July 25, 2010

Another steamy week in CT as the heat and humidity continues to grip the Northeast and from the looks of it most of the rest of the country.  The weather conditions have decreased our energy for doing much so we had a pretty slow weekend.  But have brought in the black-eyed susans which are making the front flower garden pop with color. 

Friday was rainy, which was nice to water the garden during the heat, so Jo headed out to shop while I curled up with a good book to read a little.  Dinner was pizza on the grill which gives the crust a nice crunchy taste, but I still need to work on not giving it a blackened, crusty taste (blackened sole - good, blackened pizza crust - bad).

First thing Saturday morning we headed out for our long run for the week into what were already warm temperatures.  We managed to struggle our way through about 7-8 miles, but this resulted in us being wiped out for most of the day.  After our gym workout it was home to finish the windows on the second floor - in case you were keeping track, that only leaves the windows on the deck to complete.  We also had the chimney folks into fix the chimney on the furnace.  We felt really sorry for them as it was in the high 80's, sunny, and incredibly humid.  Not the time you want to be climbing up and down from the roof or working on top of it.  But we now have a new chimney system and are back up and running.  For dinner we met up with Barbara and Mike at the River Tavern in Chester for a great dinner while we caught up on each other's lives and solved a few of the world's problems along the way.

Today, we hit the garden to do some harvesting and then made some pickles from the freshly picked cucumbers (bread and butter in case you are wondering) and froze some beans (two hours from picking to freezing - let's see Green Giant beat that).  Just need to wait a few days to taste the pickles to decide if we want to do some more.  Also, given yesterday's exhaustion a nap was in the order for the day.  ShHame I can't get naps during the week only on weekends.

One interesting story from the week, Wednesday storms knocked out our power for a couple of hours.  Instead of finding some candles to struggle to read by, we both whipped out our tech gizmos - Blackberry for me, Iphone and Ipad for Jo - and sat in the semi-dark playing games or surfing the net - such as checking on the power companies web site to monitor progress in repairing.  How times have changed.  Given the Ipad has a book reader, we could have even read a book in the dark.  Of course, all this works until the batteries give out, but the power was returned prior to that happening.  Viva new technology.

July 18, 2010

One word for this week - HOT.  Well, I should also add HUMID - so two words for the week.  Along with the rest of the country we enjoyed another week of very hot and humid weather.  This has made our nightly runs an adventure in sweating and is making it hard to get in the long mileage runs that will get us ready for the half-marathon later this year.  This heat spell has also been accompanied by a lack of rain in CT which is not doing great things for our garden.  Although we did manage to harvest some crops this week and as I promised earlier in this blog, the pictures for the week are of our harvest.  The wild raspberries came in this week and we enjoyed a bumper crop - must be the hotter weather.  We picked over 8 cups of them and could have picked more, but felt that was enough for one year and we were tired of getting scratched from the thorns.  Now if we could only get the raspberries in the garden to grow so well.  Jo cranked up her jam making skills again and quickly produced several jars of raspberry jam to accompany our strawberry from earlier this year. 

We also picked our first crop of beans and will be enjoying fresh beans now for about a month.  We had to freeze several bags since there were way too many for us to consume in a week.  Our garden also produced for the first time a cucumber - drum roll here please.  We have planted cucumbers for several years, but have never actually had them grow until this year.  So another check in the plus column for this year's garden.  Lastly, the cherry tomatoes are starting to redden up and we should be able to enjoy eating them for the next several weeks.  So, a good week for the garden although if we don't see some rain soon, future pickings might be limited.

For the rest of the weekend, we enjoyed a couple of rental movies - Up in the Air was particularly noteworthy - and had a great fish dinner along with a Peach Mable (you'll have to ask Sheri for the recipe - just click on the blog to the right) at Sheri and Bruno's last night (compliments to Sheri's culinary skills) before heading to the Granite Theater for a show.  The show was a high energy comedy called "The Perfect Wedding" and was very well performed.  The rest of the weekend chores consisted of working with the above mentioned vegetables/fruits (freezing or canning), cutting the grass, pulling some more weeds, and continuing progress on cleaning the windows.  Still have 24 to go - although we have completed 40.  Told you this house has a lot of windows.

Nothing big to report from work this week.  Jo was in New York during the week with a run over the Queensboro bridge one of the days she was there. 

July 12, 2010

We had an exciting weekend as usual with a mix of chores and relaxation - as any weekend should be.  We started the party early this week by attending the North Stonington Agricultural Fair which is a local fair that we have attended for several years.  We enjoyed a dinner that contained no redeeming values from a health standpoint but tasted great as we enjoyed a lamb gyro, baked potato with broccoli (the only remotely healthy item consumed that evening) and Velveeta cheese (you can't beat Velveeta in my opinion, although Jo takes some exception to that rule), a plate of onion rings, and topped all off with hot fudge sundaes.  Needless to say we needed to run extra long over the rest of the weekend to try and make up for that.  Jo also got to pet some cows which seems to really calm her down and touches some deep part of her younger self.  Personally, I find them a bit intimidating, but then I didn't grow up with them in the backyard - although the thought of my Mom having cows in the backyard certainly brings a chuckle (sorry Mom).  Friday we tackled cleaning the garage - taking everything out of the cabinets and give them a good scrub along with removing a set of spider webs that would have made the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie proud.  We were pleased with our handiwork as it almost glowed once we were done - of course, that could have been heat exhaustion.  Then we enjoyed watching one of the Harry Potter movies and got excited to see the next installment over Thanksgiving.

