09:18 – I’m taking a day off writing today to get some work done on the new batch of chemistry kits.
11:17 – Barbara says it’s time to replace the deck. I’m sure she’s right, since the deck was built with the house in 1968 with pressure-treated wood, and hasn’t had much maintenance since then. Yesterday, one of the sides fell off. Hmmm.
So, after Tax Day, I’m going to start researching options. We already know we don’t want pressure-treated wood. We want something that’s as low-maintenance as possible, like vinyl or composite. We also know that we don’t want or need a new deck as large as the old one. We seldom entertain, and when we do it’s usually just one or at most two other couples. We need room for a gas grill, a small table, and four to six chairs. Barbara and I just went out with the tape measure, and we decided a deck 13 or 14 feet (~ 4 meters) by 8 or 9 feet (~ 2.5 meters) would suffice.
I do want to have room for one special feature: a pivoting trap door in the floor above a tank of piranha, with a squirrel feeder positioned such that a squirrel would have to step on the pivoting trap door to reach the feeder. We have squirrels year-round, so the piranha starving to death won’t be an issue.