Ok. Having a cold sucks. It’s the kind of cold that isn’t bad enough to be incapacitating, but bad enough to make ones day miserable.

Today, I can knock two home-related things off of my to-do list. I think I improved the surface drainage system around my house. I had had problems with water getting into the basement, which made it wet and nasty down there. This only happened during a rain. I determined quite some time ago that the problem was that the gutter downspouts were directed into an old foundation drainage system which was, shall we say, leaky.

Solution: get corrugated black drainage piping (cost: $22 for a spool of 100’). and redirect water away from the house. I managed to do this before today’s big deluge hit. Result: the side of the house that was notorious for the leak was bone-dry. Yay, me!

Also: put down some 4 mil polyethylene sheeting in the earthen part of the basement. Hopefully, this should help dry things out a bit, since the earth is always somewhat damp. Camel crickets and black widow spiders were the only annoyance I had to face.

Now: it’s time for Vick’s Vapo-Rub and sleep.