Way back in January I planted two new rose bushes in the backyard where two of the three existing bushes had died. The ground cover for these had been river rock but somehow grass and and some kind of apparent succulent ground cover started taking over, which is what we believe killed those bushes. So I had dug all the rock out and onto the patio until I made it to the old weed guard plastic which was all torn up. I thought digging up all that rock would be the hard part, but after planting the bushes I had to clean all the dirt, grass and ground cover off the rocks before I put them back so the same thing wouldn't start happening again right away. After some trial and error, I ended up using my pressure washer and our mesh wrought iron patio table.
Also in January, I went to Las Vegas with my wife and her good friend. The hotel stay was covered just for attending a timeshare presentation which lasted a couple hours. While in Vegas we walked around the different casinos since they're so interesting to look at. They're almost like a theme park with no rides... although there is a roller coaster at one of the casinos. My wife and her friend played the slot machines a couple times and didn't win. I find slots to be the opposite of fun, so I opted not to participate. We also saw a Cirque du Soleil show called Zumanity which was really cool.
In February I won a couple gift cards just from donating platelets. I walked in for my appointment and was handed a little gift bag with balloons attached and was told I won a contest I didn't know was going on. The gift cards were for Fandango and some fancy fine dining restaurant called Clearie's. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to use those cards because the very next day I headed to Vallejo. My grandpa was in the hospital so I went to visit him and to help out my mom with getting him transferred to a care facility. I ended up stay until mid-March so I could help get him moved to a more permanent place after he got released from the care facility and to help get my grandma moved into an assisted living facility. When I finally made it home, we still couldn't use the gift cards as everything had just gone on lockdown due to this COVID-19 cornoavirus.
This month we had our overhead microwave oven replaced. It had been giving us issues off and on for a few months and it was like 20 years old so it was time. I also replaced our tiny low-watt countertop microwave with a bigger more powerful one I picked up at a local auction. I also got a DiskStation NAS (Network Attached Storage) at auction back in January so I could stop using external hard drives attached to our router as a makeshift NAS. I've picked up a lot of cool things at auctions for rock bottom prices. I'd recommend checking to see if there are any local auctions in your area.
