It's too darned hot!

I shouldn't complain. It's been a pretty nice summer so far, temperature-wise. But this week with heat indicies well over 100 degrees and actual ambient air tempatures either flirting with or hitting the 100 degree mark... I have just one word.

Pleah!

My car's in the shop this week getting the dent fixed and new front tires. We're staying indoors as much as possible. The big news is that Aunt Pat stopped at our oasis on her way back from Colorado and we had a nice visit. I'm afraid we wore her out Saturday & Sunday, though, as she & Sam went golfing. In the heat. We actually went with them Sunday. First time I'd ever been on a golf course. Eh. I could enjoy it I suppose. Definitely on a cooler day. But I played paparatzi and took photos instead. Imagine that.

Sam took this one of Aunt Pat and me, which turned out pretty nice I think.

Other than the golf, our visit was pretty low-key. But that's kinda the way we are, normally. Vicki and Aunt Pat played cards & dominoes, and we talked. Sat out on the deck in the evenings for "Cocktail Hour" (hey, I think I'm going to like retirement ... but that's a ways off).

She left yesterday morning, after a scare with Dad (her brother) -- he thought maybe he had another leg blood clot, but apparently it's just complications from his valve problem in his legs. His blood thickness test came back fine. So I guess chinese silkworm stomach enzymes DO work.

We've decided on, probably, the Maroon Bells/Snowmass Wilderness area this September -- going to go see the mountains with their Aspens on. Might be a little nippy at night, so I'm thinking about maybe one of those catalytic tent heaters. Still need to find a good camping location there.

In other news, I'm having a little dispute with an Ebay seller over a replacement cell phone I ordered over a month ago. Their feedback is generally very good. I did note that the negative comments seem to be poor communication when the product is defective. Well mine was defective, and I'm experiencing the same thing. I shipped it back to them. I used the post office's Track & Confirm. Post Office said it was delivered almost a month ago. They say they don't have it and want me to get proof that the post office delivered it to the correct address.

Now I suppose it is possible that they did not, but that possibility is extremely remote. Judging by their carelessness in correspondence (ignoring several emails over the past two weeks), I think it's much more likely that they got it and misplaced it. At any rate, I'm out $66 if they don't agree that they got it, I guess. Even if I did insure it, as far as the post office is concerned it was delivered, so it wouldn't matter.

So if it doesn't work out, I guess the lesson is get signature confirmation on these things. But I was unhappy enough about having to pay return postage on it, much less add on signature confirmation.

Well, stay tuned on that one.

General Stuff

That last post chronicled Vicki's and my visit with Sam out at his pond on the first, and then a visit with much of the Leith clan at Mom & Dad's on the 4th (I think Ryan and Kristie made it in there, too, from Sunday evening). Aunt Pat came up from Florida to visit everyone so we used that as an excuse to gather. Cousin Dawn and her husband Marty came down (Dawn still takes a good picture, doesn't she?) Julie and Guy, and Uncle Eddie and our other Aunt Pat. Tom, Betty, Joel, Jeff.... I had fun with Jeff playing a few tunes on the guitar and dulcimer. Jeff "gets" music theory better than I do and picked up the dulcimer pretty quickly.

I took Monday off and patched woodpecker holes on the back of the house and re-painted that whole side of the house -- most of it was on the chimney. We need concrete siding. Well, I did use autobody putty for the patching material. That's pretty hard stuff. Anyway it looks much better now.

Last Thursday we went down to Cooper's Landing. It was a beautiful evening, and my guitar instructor Lee Ruth was playing and I'd never seen him perform. He plays a lot of river songs, and his own songs have a certain warm quirkiness about it that matches his voice well. The sunset over the river was beautiful, and provided some good light on Lee which just completed the picture -- I think I was able to capture the mood quite well. I love the sunlight on his old Martin -- I think it's a D-18, and it's probably about 50 years old and it shows it. The sunlight helps visually marry the two subjects and might give an idea of what it sounded like as well.

