Hot

For the record- It is HOT and Humid in our little corner of the world. I am thankful for our AC, ceiling fans, and popcicles :)

Summer Memories

Mom and I made homemade zucchini bread tonight. Wow does the house smell yummy. It sure does bring back happy memories of summers growing up.

Bachelor Days

Amelia is heading out for a few days, so you know what that means.... It's BACHELOR DAYS for this bald guy! Meals of pizza, pork rinds, beer and deep-fried lard! Unwashed dishes all over the house! Dirty clothes hanging from the ceiling fans! Movies of questionable content! Going to bed at 4AM and not getting my lazy butt out of bed until 10PM the next day! Work? Eh, who needs it? Not like Amelia's gonna know any different! She won't have Interwebnet access until she gets home, and by then, it'll be too late!

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

Sometimes.....

Sometimes it pays to be bald. Today was one of those days that made me want to rip my hair out.

First Harvest

After watering the garden tonight I picked our first tomato of the season. It was a little grape tomato. We also have 3 green peppers, 1 sweet pepper, and 2 zucchini that are ready to be picked. Another sign of summer is that we stopped at the farmers market tonight and got some homegrown corn. Looking forward to a big harvest in the coming months. Stay tune for our adventures in canning!

YAY!

IT'S HERE!

GAH!

Patience really isn't my strong suit.

My new toy is supposed to arrive today. I've been looking out the window for it all morning.

Nope. Patience isn't my strong suit. Still not here...

Visit with Gramps

Today we visited Tom's Gramps in his new digs (aka assisted living). He is much better than when we saw him a few months ago. The trick to the visit is to play Skip-Bo. This is a fun little card game for all ages. Tom was the lucky one today. He won both games.

Trip to Canal Park

An open letter to my beloved Akron Aeros:

To whom it may concern,

One of the great joys of my summer for the last ten years is enjoying Aeros baseball at Canal Park. The Aeros and the teams of the Eastern League provide a glimpse into the future of my favorite pasttime at a reasonable enough price that I can see several games per year. Add to that the fact that Canal Park is one of the most beautiful fields in minor league baseball, and every trip to see my beloved Aeros is a treasured experience, win or lose.

Now, one of the more important pieces of the whole baseball experience is the traditional "eating of the hotdogs". Hotdog consumption is deep seated in the traditions of our national pasttime, and is not something to be taken lightly. There is a correct way to consume the traditional hotdog: 1) slather as much brown mustard (never yellow) as the bun can hold over said hotdog, 2) pile on enough onions to hold the Canadians at bay, 3) eat and blow mustard/onion breath on your wife until she beats you with your own mitt. This is something that my father taught me, and, if I have a son of my own, I'll pass on to him. To my great shock and dismay, however, Canal Park is no longer providing fresh onions for condiments! The blasphemy! The heresy! The... the... ignominy! And to make matters worse, the onions have been replaced by some insipid concoction called Heinz (R) Chopped Onions. Oh, the humanity!

In all seriousness, even though my game got rained out, I enjoyed my trip to Canal Park. I don't get to see the Aeros as often as I used to since I moved to Columbus (against my will, I assure you, and I won't deign to root for the Clippers), but I still fondly follow the progress of my favorite team. Keep up the good work with the park and the team, and bring back the onions!

You'll of course remember my opinion on the subject of baseball food.

Oh yeah, the game itself got rained out. Bummer...

Joining the 21st Century

Coming to my doorstep sometime late this week or early next.... a new toy.

I'm a happy, happy boy :)

Idiot Update

I think I've gotten lucky. No itchies on my head this morning. Of course, the last rash took about a week to fully disclose itself, and I'm still on prednosone which might be muting any inflamation, so it's not a sure bet yet...

I Am An Idiot

Amelia and I were out in the back yard again tonight, finishing up a new bed we'd been working (slowly) on. The same one, you know, where I found poison sumac a few weeks ago. So, taking no chances, even though I didn't see anything even remotely reminiscent of what I'd seen last week, I donned gloves for the duration. After finishing that bed, we went about weeding some other beds around the yard, and there were a few things that did bear a passing resemblence to the itchy stuff. So, I very carefully pulled and immediately bagged everything, making sure that nothing came in contact with skin. We moved off to another bed where I pulled out some ivy, working up quite a sweat. So, I wiped the sweat off my face. With my gloved hand. The gloved hand that might possibly have come in contact with poison sumac.

I took a shower right after coming in, and I scrubbed my pate pretty hard. We'll see tomorrow if I was right about the poison sumac...

Superman Review Part 2

Yep, as noted by Amelia, we went to see Superman Returns last night. As she stated, Brandon Routh was a fine Man of Steel, though I didn't care much for Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor. While I understand that this movie was a sequel of sorts to Christopher Reeve's Superman II, I've been more enamored with the way Luthor was depicted in the WB's animated series, a good guy to the world at large, with his villany more subtle. The movie as a whole was fun, and I definitely am looking forward to a future installment.

