Quite revolutionary for me. Beautiful weather this weekend so I spent it outdoors starting yet another project. This time however, I finished it!

Whilst the Huon Pine coffee table is still a work in progress, I whipped up a nice little outdoor bench out of some smaller pieces of Huon I just happened to have laying about. I wanted to make sure it didn’t have any nail marks so had to resort to using dowel joins.

I am not particularly good at the dowel join thing but I think the end result is still pretty good. I just wouldn’t sit on it!  :-)

Yes, I started another project today. BUT, I finished it too. Well as much as you can finish a garden bed.

After having constructed our deck, we always intended to plant a little garden bed along the end fence-line. Today, I finally got around to doing it. After a drive down to Arthur’s Seat to visit AustPlant, a native nursery near home, a arrived home a little poorer but ready to get stuck into it.

The image shows what it looked like to start with.

I purchased two Pandorea Lady Di climbers and a few Canostylis candicans (Grey Cottonheads) for ground cover.

Of course, it’s never quite that simple, there was some Osmocote stuff (plant food I think), wire, garden ties, etc.

After a bit of measuring and mathematics, I got stuck into the digging, putting in a little plant food for lunch and popping the plants into their new homes. All in all, a pretty easy job and quite rewarding.

I spent the rest of the afternoon stringing up wire so we can guide the climbers and doing some other work on the other side of the garden (with the yet to be completed paving). Will be interesting to see how quickly these things grow. Will post some more photographs in a few months once it’s all established.

How else do you get a dog to do this? …

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziDeUbifKIM[/youtube]

Check out more of Tyson’s adventures.

Went for my first run in a few months last night. Didn’t get terribly far (2km) but am glad I did it. Will be going for another tomorrow night and then again on the weekend.

To keep me motivated as summer comes along, I’ve enrolled on another Boot Camp month and also booked my place in the October Melbourne Marathon. I’ll aim to do 10km at the marathon run. Only half the distance of my start of year goal of the half marathon, but it’s still more than I’ve ever run in my life.

Oh well, off to start psyching myself up.

Ran into this fantastic advert the other day on TV. Funky music, great colour, fun vibe, and most of all brilliant choreography.

Oh, the gals aren’t too bad either.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZhSc1qtves[/youtube]

You can learn more about the advert from the Bond’s site. If you’re quick, you can even download a copy of the music.

Before I got further into finishing my coffee table, I did the typical male thing and started another project. In fact, I started another bigger project.

We’ve been thinking of paving the remainder of our yard, so before summer hit, I thought I’d better get a head start on it. Not knowing anything about paving, I looked to my oracle to help.

A bit of research, some measuring, a few trips to Bunnings for parts (and a sausage), and it’s finally taking shape. The most difficult part was getting the sub-base nice and even. Way difficult when you have a very uneven soil level to begin with.

Compacting the sub-base with a plate compactor made for a few headaches. After a trip back to Kennards and a new spark plug we were back on track. The more I compacted, the more I realised things were quite even. More shoveling rock, more compacting, more leveling.

The end result is pretty good so far. Next week, I’ll be adding the sand, leveling it all up perfectly and then adding the pavers. I’m not good with patience, so the next stage will be quite a test.

Sorry Katherine and Joe. Those the the facts. Can’t argue with that!

In an effort to “get back in touch with nature” I’ve begun my next project. It’s a coffee table. Not just any boring old square coffee table, but one made from Huon Pine and with no electrical assistance.

We bought the block on our trip to Tasmania earlier this year and it has since been sitting in the garage. Last weekend I gave it a good rough sand and clean-up. In doing so, I quickly discovered I had a lot to learn about manually working with wood. A belt sander and electric plane would have done the trick easily, but I wanted a challenge.

Wasn’t that a stupid idea! There are a few marks from the original saw which will take some time to work out as well as some rough edges which I want to keep (but tame somewhat). I bought myself a hand plane and started using it yesterday. It is a lot harder work than I expected but am actually enjoying it.Not much progress to date, but I’ll endeavour to do some work on it each weekend.

This have just been “busy” lately and this is a post to fill in some time. What’s been happening …

• New manager at work so we’ve been devising a strategy for the department. Lots of work, but I am finding it an incredibly engaging learning experience.
• Training has dipped slightly. Ankle not coping too well and I missed the Run to the G today (need to be at home to take care of E.)
• Been regularly taking the train to/from work. It takes a little longer but it is far more relaxing. Thinking of selling my car and downgrading to an old bomb to get me from home to the station (and hopefully back again)
• Been researching a little on heart disease + smoking. E. is predisposed to the former and with the later it makes for a fearful life ahead.

Other than that, I’ve just been busy!

Well it’s my first personal best but that’s gotta count for something. We (being me and E.) ran in the Melbourne Mother’s Day Classic on the weekend. I opted for the 4km run as I’ve had a pretty sore ankle this last week.

The event was pretty fun and we had perfect weather. Soooo many people. I was pretty shocked and didn’t quite expect the mountain of people running down St Kilda Rd and through the gardens. What I found most amazing was the variety of people. You hear people say it all the time, but until you experience it, you really don’t understand how varied the variety really is. There were literally all sorts, including a gorgeous little kid in a Superman outfit, cape and all!

New personal best …
4km run, 27 minutes, 54.26 seconds
E. did really well too: 31 minutes, 10.45 seconds.
The image is of my heart rate during the run. I have one of those fancy Polar watch gadgets which measures your heart rate and all sorts of stuff as you exercise. I’ve finally gotten it working with my Mac so I can produce the cool looking graphs. It tells me that I ran at around 9.8km/hr for my last 2kms. That’s pretty cool for me. On average I ran around 8.5km/hr which is a nice comfortable tempo.

The odd things are the dip around half way through - that was the drink I slowed down for (and walked for 30 secs). The other oddity is that my heart rate high 199bpm at the start of the final kilometre! It must’ve been a glitch cause by all accounts, with that heart rate, I should’ve been a goner.

I can’t wait until my ankle gets better so I can actually get out there and run some more. Sheez, how things change!