There's a trailer-kitchen down there, like those you find at a fair where this Thai lady cooks up Thai food... we had Thai BBQ, which frankly tasted a lot like American BBQ. Not that that's a bad thing. There was a nice Thai cucumber salad, though, with hot peppers in it that was unique and went well with the ribs.

Let's see, I added a couple of shelves to the workbench in the garage to stash things like my coffee cans of random fasteners and some odd tools in boxes -- hole saw, mitre box saw -- things that don't hang well on peg board or take up too much room in a toolbox drawer.

Sarah and Mark & family just got back from Colorado, and she sent pictures because she is cruel and heartless and loves to taunt me. Actually, I appreciate hearing from an old friend and I always appreciate mountain pictures. She and I go back to our college days where I spent my time unfortunately too captivated by her roommate to fully appreciate her. She helped me through a fairly rough period in my life after I graduated and was always a good friend. It's good to have her in my life again, however peripherally. And she seems to share our love for the mountains. *sigh* Mountains. (Photo by Sarah)

Vicki and I went through pictures this weekend, culling ones we didn't want anymore and organizing some of the rest. I went through my old ones and found a few pictures of Sarah in College. She was always very photogenic -- and then there was me. So here's a gooofball shot of us back then. (I'm pretty sure I was pointing her face at the camera so she wouldn't hide it). Yeah. The cute one is Sarah, in case you're wondering.

We also ran across this great old one of Vicki with quite the glamorous hair do. Never knew she ever had it that way. And she said all the guys were after her roommate. Huh. Strange guys. I saw her room mate and I know which one I would've picked (hint, I'd remain in a married state if I told you).

Last night I decided it was time to fix the drip edge/gutter situation in front of the garage. Whoever installed it installed the gutter on the wrong side, and a lot of water from the roof ended up running down behind the gutter, causing an annoying cascade out front whenever it rained. Taking it apart was cake, but I soon figured out why they did it that way (no, it was still wrong but they did it that way because they were too lazy to fix the problem and do it right). The drip edge was longer than the gutter and wouldn't fit inside. So I had to cut it. I still had quite a bit of trouble getting it back up behind the drip edge and had to have Vicki come out and suffer the 100% (not exaggerating!) humidity and mosquitoes. It was only about 73 degrees outside, but the dewpoint was also 73 and absolutely no sweat would evaporate. It was not raining and yet I was very quickly drenched. Needless to say, a shower was in order after that ordeal. But it's done (except I need to re-patch a seam on the corner with some caulk when the gutter dries out.)

4th Weekend Photo Essay

If a picture paints a thousand words, then you've got a LOT of reading ahead of you.

Another lovely weekend

This weekend we took of for Olathe to visit the Groves. Cami was having her girl party over at Rita's, so Vicki went there. Mark and I stayed back with the kids. Tossed the ball around with Nathanial. Looked at lots of stuff Cassie wanted us to look at.... went to the pool. Mark was smoking pork ribs (which it turns out are very difficult to get in your pipe and harder to light ;-) ). We played the guitars and sat around and talked. Beer? Of course!

It rained some at the pool ... but that always reminds me of the old Dennis the Menace cartoon "But we came here to get wet!" as his parents are dragging him off a rainy beach to the car. It didn't rain much, but we headed back around 3:00 or so.

Cami had bought a mountain dulcimer on clearance at Walmart. I've wanted to get one for a while now but I didn't want to pay $100 for one -- which is about what the less expensive ones often go for. Well this one was clearanced for $30. So I hoofed it up there and scored one. On my way back, the skies opened up and we got some pretty heavy rain. Anyway, the dulcimer sounds pretty good. And, it doesn't have hearts for sound holes!!!!!!

The ribs were great. John and his father Don (John and Jutta live next door -- and Jutta was at the girl party) came over and ate with us. Mark read the first chapter of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" to the kids, and they went to bed. The girls got back around 11:00. We stayed up until around 1:00.

