So Laura wakes up one day to the sound of a backhoe in our front yard.  As it turns out, it was the Birmingham Water Works changing out our water meter.  Apparently the bills we were seeing weren't normal (we'd get a $30, then a $9 and a $9 just to repeat again) and our meter kept getting stuck.  So they were out here digging in the yard to replace it with a working one.  I'm afraid our water usage will go way up - anyone know how to get the meter stuck again?

Ah...  our brand new meter with less than 30 cubic feet of water used.  Sadly we're probably WAY higher than that now with sprinklers in the summer, etc.

And then there was some home improvement by us.  There are quite a few places in our house that leak air and believe me, we're paying enough for air conditioning.  So I have taken it upon myself to slowly replace things that aren't energy efficient (for example the door between our garage and the house didn't seal at all and wasn't insulated).  So I went to Home Depot the other day and bought a ton of stuff and brought it home in the Home Depot truck:

Notice the 16 foot long boards that didn't really fit no matter where I put them?  The bed of the truck was only 8 feet long, so sticking them straight back would have made them unstable to travel.  After getting home I wished I had put the ends of them against the tailgate and the rest of the board over the cab.  It would have been a little trickier to go on the interstate, but it would have made them much more stable on surface streets.

So that's 4 16' pieces of pressure treated wood (for the deck), two rolls of insulation and 3 sheets of plywood (for the plant ledge), a door (for the garage), and another door (for the attic).  It will probably take me several weeks to actually complete all of these projects, but at least I don't have to rent the truck again.