Sick Like Winter

This is an April fool's joke, isn't it? First the snow, then strep throat. WTF?! Yes, sick again. The snow came first, tuned me into a minor cold which turned into major pain. And by last Friday, I was completely incapacitated. Saturday I went to the Minute Clinic - strep.

But I wasn't alone! The door dude called Mike. He was sick as well... sounded worse then I did, Mike said. (How that was possible, I didn't know.) The garage door installation was again postponed.

My good gal pal Heidi and her 4-kid crew were also supposed to come by for family hair day. (She does the hair, if you hadn't guessed.) Strep unfortunately canceled that date too. No need to expose two older kids, a toddler, and a newborn to ANYTHING like that.

Timmy, on the other hand, was healthy and well and arrived on Sunday around noon for more railing installation. (I was quarantined to the house as soon as folks arrived.) He and Mike (and Richard, who joined the party a couple hours later) wrapped the last full height pole and installed our last in-stock railing. (Two more on backorder, yet to arrive.) Then, they wrapped the three half poles of the side stairway. Ready to rock.

At the end of the day, the guys figured out how the front porch steps were going to go. Mike and Richard dug and prepared the stairway landing area for concrete. Pending a break in the rain, Mike will bring home the cement mixer and pour the front stair landing and the remainder of the side stair landing. (Which we previously - and accidentally - poured only halfway.)

*UPDATE
So here I am on Thursday.... still having not posted the post that I started writing on Monday. Blame the sickness! (That's what I do.)

While I was busy not-blogging, Mike and Richard picked up the cement last night. Mike had brought home the cement mixer, but there just wasn't enough daylight and energy to make it happen. Plus, we had a little bit of rain. Tonight perhaps?

Meanwhile, I've been trying to research solar post end caps. And if you click on that nifty link, you'll see that Amazon has a wide price range of products. Some of these dang solar lit post caps are big bucks. Like this one for $49.99... IT'S ONLY ONE CAP, PEOPLE!
Home Depot has a 4" x 4" one for $3.99. Yes it's crap, but it's only $3.99! Compared with $50??? What's wrong with the world? If I had a 4" x 4" post, I'd buy a few for $3.99 and if they turned out to be poo, I wouldn't give a poo.

The thing of it is, the reviews for the expensive ones aren't that great. They stopped working... they came broken... they're not bright at all... etc etc.

Unfortunately for us, we have the harder-to-find 6" x 6" post. So I can't just pick up a $3.99 cap and call it done. In fact, I'm having a difficult time finding a 6" for a decent price. I found this one here, but I'm not really in love with the design. I more like the design of the $50 one. Not that it comes in my size anyway.

And other websites - deckdepot and decklighting and otherstoopiddecksites.com? Yeah, I've found that their pricing is NOT at all competitive, their sites have poor design and navigation, the information is lacking, the selection is limited, and overall - I've come to the conclusion that I probably won't be able to find these online.