Didn't do much Sunday. The weather was beautiful -- a strong cold front was what triggered Saturday's rain, so the relief from the heat was welcomed. Left for home around 2:00. Then there was this made-for-tv AMC western on, a new one a-la "Open Range". This one is "Broken Trail" starring and produced by Robert Duvall. Same idea as "Open Range" (Which he was also in). It's good. Part II is on tonight!

(Nathanial making goofy faces.)

Weekend

We went and hung out with Sam at his place to hang by his pond, play guitars, drink, talk, and listen to the night sounds of the country.

No whipoorwills :-( Lots of bullfrogs, though. Just ask Vicki.

First he took us to see a cabin he has access to on a large pond near his house. Nice place (that's part of the cabin lake to the left there.) Anyway, we went to Heur's for dinner and had catfish. Vicki got pie to have for breakfast.

Unfortunately, we forgot the pie when we left. So we went back for it the next morning -- and went to Huer's for breakfast ;-)

Both Angela and Kevin were out of town, so we took care of Mia (Potato) for them. I went in the morning and of course brought the new camera along. I tried working her out with the ball. She's called Mia Potato because she is about the shape and color of a potato.

Saturday afternoon I painted the side of our house that faces the unfriendly neighbors -- who suddenly moved out of our "cracker" (their words) neighborhood a couple weekends ago. I took the opportunity to get on the deck next door and paint that wall, which needed it very badly. And a bill collector showed up looking for them yesterday, and he also brought along an eviction notice. Well!

Anyway, I spent most of yesterday working on the ozone generator -- making it smaller (and fixing a short while I was at it) and less unattractive.

I also managed to re-injure my left middle finger while playing guitar last night. It's the same one that got smashed by a log months ago. I probably re-tore or shredded the tendon. I should have stopped playing the moment it started hurting, but I played on for about 2 minutes. Bad move. It hurts pretty bad today. Hard to type.

Kristin had an exciting weekend. She'd gone down to Farmington for a wedding shower, then back up here for a benefit picnic Saturday, back down to the lake Sunday to meet some friends (apparently she knows Dourty here from work as he's married to Blaine's sister Jill) and ... well, she shattered a glass in her hand when it slipped and she grabbed it tighter, cutting HER left middle finger. Then Sunday Blaine lost his keys in the lake... her purse was locked in his car... with her keys ... and her cell phone. She came back up here last night with some friends while Blaine et. al retrieved their cars. She had about 3 weekends worth of trouble in 1, poor girl. What's the term? "A series of unfortunate events."

Well, I'll leave you with this picture of Sam's dog "Beagle", who hung at the pond with us Saturday night.

New Toy

It's here.

A Pentax *ist DL with a Tamron 28-300 mm lens. A digital SLR. Nice. Hefty. Very, very flexible.

Still learning the ins and outs of it. It does have a cool "continuous shooting mode" which helped me get this shot of Vicki coming across the street to the neighbors house where I was doing a little show and tell. (I had to muck her right arm in PaintShop Pro because there was a car mirror partially obscuring her lower arm and part of her hand.) But it's a great picture of her.

Took Ev to the KC airport Tuesday and while there went to lunch with Mark. He showed me around his company's new building, (pretty nice!) and we went to lunch at the Peanut. Had some awesome hot wings.

I dropped by Cummins tools on the way back to get a scope for my pellet rifle. The sites aren't real good on it. They had one for $7. Perfect. And while I was there they had a 7x7 American Camper tent that weighs, from what I can tell, about 4 lbs and 10 or so oz -- perfect for two people lightweight backpacking. Rolls up very compact.

Went to Maguey's with the Williams' & Daryl last night for dinner. Back home of course I played with my camera some more. And they're re-surfacing the concrete surface on Providence -- working nights. Right now they're scoring the road with some heavy machinery, I assume to help the asphalt stick. It's a slow process, and we could hear the machinery all night long last night as they were working right up the hill from our house.

Well, that's it for now. Hopefully I'll have some tasteful pictures from the new toy in the coming weeks.

What up wid' da flipster

I've been very lax posting.

