Field Trip, Man madness, and a book meme

I got a whole mess of random for you today. I'll start with the knitblogger backyarn field trip that I learned about at Knitting Interrupted. I'm a bit late, but I think we're ok. I'm going to show you around my rather small backyard. Now, my backyard is a mess. When we moved into this house a year ago, we discovered that we had some trouble with a couple trees and drainage. Nothing we did could save the lawn in the backyard. Add that with RM's lack of will and time to work on the backyard, and we end up with a mess. It's a mess that the kids can still play in, but it's not attractive. So the views I have for you of the backyard are heavily edited. We have a long and thin backyard. The previous owners have a lot of shrubs and trees that ouline a lawn in the middle, but the whole thing is at a bit of a slant, thus all the rain water ends up keeping one section of our lawn rather wet. I do like our backyard though. We did a lot of landscaping on our last house, which has quite a sizeable front and backyard. It's nice to only worry about this small space. We'd like to relandscape, take some trees out, fix the drainage, and redo the lawn. Eventually we'll replace the wood deck we have too. I don't have pics of that as it is covered in kid toys. All this discussion of the yard brings me to some man madness, specifically RM's brand of crazy. RM is a handy guy. He is rather good at fixing things. If he had more time, he could probably finish many home improvement projects. Now having said that, every home improvement project that he embarks upon always bring up problems that he doesn't expect. These problems bring about much gnashing of teeth. He then works even harder at making the project work because, "He's going to win! He's going to beat the (insert home project here). This weekend he's had a project he's been working on. Nothing has gone as planned. Gnashing of teeth has ensued. Querying children, curious about why daddy is holding a drill and has a crazed look on his face are told that he, "is on a mission from God." (Blues Brothers fans will understand this reference.) Please reassure me that I'm not the only one living with this brand of crazy. Please. And now for the book meme. I've read this meme on several blogs now and thought I'd share too! Feel free to answer this meme if you'd like 1) Name 5 of your favorite books: The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead, Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I could go on. I love lots of books. 2) What was the last three book I bought. Hmmm... I honestly can't remember. I've Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress recently. 3) What's the last book I read? I finished the Knit the Classics February selection, Woman at the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Actually this may have been the last book I bought... 4) Name three books I've been dying to read. Well, I've got way more than 3 that I could list here. I really want to read Anna Karenina, Son of a Witch, and Outlander. Oscars are tonight! You know where I'll be while knitting.