Saturday morning dawned warm and humid - according to the weather report it was at 90% humidity which made our run an adventure in sweating.  No need to shower afterwards since we were already soaking wet, but we did get some good mileage in which helps in the preparation for our half-marathon later this year.  Then after a quick stop at the gym and grocery store (we did shower before, in case you were concerned) it was home to have our chimney's inspected.  Which did not turn out great, as we discovered some problems with the chimney for the furnace which will require a bit of repair work.  The amazing thing was the chimney guy climbing on to the peak of the house with no safety equipment what-so-ever - which warranted capturing in the blog for the week.  This must have been 40 feet in the air on a steeply pitched roof - did have the thought it would be a lot safer to be a chimney guy in the Midwest with ranch homes or the Southwest with the flat adobe roofs. 

Saturday night we went to see the fireworks that are part of the New London Sailfest event.  This is the big local firework display and it didn't disappoint this year.  Although with the changes at the Pfizer New London site, this might be our last year of really convenient parking.  Sunday after our morning run - yes, still warm and humid - we did some yoga and then got going on cleaning all the windows on the house.  As I've mentioned before, this house has too many windows.  We managed to get the one quarter of them done before we ran out of steam and did some other chores instead.  We'll get to the rest over the next few days/weeks.  The other big happening was the wild raspberries are ready for picking and we got enough to enjoy on our cereal for a couple of days this week with the promise of more to come.  They are smaller and tarter than commercial raspberries, but they came free with the house and with the right cereal are delicious.

This is a big week at work for Jo as she moves into her new office.  Gone is her 5th floor all-wood furniture digs with a view of the Thames river along with her winter seal watching - a seal would perch on a rock just below her window - and watching the submarines coming in and out of the Long Island Sound.  Now her office has a lovely view of the waste water treatment plant and she is back to laminate furniture like the rest of us.  But to help buffer that she is spending a good portion of the week in NY enjoying the heat in the city.

July 4, 2010

Happy 4th of July.  We have a three day weekend, which is always a pleasure, to enjoy and so far absolutely beautiful weather to make it perfect (plus the flowers from the garden).  It was hard going back to work after our nice vacation break, but we both managed to slog our way through the week.  Jo was in town all week which helped her get back on top of her workload and we both spent some part of the week either moving offices (me) or getting our office prepared for a move (Jo).  I moved offices because my new group will be located together in a different building.  So first thing Monday morning I had about 2 hours to pack and then spent the afternoon unpacking and settling into my new digs.  It was a bit strange since I've spent my entire Pfizer career all in one building - but one upside my new office is a shorter walk from the parking lot.  Jo is having to move her office since we sold the office building she is currently in - she'll move to this office for about a year and then will finally land up relocating again to the Groton site, with me, once some building renovations are complete to fit everyone in.  The rest of the week for both of us was just catching up on things that happened while we were relaxing in Europe.

For our weekend, we started off with a nice BBQ with friends, Sheri and Bruno (you've got to check out Bruno's Canadian Maple Leaf from raspberries for Canada day - see the blog link down below).  Then headed to Ocean Beach for some putt-putt golf (Bruno won with a stunning 7 over par) and a great fireworks display.  Saturday morning temperatures were perfect so we headed out for a long run and then decided it was time to get the US economy moving a bit.  After a stop at the bank, we hit Panera Bread, Target, Sears, Macy, and Blockbuster with a purchase at each.  So any uptick this week in retail sales and the stock market, you can say we did our part.  Then after a quick stop at the gym, we went out for lunch to a place we first stopped at during our initial visit to decide if we wanted to join Pfizer - Sunset Ribs.  It overlooks Niantic Bay which was a nice backdrop to our repast.

The rest of the day was spent removing excess plant growth - in other words weeds - from the front flower garden.  It is amazing how if you miss a couple of weekends due to a trip how the weeds take over.   Friday we had done the same to our vegetable garden while also removing the last of the fresh peas.  Besides lettuce, which we have been enjoying in salads now for several weeks, there probably won't be another harvest until the tomatoes start coming in over the next few weeks.  Still having problems with getting carrots and beets to grow but everything else is doing better this year and this is the first year we managed enough peas for multiple meals.  We finished the day up with watching the movie Twilight since we figured we should stay current with the latest craze.  Good movie, we have the sequel for tonight. 

Today after our morning run we are spending it goofing off.  No chores allowed.  I'm planning to spend it reading and I'm thinking of re-reading all 6 Harry Potter books.  No particular reason as I have a whole bunch of new books I haven't tackled, but just feeling like I want to re-immerse myself in Hogwarts again especially with the next movie due later this year.  For the rest of the day, we have to return our one movie and once we are out thought we might as well have ice cream at Michael's as a reward (not sure what we are rewarding, just sounds better than we want to eat high calorie desserts that aren't good for us).  To not feel we are complete slugs, we decided to bike to both places - helps justify the extra large ice cream sundae.  Tomorrow we are going to yoga in the morning and then spending the morning on the beach as the temperatures are predicted to soar into the 90's.  Then comes Tuesday and it's back to reality again. 

This mushroom/fungus is growing from a decaying tree stump in the yard and it is just spectacular.  So thought it was worth a blog photo.  It is roughly the size of a hubcap - just to give the photo some perspective.