Well, let's see. Last weekend (weekend before this past one) I helped Ryan finish the siding on his house. That project, I'm glad to say, is done. fin. He rented a man lift -- probably weighs in exess of 10,000 lbs. It needed to, to counterbalance the long arm. It made the job a lot easier, but we did rut up the yard a bit. Ryan and his dad fixed it this past weekend.

I also got the deck all straightened and the waterers in the vegetable garden going.

This weekend we went down to Warsaw for Kristin's wedding shower -- no, I didn't go to the shower. Hung out with her dad (John) instead. I went down to the Truman Dam visitor's center where her brother Brian works overlooking Truman Dam, which divides Truman Reservoir from Lake of the Ozarks. Checked out the view there and read some of the historical stuff and watched a little thing on how the generators & flood control works. Then I went down to look at some log cabins and an old home that's been preserved on the grounds.

The one log cabin was about 12x12 -- MAYBE 15x15, with a stone fireplace and a table, then a loft upstairs for sleeping. Makes you realize how rich and spoiled we are. Apparently that place comes alive during Heritage Days in the fall -- there's only the two cabins and a smokehouse, but it looks like they're building a third. Sounds neat.

John was out showing his new boss around town trying to find him and his family a place to rent -- and they were successful. So he was flyin' high the rest of the day. We went to the car show across the street in the park and looked at cars. He knew a lot of folks -- first of all, everyone in town knows him, and second -- he's a bit of a car enthusiast and that helped as well.

It was hot. We didn't spend more than about 45 minutes there. Went back and helped tote Kristin (& Brian's, I guess) haul back to the house -- from next door, where the shower actually was. Then John whipped up some fantastic BBQ and we had a good time visiting.

Mom's down for the shower -- I take her to the airport tomorrow to fly back to Fort Wayne.

Wednesday I get my windshield replaced. Thursday I go to traffic court for my accident, what, 6 weeks ago? Busy week. Somewhere in there I need to solve some server problems and split some services out to at least one more server at work.

I bit the bullett and ordered a new digital camera. Got a digital SLR. A Pentax *ist DL with a Tamron 28-300 AF lens (that translates to about a 40-450mm equivalent in relation to 35mm). That's what, about a 20x optical zoom? It should be here tomorrow. But I think I'm going to want a wide angle lens for "big" scenes. But to get started, I decided to go with one lens that will cover 99% of what I want to do. It's not here yet, but it should be tomorrow. I'll pick it up on my way home.

My Olympus C720 UZ had a serious dusty lens problem. I'd taken it to Columbia Photo to ask what I should do. They said they could ship it off to Olympus, but that they'd charge $100 minimum no matter what. So I posted to Steve's Digicams Olympus forum and asked what my options were. One guy replied with a link to a series of pictures walking you through taking a C700 UZ apart. It turns out that it's not too hard to remove the front lens. Most of the dust was between the two elements in the front lens, and I managed to carefully pry that apart and get the dust out and put it all back together. That will still be a good camera to take places I don't want to take the bulky SLR to. Plus it has a nice builtin flash. It's a 3MP camera. The new one's a 6.1

I still have a table to re-finish sitting in the garage. Hacked back the trumpet vine last weekend. Um... Well, nothin' else too exciting going on. Ken and the boys (including Scott) are up in Canada for a weeks' fishing on their own (for a week) private lake about 150 miles from nowhere with a cabin. Sounds like lots of fun. John showed me a picture he took a few years ago when he was up with his dad and brother doing the same thing. It was gorgeous. I'm gonna need to do that sometime.

So, that's it. Go back to your regularly scheduled surfing.

An Over Arching View

Well, I finally did it. After growing up within about 70 or 80 miles of it, living in St. Louis a couple of summers, spending a summer there as a kid, actually walking up to it a few times and visiting the museum once -- I went up to the top of The Arch.

It's not that I was afraid to go -- just never really had a real good chance, except for the time I went to the museum, and nobody else wanted to go up. I didn't want to go up myself and have people waiting for me.

We went to visit Honey & Ray, Sam's mom and stepfather in Breese Illinios friday night. Just hung out. Went to dinner, watched the end of Iwo Jima and the beginning of Sgt. York. Memorial Day weekend, you know. They went on down to Evansville Saturday, and we came back home, but on the way I decided that the Arch would be on the agenda. We spent a little time at the top. It was relatively crowded, and the windows aren't that good. Got a good feel for it, though. Oddly, the city side was more interesting that the less populated Illinois side & River. I thought it would be prettier -- trees, water. Turns out big casinos and parking lots aren't really that attractive. I did get a nice shot of the new Bush Stadium and one of the water in the big muddy.

Did you know vinca blooms? I didn't. But ours is. Not that it should be surprising, but it's known as a greenery plant, not a flowering one. Not that the flowers aren't pretty... but ... there's only one on the whole plant, and I'm not lookin' for another. Still, here it is, just for proof.

We went on the float trip last week. Didn't seem like it went long enough. But Brian and Kristin came down with us, and we set up our little mini tent city and did just a Bay to Alley float on the Jacks Fork river. With an hour of fooling around, it still only took us about 4.5 hours to do the float. The river was up slightly and a bit faster than normal. There were a couple of unfortunate spills -- and unfortunately Kristin caught the worst of both of them. But she's pretty good natured, and she wasn't hurt.

It rained Sunday morning for a few hours and we had to break down in the rain, first time I'd ever had to do that. So we had to set the tents back up when we got home to dry out. Ours leaked a little (first time this tent had been rained on) -- I never seam sealed the rain fly. Apparently it needed it. I'd done the rest of the tent before. It didn't leak much, maybe a whole cup of water in 3 or 4 hours.

We did well on the float. Vicki let me do most of the steering and apparently I do know what I'm doing on the river ;-)

Got the water heater part and replaced it yesterday. So no more leaking. Also helped Ryan put up more siding. Next weekend we have to finish because he's renting a man lift for 1 weekend and we'll need it to finish the high parts on both sides.

Today I got the house vaccuumed and cleaned some spots in the carpet. And tomorrow, need to set up the automatic irrigation system for the deck plants and garden.

Well, I'll leave you with this river pic.

Things

The water heater part is ordered, but it hasn't arrived yet. New output pipe. It started leaking again. About a gallon a day.

Let's see, what else? Had a minor traffic accident last week. Fender bender, mostly mine. My fault, too. Well, I've been driving what, almost 27 years now. First one I've been involved in that it was my fault. Needed to turn around and look one last time before I went. Didn't think I needed to for some reason. But I needed to. And I didn't. So... that'll be a $500 deductible. You can hardly ding your car anymore without spending $500.

Went and got Mom last week (I usually call her "mother" here to distinguish from my mom, so "mother") from Fort Wayne. She spent the week. Her birthday was Monday, and we had the boys and their girlfriends over.

We also went to the new Buckingham's BBQ place later in the week. Nice place, and good food as always -- but their horseradish slaw wasn't ... well, it was hard to tell if it had any in it. It used to be real good and hot. He should keep some "hot" around for those of us who like it.

I weeded out the garden and put tar paper over it, hoping to kill the other weeds. I'll probably leave it there and put the drip irrigators through it to water each individual plant. I was going to get some horse stuff or goat stuff from Mom and Dad's, but I didn't.

Went out to Mom and Dad's for the annual Mother's Day Dinner (this year it was American, * yeah!) I brought apple and cherry pies we made here last Saturday. Vicki and Mother stayed here and had the boys over for brunch and an afternoon. Tom and Betty brought ribs, Jeff brought potato salad, Joel brought carrot salad. We had a nice afternoon. Jeff brought his Taurus 40 Ten for show and tell. It's a pistol that shoots 45 LC's and 410 shotgun shells. A real crowd pleaser. Apparently it works well for dispatching copperheads. Anyway, with this cool puddle of air that has settled over the midwest and most of the east for the past week I had brought my tan fleece jacket. I think I left it there.

