Pujols + Fathers Day = Kickass

Girls coming home tomorrow

I have really started to miss them this week. Apparently Miriana reciprocates. She has been calling us each of the last 3 night at bedtime just to hear our voices. She also likes to read us a story over the phone. Anyway, they'll be back tomorrow, and I can't wait.

I picked green beans yesterday and ended up with a heaping colander full. With just us here, that's way too many to eat in the next couple days, so I decided to try out the 23 quart Presto pressure canner I bought last year. Everything went smoothly and easily. It took a total of 1 1/2 - 2 hours to go from fresh picked beans to 6 jars of sealed and preserved beans. I was able to do it all myself very easily and I think I actually prefer the pressure canner to the water bath canner. There seems to be a lot less mess for some reason. The biggest thing is to make sure that the pressure gauge get to and stays at the correct pressure the whole processing time. That means that I had to make minute adjustments to the heat settings throughout the 20 minutes that the jars processed.

The tomatoes are starting to finally come on decent. I had to boost them with some general fertilizer which helped a lot. However, they hang directly above the pepper plants and so any excess water from the buckets drips onto the pepper plants. I did not think about that when I also fertilized the pepper plants. So the peppers got direct fertilizer and indirect fertilizer and now they are dead. Oh well, this is my 3rd year trying to grow peppers and my 3rd failure. Maybe I'll skip them next year. I seem to be good at green beans and tomatoes, so I'll stick with them for now.

A/C is fixed

$110 to have some guy come out and turn the unit on and off a few times. Apparently there was some Reversing valve that was stuck because we don't use the unit enough. What a pain. Anyway, the house is nice and cool and DRY. Yeah!

Pujols is on pace for 127 walks, 62 K's, and 57 HR's. His numbers just get better and better. 8 1/2 seasons and I am still just in awe of this guy.

Right now we're only one game out behind Milwaukee. Go Cards.

Now that's how you play Baseball

Last nights game against Detroit was FANTASTIC. 11-2 and we got to see just about everything. I was impressed with the bats. Hopefully they are starting to come alive again like they were in April.

Let keep it going tonight.

It's been so hot and humid here that I finally called the A/C repair place to have them come out and fix our unit. It's not getting over 83 or so in the house, but with the humidity levels staying near 97%+ all the time, everything is just sticky and nasty. Hopefully the repair is not too expensive.

No Bites Yet

Well, I applied for at least 5 different jobs today. Let's hope that I get some calls on them. Things are definitely not dire yet, but I get real bored being home all the time.

Going to New Mexico

Dad called last night to confirm that I would be available to fly out and help him get moved. Of course I will. No question about it. I am actually really looking forward to spending a few days just Dad and I. I can't really remember a time when we got to do that, since....I don't know...when we used to go fishing...when I was like 8. Anyway, he needs my help and so I'll be there.

That got me thinking though. You know between taking the kids up this last weekend to Illinois, and then Elisa and Rick bringing them back, Dad needing help in New Mexico, the birthday bash in Illinois after that, and then the Cruise directly after that, I would have needed to take off like an entire month of work to get all those things in. So, I guess getting laid off has opened up a lot of family opportunities that I wouldn't normally have been able to do. Cool.

OK so the Cardinals are back to sucking it big time again. This trend is getting old. Again the stats show that if Albert isn't hitting then no one else is hitting. What's up with that? We need some consistency, or we're in big trouble this year. Pujols has already said that he will stay in St. Louis, but only if we can surround him with the caliber players that can protect him in the lineup and have the potential to get to the playoffs. I seriously doubt that this team is THAT team. This year we have surrounded him with mostly inexperienced rookies. I would hate to see him go, but I do understand if he is not feeling the support this year. One man does not a team make.

Nice Weekend

So we took the girls to Illinois this weekend. Miriana has Church camp this week, and Jillian is going next week. When we dropped Miri off yesterday she was soooo excited. I just know that she's going to have a great time.

We got to see everyone, and got to see Grandma and Grandpa too. Elisa has her first garden in and it looks great. Kurt has replaced his grass with some kind of artificial Astro turf and thinks no one noticed. :)

We got back to Tennessee to discover that it had (of course) not rained all weekend. Everything, including some of the garden plants were starting to get a bit crispy. The lack of rain here is definitely the hardest part of trying to have a garden here.

Elisa and Mom both called last night and said that they had really bad storms roll through after we left. Apparently there was lots of hail too. Definitely didn't sound like any fun.

And best of all, Colleen and Daniel returned my BABY to me this weekend. She said that they had unwittingly been in possession of it for quite a while. How cool. I love that paddle. Thanks Colleen.

Well, nothing yet?

I know it's just Tuesday, and only my second day of looking, but I thought I'd let you know I haven't had any bites yet.

Time to hit the pavement

Well we had a really nice weekend with the in laws. I got to cook out twice and once was on their dime. Anyway, I have talked to my ex-coworker Paul a couple of times and it looks like the total damage was 14 people. What a bummer. That's 14 people that are all going to be hitting the pavement at the same time as me. Oh well.

I really have no idea where to start with this looking for a job thing. I know I've updated my resume this morning, and I'm going to be updating that and my profile at Careerbuilder and Monster, but after that, what do I do? It's been a while since I was under the gun to find a job. The good thing is that I'm at a point where I have the knowledge and skills to do a pretty vast array of things. But do I just take the first thing that comes along, or should I be picky at all. With the job market and economy the way they are, I tend to think that I should just take the first thing that comes up...