Volunteered last night at the Fountain Day celebration on Fountain Square. We served plenty of beverages despite the brisk weather and I talked to officer Chris Thomas, a cool police officer who kept an eye on our booth. Lighting the Tyler-Davidson Fountain was really cool, I caught a few pics in progress.

Thanks to our friend Suzanne for getting us in touch w/ the volunteer opportunity.

I got some spectacular photos of lightening tonight. I’m about to turn off the computer and unplug it (in case that lightening gets a little too close) but take a look at these photos. It took about 40-50 shots to get some good ones; you just have to press the shutter release and hope something happens in the next couple seconds.

Tornado sirens going off now… time to be smart and get in the basement

The Enquirer has reported on the story I wrote about on July 23 in which I commented that the Mairose Grocery store in Hyde Park was finally demolished to make room for a parking lot: Church plans anger Hyde Park neighbors. I’m surprised at the reaction other neighbors had about the demolition; on the few days the building was being removed, I was looking for neighbors to relate my frustration about not being told what was happening and no one was around.

I suppose though now that the building has been removed there is no point getting in the way of a nice looking, very well landscaped parking lot being built — hint, hint St. Mary’s.

Well Mairose (Hyde Park, Cincinnati) is finally kaput. When we left for work today the building was standing, a solid neighbor for many years. Today we came home to find bricks, bent steel, and splintered wood. Goodbye Mairose.

Our church, St. Mary’s in the background, will build a new parking lot and attractive landscaping for the Suburbans, Escalades, and Navigators that shuttle kids to and from school each day. The street does open up quite a bit with the building, which was very close to the curb, no longer there.

The 8 feet between our garage and our neighbor’s garage has been a mess since the day we moved into our house. There were old tires, rusty hose reels, a 8′ x 5′ pallet, a ton of bricks (well perhaps 1/5 of a ton… seriously). So over the past few weeks, Sarita and I cleaned the space out, removed the bricks and built a small wall so we could level out the space. Unfortunately I didn’t take a good before picture; the first picture is post clean-up and wall construction. Those green plants are not planted, they will go in the final space.

So after cleaning the space out, I decided we needed to fill it in with dirt. So I had some dirt dropped off. Dropped off is an understatement.

I had just eyeballed the measurements (8′ x 20′ x 8″) for how much dirt we needed. That came out to about 106 cubic feet which is just shy of 4 cubic yards. Well there was no way I was picking up one-hundred six 1cubic foot bags from home depot so I called a few places about delivering dirt. I found a great place, H Hafner and Sons, where same day delivery is included in the cost per cubic yard (and it wasn’t much more than I would have paid to get 106 x 1 ft^3 bags).

Hafner’s had a price break at 4 cubic yards though so I ended up getting 5 cubic yards for the same price (I figured a little extra dirt wouldn’t hurt).

» Read more: Our (not so) secret garden