A Busy and Restful Day!

Somehow, today I managed to hit the fine balance of staying busy without really getting anything done!

I spent a long time on the Amtrak website weighing out dates and times for upcoming trips to Boston, Chicago, and Hartford but still haven't decided.  I tried to cancel my Southwest ticket to Baltimore because I'm taking the train instead - but the wait time on the phone was going to be 15-20 minutes, so I hung up.

Did some menu planning for my upcoming Royal Wedding Party on the 29th.

By merely taking a scenic walk around the yard, I got estimates on some major outdoor projects and we just have to decide how much work I am going to do and how much work we should pay someone else to do (and when we want to shell out the money to get it done!)

-power washing the shed
-power washing the shed and house
-power washing the shed and house and scraping/reglazing/painting the window trim on the house
-fixing the cracked window pane on one of the windows
-tearing down the pergola with and without haul away
-building a new safer properly designed pergola
-building the new pergola and screening it in (take that, mosquitoes!)

The exorbitant cost of fixing the cracked window pane tells me that if we decide that the pane needs replacing, I will soon become familiar with glazer's points and putty and the nuances of replacing glass in old windows!  The piece is 8"x32" and the quote was from Glass Doctors for a minimum of $175  *choking*  We could get some other quotes but I imagine that they'll be high too since it would be coming all the way to our house to do one tiny piece of a window.  Good thing the crack is at one corner and only about 3" long.  I've had it covered with painter's tape for 6 months and that seems to be doing the trick : )

I'm really hopeful about the pergola project (particularly with screens added in) but I'm nervous about hiring someone to do it!  The most major project I've hired out is having the electrician put 3 pendant lights where we used to have one chandelier!  This is a whole different situation, involving things like liability insurance, checking on contractor licensing, permit pulling, etc... and there are so many horror stories on tv about people getting ripped off by contractors!