Stats

In drafting up a post the other night, I noticed this little tab "Stats."  Stats brings to mind shuttering looks and murmurs of "oh no, not stats 601/602."  The dreaded graduate level stats class.  You'd think, given my job, that I'd like stats (or at least math).  I something didn't get the "stats gene."  Nope.  Stats ranks up there with geometry.   Although in fairness to geometry, if I'd had a different teacher I probably would have liked it a lot better.  Now calculus, that was my favorite.  My calc teacher (Mr. Smith) was great.  He really cared about his students.  He took the "Stand and Deliver" method of teaching.  Even had us watch it during class.  I think he was the reason I did well enough on my AP exam to actually get out of taking more than 1 semester in math as an undergrad.  By the time I got to grad school, my advisor was uninterested in me actually taking any classes ("gets in the way of your lab work"), and since my curriculum was up to my committee (and he was the chair of said committee), I didn't take but a few semesters of coursework.  Stats 601/602 was omitted for the more friendly biostats for clinicians.  Open book, too.  I went so far as to buy the Cartoon Guide to Statistics.  Oddly enough, I was actually looking for it the other day when I had a stats question after reading a paper.  Believe it or not, it did the trick.  Although I'm pretty sure my question wasn't all that complicated.

As to the "Stats" tab....upon clicking it, I discovered people in the Philippines, Latvia (yes, Latvia), and even Poland were looking at my blog.  I'm thinking it was because they clicked on the random "next blog" link on Blogger.com.  Wonder where it's going to report next?

A final touch

ES and I re-did our downstairs bathroom this past year, including new fixtures, a faucet, and paint.  What we didn't do was find new lighting.  There's some things I don't like to do.  This includes wiring new fixtures in the house.  We'd put off a new light for quite awhile, but finally took the plunge, watched some e"how" videos, and decided it looked easy enough (famous last words??)....

Stay tuned.  Fixture installation this weekend along with a final garden bed clean out.  Been putting it off, but as the weather is cooling this is the best time to try and tackle it.

Backyard Reno(vation)

After a couple of summers of looking at the one corner of the yard and saying how we need to do something with it, we finally decided it was time for a change.  What we thought would be an easy job, turned out to be a 1-plant removal a weekend job - usually a 3+ hour process complete with rock and root removal.  The original owner planted things that while appropriate for xeroscaping, were grouped in with those that were not.  The sprinklers didn't discriminate between them and our yucca was pretty much rotten by the time we removed it.

As you can see, ES loves the old corner....Note most of the old plants (including the corner yucca) had gotten a major haircut.  This still didn't make the area any more palatable (and the yucca any healthier) so out they came....

We decided on replacing the  area with roses.  They grow well here and I love having fresh flowers in the house.  The final one went in this afternoon.  Now we just have to put in the other two rebar poles for the other glass bird baths and we're done.

Our next DIY outside....the rest of the fence.  Still trying to decide between cedar and PVC.  Pros and cons to both.  Cost may ultimately win.....