my driveway can beat up your driveway

Normally I try to post every weekday, even if nothing's happening. I usually have a store of pictures from stuff we did over the weekend that I can use, or I write a tutorial on something. Sometimes, though, stuff just happens. We both got sick over the weekend -- I have an ear infection, he's got some horrible sort of sore throat - headache - coughing thing -- and have been rather the worse for wear. So I apologize for not posting, but I had a good excuse. Liberal applications of ice cream and chicken soup are forthcoming, as I went to the grocery store for that express purpose after work today.

So, to make up for my negligence, I thought I'd show you all my new four thousand dollar driveway.



It's lovely, isn't it? Our original driveway was lumpy and incomplete, for a very good reason. Many years ago, Pop-Pop Brinkley was accosted by a gentleman who, seeing his unpaved driveway, inquired whether he might be interested in having the leftover asphalt from the parking lot the gentleman's company was paving a couple of blocks away. Pop-Pop pondered, then said yes. So the nice asphalt men came and cheerily dumped a giant mountain of steaming tar on the driveway. Clan Brinkley mustered, armed with rakes and shovels and what-have-you, and they proceeded to do the best they could to spread out the mountain into some semblance of a paved driveway. For a bunch of people with rakes, they did a good job.

But by the time we bought the house, the weeds had managed to find their way onto the driveway, into the spaces that had been left unpaved. The uneven pavement was cracked and lumpy, and it was all rather seedy looking. But getting a new driveway was hardly a priority -- after all, I still don't have a working dryer or a fully functional stovetop! We planned to leave it until we had finished other, more important things. Then Don got laid off, and began his campaign of therapeutic demolition. One day, while he was out wrestling with the chain link fence that lined the driveway, a man in a truck pulled up and leaned out the window to ask -- you guessed it -- if Don wanted the leftover asphalt from a parking lot they were paving up the street!

Needless to say, we had no intention of breaking out the rakes and shovels, but the man assured us that they would actually pave the driveway, giant rolling presser-downer-thing and all. Hurrah! We agreed, and they came and paved the first two-thirds of the driveway with the leftover asphalt, and told us they'd come back the next day to finish up. They charged us half of what they would normally charge for paving, and threw in the sealant coat for free to thank us for taking the leftover asphalt off of their hands (normally they charge four dollars per square foot; we got it for two, and the sealant would have cost thirty-five cents per square foot if we hadn't gotten it for free -- and yes, still spending four thousand dollars after that steep discount means our driveway is very, very long!).

So, our unexpected driveway turned out quite nicely. And the plus side for the friendly asphalt man? The day after our paving was completed, we spotted our neighbors standing by the side of our new driveway and examining it -- and two days after that, three houses on our street sported new driveways!