Money gets in the way

The other day Simon came around to my place. It was a pretty big moment in my houses history, few people ever drop around. He soon made it clear though what his intentions were, he wanted to get my laptop of me for about two hundred dollars.

A very cheap price, for a laptop that is only a year old, has 2GB of memory, Bluetooth, 160GB of hard disk, CD-DVDBurner, SD Card reader and heaps of other features I got it for. But haven’t really used much, and then Windows died on it, so I didn’t bother fixing it, loaded up Linux and used it maybe once a week until I got my new Mac (that I like using heaps more than I ever did my other laptop). Problem is that he wants to get Windows onto the system, and is having problems with it that the tech guys he talks to say will cost him a couple more hundred dollars.

I didn’t get the cash from Simon when he came over, but happily let him take the laptop so he could try and get it working and he promised to come around and drop of the cash. But hasn’t come around. Instead he calls me up and asks if he can not do the sale. Sure I answer.

Then he has another attempt at “fixing” the laptop (I have heard some arcane things have happened to the laptop to try and get her running Windows again, that apparently she does now, just not very well). And I go over his house and figure that he will drop around tomorrow and leave the laptop if I’m not in like I offered him. Or possibly call me and say when the money will come.

I should be more laid back about it all, but it is a strain for me. Money is so precious and I get strung up about it all the time. From the furry I feel when I make a downpayment and have to wait an extra few days for a delivery, when I figure I should had made a different choice. To when my money is inacessable because of needing an SMS from he bank, or the bank not liking the characters I type on my phone for anything but the password to get into the online banking. I get furious.

It is one of things I am taking a holiday from though, I have my cash easily acessable incase I want to spend it, and have plenty enough that I shouldn’t be worried about any costs. If it works though? I am yet to see…

The ecological disaster in my backyard

Yesterday I discovered a collapsed part in my garden, and on probing it I discovered a hollowed area about a meter in length with about thirty to forty centimeters of soil above it (that was held in part by some tree roots).

Strange I thought, and shoveled some soil from an unused garden bed to fill in the area, figuring it was most likely a hole dug by a dog that was covered over by the previous tenant. Or maybe where a pipe that had been removed leaving the meter long void.
But then this morning I noticed a huge sunken hole where I had filled in. And took a look around thinking to find out what caused it. Maybe it was an animal digging it? But then noticed the grass near it had no soil under it too. I had a water problem. Water was washing away the soil in the corner of the garden, and trying to fill the corner of my backyard like the Colorado River finding a way to fill the Salton Sea (on a much much much smaller scale).

So I searched around for a sprinkler head or something near by what would be the cause. I found the plug first, then an o-ring. Both had been washed into the hole by the water. I then found the uncapped sprinkler, still surrounded by some dirt and grass, almost not connected to the wash out a short few centimeters away.

I put the o-ring and cap back into the sprinkler, but knew that it wouldn’t stop the flow of water because the sprinkler had no head. The sprinkler with plug in was just a jet nozzle to cause more soil to be washed out. So I ended up digging around the sprinkler (using my hose to flush out a lot of the loose soil actually) and using duct tape and some plastic I covered the end.
I had at first thought to just put a rock on top of the sprinkler, but then figured the water damage would just seep from there. So to finish of the disaster area, I put down some broken cement and rocks that litter another corner of my backyard to bulk up the soil in the area (that I don’t really like to mow anyway) and then put more soil down to replace the lost stuff and level it out a little.

It was lucky, because yesterday I was thinking about planting something there and making it a small vegetable plot (with carrots, corn or something equally as easy to grow there). If I had planted that yesterday I would be now without a garden, as the seeds would had been washed away!

But I figure I’ll have to wait another day or maybe two to make sure that the sprinkler is capped properly (the sprinkler turns on every second day at about 5 am I think). I remember having to cap the sprinklers hose in the front yard that actually was spewing water onto the footpath and stopping the sprinklers giving out much of a spray. That was a duct tape and then bury.

(Note: I would had drawn some pictures, but my Mac doesn’t have a drawing program on it.)