New Driveway and Life and Times

I'm trying to do patches of work from home today.  We have had storms off and on this week, and all power and phones are cut from the office, making even remote access impossible.  We were all sent home under an emergency provision clause. I have work I can do without accessing the work servers, plus we have a limited but hard to navigate outlook web mail server, so will check in a few times. It's loud here though. One of our projects on the house list was to get the sidewalk and apron around the garage redone with new concrete. Not a cheap venture. We also needed a new coat of black asphalt.  As luck would have it, the neighbor is having the same thing  done so DH walked over to see what they might do ours for. 

Not only were they willing and able to do the sidewalk and apron, but  for a quote the same as what we were going to spend with only asphalt, they agreed to do the whole driveway in concrete. That's  less than 1/2 of what we had for other quotes for a concrete driveway, so we never pursued. DH jumped on it. Doing the jobs back to back saves the company at least an hour of labor for 1/2 dozen men, plus the equipment is already here. I think they were surprised at how long the drive actually was when they measured, but held at the same quote. That's $5,000 of our home improvement set aside eaten up, but then this was the priciest thing on the list and on budget. The curb appeal will be immense, and once I finally get my shrubs taken care of, and a good power wash to the porch-maybe a new coat of white paint, and scrub the porch bench, this improvement will go miles in my appreciation of my home, at least from the outside.

My broad community is in the news in the way a community never wants to be there. Just a few miles from my office, on a road I travel every day on route to work, there was another police involved killing of an African American man. There are no words other than tragic to talk about this, and I say that before any details are studied and conclusions reached. Fear, discrimination, prejudice, and preconceived opinions all led to the tragedy I surmise. There were a few flowers by the roadside, where I assume the tragedy happened. My heart breaks for all involved, and I pray justice, whatever that turns out to be, is done. News coverage in Minnesota alternates between this, and the republican hearing of the FBI probe of Mrs. Clinton's e-mail debacle. It is a sad, crazy, and pathetic world sometimes. 

But then it is beautiful and happy, and filled with joy at the very same time. I have some extra time home with my family, even though we are all doing our own thing, we can have an impromptu, budget, lunch together. While rough weather is expected later this afternoon again, it is wonderful now, and I am going to take pup for a good long walk as he is in defense mode against the workers and quite stressed. I'll post this a little later, as I may want to add, but by then the walk will be done, and he should be settled down a bit. It's a little cooler, and I have eggs to use up from the stockpile I bought at $ .49 a dozen, and have an egg bake in the crock pot. I'll freeze most of what I bake for the weekend and next week when I am gone. Austerity is not going to get to me as I know I am luckier than most. Too bad crap news has to be what reminds me of that.