Patio madness

You'd never think that something as innocuous as a backyard patio would be enough to send me into a limited form of psychosis. This is a project we started last spring (I mean spring of '07 people) and JUST finished today. It started as a "hey, lets clean out that big space of garbage in the back where the retards that lived here before us dumped thier trash... " and our refusal to spend money for someone else to do what we could do eventually. Literally, cleared it away ourselves (that was a three person, day-long job) measured it out, rented a stump grinder to remove old tree stumps, Mark dug the hole, read up on it, bought gravel, bought stone dust, put said gravel and stone dust in the hole (yeah, why do we dig a hole just so we can fill it up again?). That stone dust, and the unfinished hole in the yard, stayed like that from October to spring time '08. Then we ordered the stones, scheduled the delivery, then had to re-schedule the delivery because the place was short a truck, then had to send the second delivery back because they brought the wrong stuff. Then we forced Brian into slave labor to help with the stones, which we later found out weren't enough to cover the space. ARRGGGG. Go back to order more stones, they don't have them. Go back again, they don't have them. Call a week later. Call again. Finally order stones and have them delivered. Mark was able to work on it today finally... as the hurricane was starting. That brave soul stayed out to do this project in the pouring rain until it was done. Sixteen months later... we have a patio. And it looks pretty good. And yes, I know this seems like the ramblings of a bored suburban idiot, but puh-leeze, it was enough to drive anyone crazy.