Grindstone, Meet Nose...Nose, Grindstone...

Haven't played a lick of poker the last few days, as I've been putting the nose to the grindstone and banging out some freelance work that's been lingering undone for too long.

Still settling into the new house and routine, but we're getting there. It's been interesting joining the ranks of the commuters, especially living in the country (relatively speaking) and driving to the big city (relatively speaking) for work each day. In some obvious ways, yeah, it's a pain in the ass, but I'm sort of liking how sharply it divides work/not work, especially when we're hanging out in our cool, big old house in the country. ScurvyWife has classes on Wednesday nights so I've been picking off more projects at the Austin house, to occupy myself until she's done since we drive into Austin together, so that's been good, as far as continuing forward momentum and not lapsing into relative laziness.

Next big project at the new house is, thankfully, one that involves me lifting nary a finger, except to write a check for many American dollars to someone to murder trees. The backyard is pretty much dominated by a huge elm tree that's got to be pushing 100 years, but one that's sadly on its last tree legs. Tree guy thought it'd been strucky by lightning at some point, and since elms apparently don't really heal well, it's been slowly rotting ever since. Looks perfectly healthy outwardly, as it's still sprouting green leaves with no dead limbs, but once you get close you can see that the trunk is nearly rotted through, with just the outer rings of new growth keeping it alive.

So that's gotta go, which sucks, expensively, but at least it'll give us some extra room and some sunlight to work with back there, landscaping-wise. He's also going to prune things back in general while he's there, and remove most of the old people shrubs that are in the front right now, including grinding out the roots. I could handle that last one but it seems silly to spend half a day digging, chopping, and cussing, just to save $75, when we're already forking over many multiples of that.

Still grinding away some sportsbook bonuses, and I need to get off my butt and update the degenerate challenge, as I've made some decent progress there.