For the next week or so apparently Doug and I are going to be All About The Rock.

In his case it's because his band, Public Domain, has made it through the first round and is now battling to go to the next level in a radio contest that offers the top prize of a recording contract! A freakin' recording contract. I get giddy just thinking about it.

I hear Doug has had to buy Depends in bulk.

This is one of those times when for very little effort you get to turn the crank on The Happy Ending Machine and do a random, senseless act of kindness. C'mon. You can vote for Public Domain as many times as you want for the next week. The band that gets the most votes moves on to the next level.

Pretty please? Pretty please with sprinkles? Oh yes, I pulled out the sprinkles card. I am that desperate. Vote for Public Domain until your little clicking fingers bleed. Do it for the sprinkles.

So while Doug is busily enjoying being part of the cool side of rock, I'm busily engaged in being part of the dorky side of rock. Doug is involved in rock, the music. I am involved in rock, the stone. Lots and lots of rock. Too much rock.

Many, many years ago when I was a zygote--yes, that's right, when dinosaurs ruled the earth--I started to terrace the big hill below our house with rock. It was an stupidly massive undertaking and because I am a fundamentally lazy human being about half way through the project my attention got diverted and I never got back to it.

Well, as you can see, it's gotten to the point where actual freakin' trees are growing in parts of the wall. It's butt ugly. The backdigger is coming in about a week to dig new foundation trenches for the wraparound porch and the dirt from those trenches will be dumped in front of the house to get it out of the way.

The spousal unit told me if I wanted to keep those lovely flat rocks that I'd spent months and months gathering, transporting and then assembling into walls, I Was Going To Have To Get Them Out Of There. Pronto. Otherwise, they would be buried forever and ever under several feet of dirt.

EEEEEEEEEEK.

So on the weekend he brought the tractor up and parked it in front of the wall. The deal was that if I would move the rocks from the wall into the tractor's wagon, the spousal unit would drive the tractor and offload the rocks someplace safe so I can use them in a new wall I want to build.

Last night he came home from work, had supper, and mosey'd down to the tractor because he expected to be moving a trailer's worth of rock. Only, uh, there wasn't any rock in the trailer because apparently you can't just wish rocks to jump out of walls into tractor wagons. Nope, apparently, you have to carry rocks from walls and drop them into tractor wagons.

I know. I am as appalled by this turn of events as you are. Where is my Fairy Rock Godmother when I need her? Huh? HUH?

So I spent a big hunk of this morning loading rock into the wagon. It took me over two hours to move what you see there, and that is just a tiny portion of one wall. Doomed. I am doomed.

Wait. It gets worse.

Thanks to my hours of throwing around heavy bits of metal at the gym, I now know how stupidly heavy many of the rocks I moved are. F'rinstance, I routinely do 85 pound Romanian Dead Lifts. I know from the effort it took to move some of the bigger rocks like the one in the front of the wagon that the biggest rocks are at least 50 pounds. The thick one on the middle right there was probably 70 pounds because it took all I had to move it. Unlike gym equipment, rocks don't come with well-designed handles for easy grips.

Stupid rocks.

To date I have largely managed to weasel out of using my pretty little gym muscles for actual work by, uh, not exactly lying but, uh, not exactly owning up to the sorts of weights I have been handling at the gym. It's a sweet situation.

Once the spousal unit starts offloading these rocks, though, the jig is up. Yep, when it comes time to move all the heavy bits o' things that go into building porches, it doesn't take a crystal ball to see that I am going to be forced to use my pretty little gym muscles For Actual Work.

You can well imagine my horror.

All I can say is that it better turn out to be The Best Porch In All The World, eh.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 348.46 miles.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers