Still Staining...

Will the staining ever end?  I’ve been working on staining the deck for a while now, working a few hours here, a few hours there.  Every time I think that I am getting close to done, I see more exposed wood that needs to be stained.  Ugh. 

Saturday was the sweet corn and blues festival in Normal, so the CFO and I went out early to try to beat the heat.  We did a little shopping at the artist/vendor booths and enjoyed a few ears of sweet corn along the way.  We found this cool colored ball that is lit by an internal light bulb at one of the vendors and decided it would be a nice addition to the ledge over our front door.  Finally, something to plug into the plug that we had them install on the ledge!

On Saturday night, we headed to downtown Bloomington for the Jaycee Criterium bicycle race.  I was really excited to hear that they were doing the race downtown, as they do Criterium back home in Athens, GA and it is always a lot of fun to attend.  I was seriously disappointed by the spectator turn out, a huge party it was not.  The men’s pro race started with 50-60 racers and ended with about half that amount.  The leading 3-4 riders were no match for the remainder of the field, they blew the doors off of them.  They basically set a really fast pace that a majority of the field couldn’t handle, leaving the four of them to fight it out for the win.  With about 2 laps to go, the winner stepped it up another notch and left the other three in his dust.

UGA football is starting the season with a huge game against Clemson on Saturday night.  What happened to the good ole days of starting off the season with an easy team for a definite win?  If you need me, I’ll be on my couch watching the game... For the CFO’s sake, I hope that I’ll be cheering and not cussing.  Go Dawgs!

A 4 year old is making me look bad

Our garden overfloweth with tomatoes... we have picked over 120 Roma tomatoes in the last week!  Someone told the CFO that we could freeze them whole and then use them for salsa this winter, so we are going to give that a try.

Monday morning harvest of 40+

I was sitting at work Monday morning when my phone rang, the caller ID said it was a friend of mine, who is the husband of one of the CFO’s co-workers.  I answered it expecting to hear his voice,  but I was greeted by the voice of his 4 year old son instead.  I immediately started to wonder why he was calling me.  Perhaps he was playing with dad’s phone and I was the person he ended up dialing after pushing random buttons.

However, as soon as he started talking, I knew this call was no accident.  He started rambling about how I needed to go to the store, buy flowers for the CFO and bring them to her at work.  When I got to the building, I should get on on the elevator and hit the 5 button to go up to the floor where her office was.  There was a lot of other toddler chatter that I wasn’t able to make out, but I got the gist of what he was saying.  His parents and the CFO all seemed to be quite entertained by his instructions, as I could hear them all laughing in the back ground.

I know that he occasionally decides that he needs to take flowers to his mom, so his dad takes him and his brother to buy flowers and then they deliver them to her at her office.  I also know that he likes to go visit the CFO in her office while they are there… he’s a sweet kid and, for some reason, he and his brother seem to really like us.  That is probably because we always (and I mean ALWAYS) eat pizza if we hang out with their parents.  If they have pizza and we’re not there, he asks wif the CFO and I are coming for dinner.  

He eventually stopped talking and passed the phone to his dad, who apologized for the interruption.  I told him to tell his son to stop making me look bad by bringing his mom flowers all the time.  I guess that I could start paying him to deliver them to the CFO too… However, I prefer to buy her live plants that we can put in the yard and enjoy for years to come, instead of buying cut flowers that will be dead in a few days.  There I go again, being all practical instead of romantic... 

 

We didn't do a whole lot over the weekend, the CFO was busy preparing for the first week of classes.  We did have some friends over for dinner, games and smores on Saturday night.  We introduced them to "Scott Style" Smores, which use two soft bake chocolate chip cookies to sandwich the toasted marshmallow instead of the traditional graham crackers and a piece of chocolate. It is WAY better than the traditional style.

draw the line

Just a few more weeks, I can't wait for this:



Last Monday I finally had an appointment with an orthopedic wrist specialist about my right wrist.  It has been bothering me since sometime in April and still hasn’t healed all the way.  He spent a few minutes poking, twisting and squeezing my wrist and then ordered x-rays.  After reviewing those, he decided an MRI was in order, so I did that on Friday.  This was the first that I have had an MRI, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  The line of questioning from the nurse prior to it made me a little more nervous, but I guess they have to make sure that you don't have any metal parts inside before sticking you in the machine.

While the experience wasn’t horrible, laying completely still for 40 minutes inside a noisy box, part of which  is only a few inches away from your nose, is harder than you might think.  In fact, I am pretty sure that I have never been that still for that long… EVER.  Even when I’m sick as a dog I’m still fidgeting with things, so I had to constantly remind myself not to move.  Making things even worse was the fact that I had no idea how much time had passed or how much longer I had to go.  I was very happy when the technician finally came in and said that I was done.  I’ll be happy if I never have to do that again.

The CFO travelled to Virginia for a long weekend, so that she could attend two wedding showers for her brother + fiance.  That left me home alone again to do as I pleased, so I did some yard work (yes, the Dr. said it was OK as long as I didn’t do anything too crazy), watched some movies and went on a long bike ride.  I watched 3 movies over the weekend: Star Trek, Gangster Squad and A Good Day to Die Hard.  Out of the 3, Gangster Squad is the only one that I would recommend watching if you haven’t seen it.

As is tradition, when the CFO goes out of town, I cook things that she doesn't like to eat.  I threw the smoker box full of wood chips onto my grill and slow cooked some tasty honey garlic wings.  They were damn good if I do say so myself.

 

On Sunday morning, I went for a bike ride with one of the CFO’s co-worker’s husbands.  He rides a lot and every time that we see each other at a social function, we say that we should go for a ride… and then we never do.  This time, we finally did.  We ended up doing a 36 mile ride, riding down to a small state park and then taking a longer route back to my house.  I haven’t ridden that far in probably 10+ years, so I was happy that I made it.  I definitely felt it at spin class on Monday morning, though.

The CFO is sad that her summer is over… but, unfortunately for her, she won’t get any pity from me.  I just laugh when she says, “I don’t feel like I even got a break this summer.”  I try to be a supportive husband, but this is where I draw the line.

Race cars!

Bike wreck!

Thursday morning, while driving home from the gym, I saw a guy on a bike get hit by a car.   I was pulling up to an intersection where the light was red and he was riding on the bike trail, approaching the intersection from the right. There was a lady in a Chevy sitting in the right lane with her right turn signal on, intently looking to the left for a gap in traffic so she could make a right on red.  She never looked to the right and when her “gap” in traffic opened up, the cyclist was just starting to enter the crosswalk.  

She hit the gas right as he rode in front of her in the crosswalk and she popped him pretty good, sending him over his handle bars and onto the road.  Ouch!  She stopped and immediately got out to see if he was OK.  I put my car in park and got out and saw that he was trying to stand up.  Phew, he’s not dead or seriously injured.   The guy was in his late 50’s early 60’s, evidently the theory of “older and wiser” doesn’t apply to him since he wasn’t wearing a helmet.   He gingerly stood up, declined any help from the driver, picked up his bike and continued to cross the intersection on foot.  She asked him again if he was OK and he said he was fine, waving her away.  I asked him "are you sure" as he walked by, he just kind of waved and nodded, seeming to be more embarrassed than anything. 

If it had been me, I would have been seriously pissed and yelled at the driver for five plus minutes, but hey, that’s just me.  After he made it across the street on foot, he slowly got back on his bike and started pedaling up the trail again.  I really hope he was OK, as I know from personal experience that the adrenaline rush from being knocked off your bike by a car blocks a lot of the initial pain.  Only to have the pain sets in a little while later…  While he had the right of way, I’m sure he’ll slow down next time he pedals into that intersection and make sure that the drivers SEE him before he crosses in front of them.

Indy bound!

On Friday morning, I rolled out of bed extra early (3:40 am to be exact) and headed towards Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a day full of race cars.  The NASCAR series was racing at Indy and they brought the Grand-am series as the “opening act.”  I really enjoy the variety of vehicles that run in the Grand-am series, so it was definitely worth burning a vacation day to go see them (the CFO didn't agree).  Grand-am races have Daytona prototype cars and production based GT race cars racing at the same time, so it gets real interesting when the dramatically faster prototypes catch up to the slower GT cars and have to dice their way through traffic.  From this spectator's point of view, there is no better racing and I don't understand why the series doesn't have a bigger following.

The CFO's favorite NASCAR driver, Carl Edwards

 

A typical Daytona Prototype car

 

A GT class Audi R8

 

I left home really early because I was hoping to get a pass to one of the day’s NASCAR autograph sessions and they were handing those out at 8:30 eastern (7:30 our time).  What the online information didn’t say was that they were only giving out 125 passes...   I was probably #200 in line, so I left empty handed. In talking with some people around the track later in the day, the people at the front of the line got there at 6:30 am when the gates opened.  There is no way that I could swing that, so now I know that I shouldn't even bother with trying to get there early next time. 

I spent the rest of the morning roaming around the track, watching the NASCAR cars go through tech inspection and watching the Grand-am series cars being prepped for the afternoon races.  NASCAR is uber strict about keeping fans out of the pits, while Grand-am is the exact opposite.  You can walk right up to the trailer/canopy where the crew is working on the car and take photos from a few feet away.  Sometimes they even say, “come on in and take some close ups, just watch out for the guys with the tools.”  How cool is that?  I know there are safety issues with having fans that close to the pits, but NASCAR should really take note because it makes the fan experience so much better when you can get that close.

Crew working on a Daytona Prototype car

 

Lots of teams running Porsche 911's in the GT class

 

Brakes on a Porsche Cayman, yes, I was this close to some of the race cars.

 

The NASCAR cars were running the traditional oval course that the Indy cars run, while the Grand-am series was running on the road course, which uses part of the oval and then winds through the infield.  There are lots of corners in the infield section so you have many options for viewing the race.  I walked all around the track, watching from many vantage points and searching for photo opportunities that wouldn’t force me to shoot photos through the safety fence.  Stupid safety fence, great for protecting spectators and for ruining photographs.  I was able to find a couple spots where I could get some clear shots and I managed to max out the memory card in my camera while taking photos. 

 

The Grand am cars diving into turn one

 

A view back to the famous Indy Pagoda Tower

 

 

I spent a good bit of time playing around with settings on the camera, as I am trying to find the best settings that get the car in focus but blur the background as I pan along with the car. I really want pictures that show a sense of speed in them…  however, it is much harder than I thought to get the settings and my panning speed synced up. I will have to keep practicing until I get it right because they look so much cooler when the background is streaked and the car is in focus.

Blurred background

 

I also spent some time roaming through the infield parking lot taking pictures of spectator's cars, there was definitely some cool cars in attendance.  Here are a few of the "dream cars" that I was drooling over:

Porsche GT3 RS

Lotus Exige

Dodge Viper GTS