In any case – most of the ones you see around are pretty standard Caddy models – they’re all variants on a 3 letter model name now – CTS, DTS, etc – but there’s one in my neighborhood what is a pink Cadillac XLR – which is probably, in my mind, one of the sexier vehicles that Cadillac ever made.

The vehicle in question lives on a fairly busy street near my home. Here’s what actually gave me the idea to write about this – since its on a busy street, they have a circle drive, and the ability to head nose-out into the street. Twice in the last week, I’ve seen this car pull out, and I’ve become fairly certain that the woman who drives this car is to MaryKay what Batman is to crime fighting.

Somewhere, someone shines a light in the sky in the shape of a lipstick or something – and she races to the rescue in her pink Cadillac to take care of the cosmetic emergency.

The bed I spent a good chunk of last summer building for my daughter

Now, I’m a grown-up.  I don’t  build model rockets anymore (though I have a couple in the garage that are Carson’s – so maybe I spoke too soon).  I do, however have some hobbies.    That word clouds things a little bit – it conjures up visions of late night spent bent over a workbench putting a sailboat into a glass bottle.  I guess its more fair to say I’ve got some interests.

Maybe I have too many interests.  Which is part of the problem.   Here’s a short list of things that I’m interested in and have some plans to do this year;

• Smoking delicious meat products.
• Brewing delicious beer
• Making things out of wood
• Taking pictures of things
• Geocaching
• Camping
• Landscaping/Gardening

That probably isn’t a comprehensive list, either.  There are other things I’d like to do, too – I’d like to build kinetic sculptures, I’d like to learn to weld.  I like to write (albeit not well).  I’d still like to learn some rudimentary computer programming skills.  I should stop this paragraph, or its liable to get very, very long.

I feel pretty strongly that, especially for guys, people need something they do.  Something they’re into.  An activity that is separate from vocation that provides some mental health and productivity.  But seriously, how many do I really need?  Would I be better served to sell the power tools and just focus on being a great photographer?

I’m struggling with the question of whether I need to excel at things, or whether its alright to take the long approach – hoping that by the time I’ve got the time to do the things that I want to do, I’m good enough at them to make it worthwhile.

Yesterday, I actually walked out into my yard for the first time in those three months.  Did so again this morning, this time making a cursory inspection of things, starting to determine all the things I’ll need to get done in the next month or so.  Here’s what I learned.

• The dog is hard on the yard.  There is, shall we say, a substantial amount of evidence scattered about the yard as to the presence of our dog this winter.
• As a corollary to point #1, the dog was very hard on one of my downspouts.  I think she thought it was the lair of a delicious squirrel and as such tried to extract the tasty rodent.  This led to a slight incursion of moisture into our basement.  Thankfully, I have home repair skills, and I made what should be the permanent repair to said downspout.
• My garden makes me sad in March.  Oh, how I long  to walk barefoot to my garden on a humid night and bring back approximately eight thousand dollars worth of fresh basil.  Alas, the salad days, as they were, are still months away.
• The fence gate that I thought I properly engineered?  I failed gate engineering.  It requires a pretty substantial rebuild.
• I have a surface grade problem at my foundation.  Also, I need to get some ground cover going to mitigate erosion.

None of these are really giant issues.  The thing is, when you have a piece of paper that says “Bachelor of Landscape Architecture”, there really isn’t any excuse for any of this other than laziness.  I’m pretty well beyond the pressure to have my yard look beautiful, but I’d at least like it to not be falling apart.