Superman Review Part 1

Last night we went to see Superman Returns. Two thumbs up from this humble critic. I think my biggest concern was believing in Brandon Routh as Superman/Clark Kent. My memory of the character was of Christopher Reeve (Yes I am dating myself). Brandon did a fine job and I look forward to another Superman movie in the next few years.

I Learned Something

So, I learned something last week that I haven't yet shared. I learned all about Toxicodendron vernix, also known as Rhus vernix, ALSO known as Poison Sumac. What did I learn about it, you might ask? First off, I learned what it looks like. Second, I learned that it was growing in my back yard. Third, I learned that, unlike other members of the Toxicodendron species, I'm allergic to it. Tuesday evening, I was digging in the garden and pulled up a plant that I didn't recognize. Wednesday morning, I had a rash all over my right wrist and the top of my right hand. Thursday, it had spread to my left wrist and hand, had spread to my right shin, and had deepened on my right hand and wrist. Friday, things were worsening. Saturday, it started appearing at my belt line. By Monday, I couldn't take the itching any more and, while at Conneaut Lake on a family vacation, I ended up going to the emergency room in nearby Meadville (no urgent care facilities nearby) to get things looked at. The overwhelming response from the fine medical professionals was, "Bummer, dude..." Turns out that with as far as it had spread by that point, there was no point in giving me an injection, and no topical ointment they could prescribe was any better than the OTC hydrocortizone stuff I could buy at my local pharmacy. So they gave me a prescription for prednozone, collected my copay (OK, I had to remind them to do that), and sent me on my way.

Today, things are still spreading. The patch around my belt line has wrapped nearly all the way around my back. While the prednozone has made some of the redness go away, I've got more bumps than before. And, best of all, I'm only half way through the episode. The fine medical professionals in Meadville let me know that I could expect this pleasantness to last about two weeks in total. Lovely.

The really sucky thing is that I've given it to Amelia, too. She's really happy, as you can imagine. She's being a champ, though. At least she hasn't tossed me out on my ear yet :P

Pavlov's Cat

We got our two cats from the humane society when they were 9 months old. In our house we feed, them dry cat food. However, I do believe that at one time in their lives they were fed food out of a can. For lunch today, I had a bowl of soup. Campbell’s now has the easy open tab cans. It must sound exactly like a can of cat food opening up. I was in the kitchen all by myself. In a flash two cats come running in and being very vocal on what was for lunch. I find it amazing what they remember.

Neighbors Yard 1, Bald Man Tom 0

Now, we're not the best yard keepers in the world, but our neighbor hasn't done anything with his in at least the amount of time since we've lived here. The big issue is that there's lots of wild stuff growing along and through our fence, and there's one near the front of the fence that we have to keep trimmed back or we can't get out of our back yard.

Today, among other yard tasks, was "Hack Back the Neighbor's Jungle" day. We were going along pretty well, mostly just whacking at stuff that had grown through the chain link, with the occasional "preemptive strike" when it happened. I reached across to pull up a big chunk of stuff, and something in the chunk refused to budge. Deciding that I needed to exert my dominance over said stuff, I pulled with all of my might. My back took a holiday. It was at that point that I realized that the particular "chunk of stuff" included a sapling tree. It wasn't going anywhere.

So, here I sit, taking a dose of pain reliever every few hours. Time to break out the corn bag again, methinks...

Coming This Summer...

Tune in, yo!

Questions, Questions...

I need to learn how to ask questions.

I've come to this conclusion over the last several days, having conversations with various co-workers. I'll ask questions, such as, "what is the default value for this flag supposed to be?" and get a response like, "well, if it looks like a bug, file it." Thanks, how can I do that? I don't know what's supposed to happen, so I can't tell when something is wrong. Or, there was a situation where an intern asked me about what a particular menu item does. Now, the menu item in question appears to me to be from a custom package, but since I'm still learning my way around, I asked the local expert whether or not the package was custom or default. And got a dissertation that had nothing to do with the default-ness of the package.

These aren't isolated instances, either. I'm wondering if it has to do with the training levels of the people with whom I'm interacting. Many of the folk around here have doctorates, and those are the people that most often fail to answer the questions I ask. Devs give me a black-and-white answer to a black-and-white question, or explain to me why a question really isn't black-and-white (I love my Devs). Everyone else assumes that I'm asking a multispectral question and never gets around to actually giving me the info I need. Heaven knows I'm not a black-and-white kind of guy, but this is ridiculous!

Signs of Summer

Tom and I were out working in the garden this evening. We have blossoms on our zucchini, tomatoes and peppers. I am very excited over the zucchini. We tried to grow one two years ago and it died.. this year is looking promising.