Things That Made Me Happy Last Week, Week One-Hundred-Seventy-Three

[glenniebun]

• After I trimmed my trees a week or two ago, on Friday astute_reason helped me finish enough yardwork to make my lawn halfway presentable. (My lawn mower gave up the ghost a month ago; we were able to use his dad's mower.) In fact, thanks to some quality time with the weed whacker, my sidewalk is probably as wide as it's been in the last five years. Speculation is open as to whether this will finally be the year that I do all of this in September to make shoveling easier for the entire winter; it'd be a polite thing to do for my dog-walking neighbors, at least.
• Air conditioning is what allows me to make it from May to October.
• I appreciate any efforts to make traffic jams more hospitable, especially the absurd ones.
• For whatever reason, I haven't been drawing very much this year--in fact, until a couple weeks ago I hadn't dome any drawing at all in 2010. I started again then as a stress-relieving measure while my mom was in the hospital; tonight I finished the sheet of posterboard I split in two back then. I can go overboard with using a variety of colors sometimes, but I think everything came out okay.
• In honor of it being one of those days when seemingly everyone in the US has a cookout, yesterday I showed my independent colors by having a cookout. Highlights included lots of charcoal doing lots of burning, some hefty conversations and Sarah's Kahlua chocolate trifle. I was especially happy that Corinne was able to make it, since she hadn't been to my house before and had actually pulled out of two or three of my parties in the past. Most things went well and I think everyone had fun, so Mission Accomplished.