Did a little more playing around with the new laptop. It definitely needs an external mouse and keyboard before it becomes my primary machine but I'll go ahead and get some use out of it between now and when the ones I ordered arrive. So far it hasn't taken too much work to make Vista look enough like XP to satisfy me.

We supposedly have a load of gravel coming at 8:00 AM. I really would have preferred to do it later in the day but I was afraid if we didn't grab our chance at "first thing in the morning" we might get bumped altogether and end up having to wait till next week. I talked to Brad on the phone and I think he and Chad may wait till tomorrow to come over and spread it. He has to schedule around his girlfriend's babysitting needs and we didn't want to make any firm plans till the gravel's actually out here. I'm thinking as I write this it might make more sense from the babysitting standpoint for him and Chad to wait and come Monday but I'll leave that up to them.

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Doesn't the little calico (Look close; she really is a calico.) look terrified? She's Rainbow's daughter and this is her first day to come out from under the dresser and explore the house. The big bad tomcat is Sheba's grandson; he's about two thirds grown.

And here's why I had 10 tons of gravel dumped right in front of the garage this morning:

We have a small rented backhoe/end loader lined up for tomorrow afternoon and Sunday morning to fill those holes in the drive and dig the rest of the trench for the freeze-proof hydrant.

I finally heard back this morning from the lady in the Vincennes Social Security office whom I've been trying to reach for almost two weeks. The good news is everyone agrees I still have another big back settlement check coming; the bad news is it will be another 30 to 60 days before I get it. I'll still sleep better when it's actually in my bank account.

The freight company that will be delivering the swingset I ordered for the back yard called for directions this afternoon and will be delivering it next Tuesday or Wednesday, in plenty of time for Fight4TheRight and his friend from Terre Haute to put it together when they're here in June. If we get rained out or something I'll have Brad and Chad put it together so it's ready when my grandson's here later in the month.

I wasn't expecting it this soon but the 500 GB drive I ordered for this machine came this morning. I'll put off pulling the machine out from under the desk to do anything to it till the RAM I ordered for it gets here. Once I'm sure the upgrades took OK this machine becomes the family machine and the new notebook becomes my primary machine. I'd need a shadier place to use it to use it outside very much but I did verify this morning that I can surf the web from the picnic table out by the drive, which I'm pretty sure means I can blog from the back yard if I ever get the urge.

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I didn't do a very good job of holding the camera steady but here's my best attempt at a panoramic view of the pasture. At the beginning of the clip you're looking at the northwest corner, then the view sweeps down the west fence, ahead left along the back fence, etc, till we're back where we started: