Hot, Hot, Hot....

Hot and humid, 95 with 87% humidity today with the forecast of even hotter temperatures predicted for the next few days. Hit lower 90’s last for days Reminds me of the summer’s nights as a kid in the upstairs bedroom at 568 Elm Grove Dr. Nights when it was so hot and the air so thick I could not sleep.

Not a lot to write about since the storm that ripped through on the 17th . I’ve been cutting up downed tree limbs for the past couple of weeks. Working for two to three hours most mornings, and on some afternoons, I’m 70% complete. A water department employee who is an expert at tree trimming will, sometime in September, come to cut the hanging limbs out of the trees for me. Then I start all over cutting and burning what comes down. My neighbor’s huge Cotton Wood tree, actually it was three large trees that grow out from each others base at about a 45 degree angle to the ground, fell destroying a swing set in the process. I feared that the massive tree would fall onto kids who often play in their back yard. I had prayed that the one section would fall in a strong wind at night when no one was there.. Seems my prays were answered. No one hurt, yet. One of the original three trees remains upright. Not for long though. Using a bobcat my neighbor piled the very large sections of tree trunks and started a fire that should burn into next year. The fire is burning the base of the last standing tree. When it comes down is any ones guess.

Wendy, Kristina, Tiffani, Echo and Connie are at a baby shower for Kristy Riley. Cody and I are hanging together tonight. We went to see “Superman Returns” and then to Silver Lake restaurant were I introduced Cody to Pot Stickers. Cody likes them plain, I like my spicy hot.

Kris is getting the kids ready for Camp Edwards this Sunday. She spent some time today shopping for clothes and shoes. At lunch time today Tiff announced to Wendy and I that “from now on, I’m a vegetarian, except when I’m at camp. I love Camp Edwards fried chicken!” Funny, I say pretty much the same thing right after I finish shopping for clothes.

Stormy Night

Went to bed last night with a great deal of heat lighting in the skies over Elgin. Wendy woke me around midnight to tell me that we had lost a big tree in the back yard. I was not totally awake and I vaguely remember grumbling something to the effect that I would take care of it in the morning and in a snap of a tree trunk returned to a hard sleep. Sleeping on my left side, my good ear buried into a pillow, I hear little of anything along with the air conditioning running and all the windows in the house closed I'm afraid the house could have been swept away and I would have slept through it. As the pictures show we did indeed have some tree damage. About 15 hours with no electricity, neighbor is still without and the bad news is that it may be late tomorrow, 7/19, before it is restored. Thankfully there was no damage too any houses in the area. Only trees and power lines downed.

Pictures from the Park

A few weeks ago I took a couple of pictures and I thought you might enjoy them. Maybe there is an horticulturist out there that can ID the strange looking long plant.

July 4th Holly & Davids

Even & Kylin


Heather & Mike

Matthew and Echo

Hard Drive Crash and Burn

The last few days have been spent taking my Dell computer to the “Geek Squad” for a hard drive removal and replacement. A week ago I noticed that the “Boot up to Windows XP was taking longer. I finally got a message that a Windows XP file was missing or had been corrupted. I ran a diagnostic CD that came with the Dell with no luck. I thought that I might have made things worse but a Geek told me that I had not. He knows who is paying the bill. Some three hundred forty dollars later along with several hours of restoring and updating soft wear (not done yet) I am back up and running. What a lesson this has been! While I do burn CD backups for a couple of my more important programs Wendy and I lost a great deal of information including recipes, music, pictures, Word files, e-mail files to mention a few. Scott has the right idea and I do believe that the idea of storing your information through internet companies is and will become more and more the way to go. At the very least I will be backing up ALL of my files on CD. If you haven’t, do yourself a big favor and burn those CD’s now!