the main road, and was open last summer,
but we never went. The place is a big farm, that sells plants and
flowers, and added icecream last year. They don’t make their own
icecream, but its a nice addition. It’s pretty popular; there were
always people there last summer, and there were quite a few there
tonight, even though it wasn’t really warm when we went. I got a sundae
with Reece’s Nightmare icecream, which is pretty much chocolate and
peanutbutter, and also had the little Reece’s candy (that looks like
M&Ms) on it for a topping, and hot fudge, whipped cream, and a
cherry. Sabrina got a sundae with coconut icecream, pistachio icecream,
mashmallow topping, whipped cream, and no cherry. It was a pretty big
sundae, even though it was the “regular” size, they have a bigger one
too. We both liked it alot. I’m sure we’ll go again later this sujmmer.

I grilled for dinner again tonight. I made hotdogs, sausage (2
packs), 6 turkey burgers, and two packs of kielbasa. It took a while,
and we have a bunch of leftovers, but it came out really well. We’ll
eat the rest on monday most likely. I enjoy grilling, and am getting
better at it. For the most part things don’t get too singed. It can be
hard with the grill we have because there’s a hole in the burner so
there’s a giant flame in the middle where the propane is escaping, then
the side the propane is supposed to go to doesn’t generate much heat.
I’m used to it now, and work around it. We’re thinking about getting a
new burner for it. You can get it at Wal-Mart for only $13 or so, which
is much better than buying a new grill. I’m not completely sure the one
they have will work with the grill we have here, but its worth a try.

For Easter festivities, we made hard-boiled eggs, but haven’t
decorated them yet. We’ll make egg salad, and probably deviled eggs,
later on. And we’ll have our ham dinner, and probably an easter egg
hunt, tomorrow. We thought about going to New York to have dinner with
Sabrina’s aunt and uncle, but decided not to. That much travel for a
dinner tends to kill a holiday. It’s about 3 hours each way, and
Sabrina’s mother has to work on Monday, so we’d have to be back really
early sunday. We all thought it was better to just have Easter by
ourselves.

The garden is finally done. Well, mostly done, there’s still
some leftover dirt that has to be cleaned up, and a big pile of rocks
that has to go somewhere, but the garden itself is finished. Yesterday
we put in the edging, the rest of the dirt, and the manure, and made a
little rock-garden to put the pots of cucumbers on, and today I planted
all the seeds.

I’m pretty happy with how it came out. It took quite a bit of work,
and its not quite straight, but its still nice. Hopefully things will
actually grow in it. The stray cats that we have certainly enjoy it,
they either play in the dirt, or with the string that we have marking
the rows. We want to find something to put out in it to keep the
animals away. Supposedly things like chimes, or a pinwheel, will work
fairly well for some animals, but we haven’t found anything we liked.
We spent quite a while the last couple days out shopping, looking for
something to use and just for other general stuff. I got a 40lb set of
weights for dumbells, so I can move up from the dinky weights we had
around the house. That should hold me until I am sick of doing it. If I
get to the point that I can do all my exercises with 20 pounds in each
hand, I’ll be happy. There’s no reason to aim for more than that.

We’ve also been trying to find stuff for Easter. I’m not sure what
we’re going to do, if anything, other than eat ham and eggs. We still
haven’t put away the Christmas decorations yet, they’re on the couch in
the living room. At least the tree is gone finally.

Not much else new here. I just finished my daily exercise routine,
and tomorrow is my day off. It’s always weird to not do it when I do it
the other 6 days each week. I feel like there’s something else I should
be doing. I haven’t lost any weight this week, or even gained a little,
because I didn’t do as much exercises as I usually do (since I spent
the time gardening) and ate much more than I usually do. We’re counting
it as a holiday week though, since Easter is coming, and will do better
next week.

I didn’t get as much done on the garden as I had hoped I would, but
it’s still going ok. I got around half the dirt put back in the hole,
along with the straw lining underneith, and have the edging laid out
where I want it. I still have to level off the ground under the edging
and make it match up right, and then shore it up with more dirt, but
the edging will be done after that.

We did go buy more soil, got 3 more bags, because the 3 I had barely
made one layer in the hole. Once the new dirt was in (the first layer),
we put more of the old stuff in to make it high enough for the edging.
I still have to put in the rest of the dirt, and the new dirt, and the
manure, once the edging is completely in place. We’ll hopefully finish
that tomorrow, and plant on Friday. I had hoped to be done today except
for the planting because the weather was supposed to be bad tonight and
tomorrow, but it ended up that it will be ok afterall, so I wasn’t
worried about it. It was much hotter than forcast today, so we didn’t
want to work too hard, and didn’t start until around 4pm. We shopped
first, then worked on the garden after. It was much better once we got
back, and had started to get breezy, so it was almost pleasant again.
It’s much easier to put the dirt back in, than it was to take it out,
but still not something to do when it is 80.

So far I’m pretty pleased with it. It looks good, and the soil we
got is really nice. Very black and organic. We didn’t take any pictures
today, but will take more once the edging is in, and then more again
when it is finished.

The last couple days have been pretty busy. It took both days to dig
out the hole, and tomorrow we’re going to spend the day filling it back
in. It’s amazing how rocky the ground is here. Not only are there alot
of huge rocks, but there are hundreds of little ones. It looks like it
could be fill from when the house was built, or the addition was built,
and then buried later. We managed to get the bigger rocks out of it as
we went, and we’ll try to get some of the smaller ones out as we put it
back in. It’s just as well that we didn’t get the tiller, it’d probably
break trying to crush through the giant rocks here.