But the cool puddle needs to move out for this weekend's float trip/camping trip. Ryan & Kristie, of course US, and Brian and Kristin are going. Didn't think Kevin and Angela would want to go -- but apparently they sounded like they might've wanted to. So we'll have to make sure they get in on it next time. Angela's feeling a bit under the weather anyway.

We're getting the gear together. My new tripod grill you hang over your campfire... tents, sleeping bags, and stuff. We always have a good time down there.

Well, time for bed.

Hasta.

Blowout

For the last year we've changed our diet so that we go heavier on the protien and lighter on the carbs. Makes for a healthier us.

Well, one of my staple short-cut breakfasts consists mainly of two eggs in a coffee cup, having been previously sprayed with cooking spray ... a little salt & pepper, and stick 'em in the microwave for a couple or few minutes on medium-low and you get something like poached eggs. I did, however, occasionally have problems with them exploding due to steam buildup inside the eggs, and I started stirring them first after that. That seemed to break up any serious vapor barriers, at least at lower power.

But then you get something more like a cross between scrambled and poached, and this morning, I decided I wanted something more like poached again.

So I didn't stir. Put them in for 4:00 on 30% power... and they weren't quite done. Sometimes when this happens I just turn it on 100% for a few more seconds to finish it off.

I decided to do that this morning. Only I punched in 30 seconds. I had something to do on the deck for a few seconds so I went out there.

Excactly 29 seconds into the cook time, I hear this loud FOOM! and the clatter of the coffee cup on the glass turntable. Usually that amounts to a little spatter but mostly everything's still intact. But this was louder than usual.

I went back inside, and saw that the explosion had blown the microwave door open! There were a couple tiny bits of egg left in the cup. So I figured that steam had pushed the egg up to (and maybe out of) the top of the cup so the egg was not constrained anymore by the cup and it was all explosion.

After I regained my composure from laughing and a little disbelief.... I took this picture.

Egg coated every interior surface of the microwave.

Yes, sweetie, I did clean it up. :-)

Take a Hike

Last weekend R&K called up and wanted to know if we wanted to go hiking out at Gans Creek. Vicki wasn't feeling well, so I went, and we coaxed Daryl along as well. Haven't been out there in many years.

This is a good time of year for such a hike. Lots of flowers out, and the trees are just greening up nicely. It's not hot or humid yet, and the bugs aren't out in full force yet either.

Ryan wanted to try out his new backpack and see how it felt. He also got one of those nifty Eureka Solitaire lightweight backpacking tents I've been looking at for about a year now. At 2 lbs, 9 oz, it's a pretty light little bugger. My WalMart Ozark Trails "Kids" tent that I used is about 8 oz heavier. Has a lot more room though. But condensation problems because my face ends up too close to the tent wall ( I sleep diagonally in it -- the corner runs about 8-10" above my face.) Still, 8 oz is 8 oz. Hmmmm...

I got tomatoes, peppers, & flowers this weekend to get the deck decked out and the veggie garden started. I'll need some good manure for the veggies. Maybe I'll try to scare some up out at mom & dad's in a couple of weeks.

And in insane news, Ryan and I have started working out again... in the morning. So now the alarm is set for 5:30 am, and I go across the street and do weight training with him. Well it's nice to have it out of the way so you don't have to do it when you get home. Which leaves more time for.... Beer!!! And other stuff we need to get done. Like changing my oil the other night.

Got a Weider Max Ultra home gym for Vicki (well, for me, too -- but it's in lieu of Vicki's gym membership). It's like a bowflex, but it doesn't have as small a storage footprint. Still, it was half the price... maybe less than that. So I've also been playing coach Phil when I get home. I continue to work out with Ryan though, on the free weights in the morning. She's doing well on it.

A crack has developed in my windshield. Grrrr. Too long to repair, too. So... that'll be $220.

What else, what else? Going to go pick up Vicki's mom tomorrow... bring her back Saturday -- so I'll have one weekend day at home. It's for her birthday and Mothers' day. Larry's going to lend us his slide projector so we can look at old slides from Vicki's parents. I looked at a few of young Vicki last night (like at 6 years old). Man, what a cutie!