April 2 - john, joyce and their best friends, jerry and gail, went to dinner at McCormick and Schmits Seafood Restaurant on The Plaza this evening. It is a beautiful restaurant with a large stained glass dome and has very good food. Afterwards they decided to walk around The Plaza. There is a Segway Store right near the restaurant where you can ride a Segway "People Mover" for 10 minutes for $5.00. For those not "in the know" a Segway is somewhat like a scooter you stand upright on while holding on to two handle bars. If you put your weight forward the Segway moves forward by how far you lean. Same in reverse. To turn you rotate a handle bar grip on the right handle bar. It is a pretty intutive device which you get the hang of very fast. There was one thing john had trouble with. The grip must be rotated in reverse when going backward. This takes concentration. The Segway costs in excess of $4000 to purchase and the salesperson said they sell about one a day. john says he doesn't see that many Segways on the sidewalks of Greater Kansas City. With over 60 percent of the people in the U.S. obese and in need of walking, john doesn't see why someone would buy one. john also doesn't know where you park a Segway while you are shopping. Do you chain it up like a bike? However, john did enjoyed riding the Segway People Mover.

April 3 - john and joyce bought 3 dwarf Alberta Spruce for $8 each and 2 larger ones for $20 each at Wal-Mart today. john almost got the large waterfall running today, but needs another tube of Magic-Lube to seal the lid on a filter for one pump. The weather is great.

April 4 (3:17 AM) - john is having trouble sleeping and is up reading Robert Heinlein's "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls". The Pope died two days ago. Even though john is Buddhist, he had a great respect for the great man who could speak many languages and who helped bring an end to the Cold War.

April 11 - Here are a couple of sayings john is adding to the humor list:

In olden days it was safer to drink beer than water. (They didn't yet know about germs and how to kill them and so water often contained disease.) This resulted in the consumption of large volumes of beer, usually drunken at a tavern. The beer was ordered in pints and quarts. Whenever a bartender thought one had too much beer to drink he would tell the client "to mind your pints and quarts". You guessed it! The phase was soon shortened "to mind you p's and q's."

Another phase developed when the beer maker would test to see if the mash was too hot to add yeast. He would drip his thumb into the vat and if he didn't burn his thumb it was safe to add the yeast. This procedure soon became known as "the rule of thumb".

April 15 - Beware of the Ides of April - taxes are due here in the U.S. today!

Yesterday john got the large waterfall flowing again. A PVC pipe in his bubble bead filter had become uncoupled. It had fallen to the bottom of the filter somewhere in the half billion bubble beads. Last winter, john just shut off the waterfall and decided to deal with the problem in the spring. He put some water to float the bubble beads and took a "grabber" (like fireplace tongs) and found the pipe and reconnected it. At first the water wasn't flowing well over the falls and john thought he was going to have to empty the 30,000 pond to clean the bottom drains. Then he realized that the filter was probably not backflushed so he did that and all is well.

john took receipt of 200 large blocks weighing 22,000 pounds yesterday. This will be used to finish the top of the back of the large waterfall and to provide a retaining wall to prevent dirt from falling against a neighbor's fence and rotting it out. This is also behind the large waterfall and this area should become quite beautiful.

Somewhere within 1/4 mile from zenpond a mother Mallard is sitting on her nest with over a dozen eggs under her. Around the first of May, those eggs will hatch. She will almost immediately lead her new ducklings to zenpond where john will have the gate ajar waiting for her. She will march all 14 ducklings straight into the large pond. She will end up raising about 4 of those ducklings to maturity there. These young ducks will then begin to practice flying by first swimming (jet skiing) fast across zenpond. Then they will begin to climb on the big waterfall and jump off and "fly" across the pond and hit the far side because they don't know how to put on the breaks yet. Finally they will improve their skills and in October fly away to later raise a family of their own. Such is Life.

April 22 - All the large blocks have been moved to the backyard and john and Eddy have built up the top of the waterfall. A number of the blocks had to be split in half because they were too close to the gunite back of the waterfall. john isn't sure just yet how he will fill in the gap between the block wall and the gunite. He is experimenting with expandable foam. He may see if he can purchase the foam in larger quantities than what you can buy at Home Depot. It rained overnight and this morning, so john and Eddy are having a day off today. john drove out to Heartland Nursery and purchased some more Pholox and Silver Mound for one of the gardens surrounding the large pond.

For about the last four or five days a mother Mallard has spent alot of time at zenpond. If she disappears for awhile, john figures she will be the one to bring her "kids" to zenpond in May.

April 26 - Perhaps you are seeing the mother duck nesting next to The White House in Washington D.C. on the national news. john is glad to see that someone knows that Mom will walk her ducklings up to 1/4 mile to nearby water (See April 15). Unfortunately, it looks like the nearest water is on The White House grounds and Mom & kids do not have a White House Pass (where is a lobbyist, PAC or congressman when you need one!). She and her family are always welcome at zenpond.