Our current plan is to fill in a fair amount of the dirt we dug up,
on top of a layer of straw (which we’ve had since last summer when we
got it for cat beds). Then we’ll put down a layer of the new soil we
got, and mix it together with the rake, then more of the old soil, and
the new soil again, then later on put on the fertilizer, and more straw
once the seeds are planted and growing a bit. That way the seeds will
have nice soil to grow in, and we can cut down on the weeds with the
straw. The edging will go in before the last of the old and new soil,
so we can bury it as we go rather than dig a new trench after we fill
it in. We’ll probably have to buy a couple more bags of soil to get a
good mix, we only have 3 bags right now, and that won’t spread far. I
don’t want to end up with a big hump of soil in the yard either though.

I’m pretty happy with how it’s going overall. It’s been hard work to
dig the big hole (it’s over a foot deep, and 8 feet by 4 feet now).
There are two giant piles of dirt on tarps, and another pile of rocks,
to show for it. We took a couple more pictures today so everyone can
see our progress. Hopefully it’ll grow well and we’ll have nice
vegitables later this summer.

In other news, we tried a new Chinese buffet tonight. Royal Buffet,
in Enfield. It’s about half an hour away, but it was really good.
Someone had told us it was good and we wanted to try it out. It’s only
$10.95 for dinner, and $1 for soda. It’s got 6 buffet tables of food, 2
of which are almost all dessert items. There’s a bunch of seafood,
which doesn’t do much for me, but it was good if you like that kind of
thing. The usual Chinese items were all there, like Mongolian Beef,
Chicken Teriaki, General Tso’s Chicken, fried rice, white rice, wonton
soup, hot and sour soup, etc etc. There’s over 130 items every day.
Plus they have a sushi bar, and a Mongolian bbq style thing, where you
pick out your raw ingredients and they stir-fry it on the spot for you.
We didn’t bother with that since there was enough else to eat, but it’s
nice to have if you want it. I’ve never been good at picking good
spices to go with my food, so I don’t enjoy it as much as the prepared
foods. The food was all really good, and they had a great selection.
They even had self-serve prime-rib if you want it. For the price it was
really good, and would be a bargain even if it cost more. Lunch is
served ’till 3pm, and is only $6. We’ll definately go back again
sometime.

We went to two different Home Depot’s today, but didn’t end up with
much to show for it. I got a pair of gloves to wear while working on
the garden, and also 3 plastic pots for my cucumbers. I was hoping to
get some edging for the garden, but couldn’t find anything that I
liked, and was inexpensive. It was rather disappointing. We also didn’t
get the soil and manure yet, because it was somewhat out of reach, and
we didn’t feel like finding someone to drag it down for us so close to
closing. We were hoping it could all be delivered, since carrying 320
pounds of dirt and manure isn’t our idea of a great time, but it costs
$50 even just bringing it across town, so we’ll have to do it
ourselves. It won’t be a big deal, but won’t be a great time either.

So tomorrow, I guess we’ll make one trip to get the dirt and stuff,
and another trip to pickup the tiller. I still have to stake out where
I’m going to put the garden, but hopefully that won’t take too long. I
never did find any stakes that I liked so I’ll probably end up just
using some thick sticks from the yard. There are plenty of them around,
I just have to sharpen an end and stick them in the ground. I’m sure it
won’t be that easy, since nothing ever is, but one can hope.

The rain did stop when it was supposed to, so it was a pretty nice
afternoon. It’s pretty soggy out, but it was relatively warm. It should
be about the same tomorrow, so that’s good. It won’t be so warm that
we’ll be broiling outside while working, but won’t be cold either. The
ground should be fairly soft after the rain and warm, so that’ll make
things easier too. Hopefully things will go more smoothly tomorrow than
today.

Not much to talk about today. We bought some stuff for the
forthcoming vegetable garden. We got a combination hoe and cultivator,
with an extendable handle, which is pretty cool, and we also got some
trellis type things that will go in the cucumber pots. We still need
to buy pots, and some soil and fertilizer, but we’re planning to do
that tomorrow. And then on sunday we’re going to rent a honda tiller
from Home Depot to clear the land for my garden, and the herb garden
sabrina is making. It’s too bad that we don’t have more land to do,
because it would make it really easy. We don’t really need a giant
garden though.

I’ve got a little diagram for how big my garden will be, and how I’m
going to divide it. Once it stops raining I’ll stake it out so I can
see what it’ll look like, and where I have to run the tiller. That’ll
probably end up being on sunday, since it is supposed to rain part of
tomorrow, and we have more shopping to do, which will take most of the
day anyway. I have to decide what I am going to put around it too. I
need some sort of edging for it, or something similar. I don’t want my
new soil to get washed away, and I don’t want grass to grow into it any
more than necessary. The less I have to weed it the better.

I can’t decide if I want to plant everything at once, or do a little
each week so I have stuff ripen at different times. It’d be nice to
make it last longer, but at the same time the garden is so small it
seems silly to plant it over time. I’ll have to decide by monday or
tuesday, whichever I end up planting the seeds.

I hope it all goes well. We’ll have to take pictures of the construction as we go.