Notes For Me ( and You)

Alex is back to school and we are back to a quieter house. In fact it was really quiet this weekend because Peter was away on a ski trip to Canada – Friday afternoon until early this morning.

I picked him, and four others, up from the bus just after 4:00 am and he is now catching maybe an hour of sleep in his bed (he said he slept on the bus but that’s never restful) before getting up for school – his choice. He said he had a good time, but we will probably have to wait for years to find out the details.

Today is the start of the second semester, so some new teachers for Peter but no new subjects. Jake continues with the same cast of characters.

After a really warm day yesterday, we are heading back to winter with snow forecast by Friday.

It has been a snowy and cold start to 2010. My cold frame has struggled to preserve heat – my 100W light bulb has helped, but clearly a couple of changes need to be made for next season.

(My home control software program measures and plots the temperature inside the frame and temp immediatly outside, so I get clear record of what is happening)

First of all there are a lot gaps at ground level, between the bottom boards and the rough ground. On windy days this allowed the cold air to push in and drop temperatures. Secondly, some sort of thermal blanket to drop over the glass would help. Finally, for these really cold nights, a proper heater would be nice.

Having said that, the lettuce and rocket is still alive, albeit hardly growing ( we had to buy lettuce at the store last week for the first time for months).

Jake may or may not have a slight crack in his collar bone – that’s the verdict from the ortho doc. That’s an improvement from the Sunday morning status at the emergency room. Treatment is now do what doesn’t hurt, so he will be back out and about really soon – although he might not be playing soccer goalie again this season.

For those of you keeping score at home, this would be his third broken collar bone – that is actually why the diagnosis is unclear. The “maybe” crack line is right in with the damage from before.

He was playing goal keeper for his soccer team ( a first!) and came out diving at full speed at a player’s feet. Jake claims the player kicked him, but I would have to say that Jake was flying out there and was responsible for at least 50% of the collision.

So he is still sore on his shoulder, but should be back in action really soon.

Things have been very busy, but I have finally got some time to write some stuff for this blog. The bad news is that I have this time while waiting in the reception area of Holy Cross Hospital. Behind me Alex is being preped for shoulder surgery to bolt his broken collar bone back into one piece.

A week ago he was playing pick up football when he flipped end over end after hitting someone who was kneeling on the ground. Jeremy, his roommat called us from the ambulance that was taking him to hospital. He saw a specialist on Tuesday, and the strong recommendion was for surgery. His clavical was actually broken in two places, with a small piece between.

Hopefully in a couple of hours he will be in better shape. He will be coming home with us for the weekend, but should be back at school on Monday.

On more conventional news, my fall garden is in good shape. Cauliflower, broccoli, and kohl rabi were planted as seedlings, and lettuce and rocket sown directly. The weather has turned gradually colder, but no frost as of yet.

Inside I have been playing around on the computer trying to get a weather simulation/model up and running. This is a real model, run nationally by “proper” weather folks. I expect it will be super slow on my own system, probably taking longer than real time – i.e. the model will take longer to run than the actual weather ! But it will still be kind of cool – and provide a reason to buy a faster system.

The model is the WRF
model has been developed by various agencies and all the code is freely available. Getting it all to compile correctly has been a challenge, but so far I am making progress. I have the pre-processor running, the actual forecast engine has been run once, and now I am working on the post processor stuff – to actually be able to get to see what has been calculated.

A nice weekend, weatherwise – and otherwise.  This was a quiet weekend on the sports front, with most sports  having a bye week due to the Jewish new year. Peter played on Thursday night – and this time Wootton won in overtime.

We had a nice time at a party for Nancy’s summer softball team. It was at a nice house out in Damascus – crabs, burgers, chicken, with lots other dishes and desserts.

I changed the oil on the van, and also changed the coolant – we have now had the “new” van for five years.

We did talk to Alex on Sunday night, hopefully the start of a regular phone call, and things are doing well for him. President Obama visited the campus l;ast week and there was a great exitement ( one of the pluses of going to a university so close to the nations capital).

One of the noisier nights last night – we had three ( at least) storm lines come through, waking everyone up. Jake had a hard time getting back to sleep – although at least part of it – he would never admit this – was nervousness about his football scrimmage set for this morning.

Alex is finally getting focused on the fact that this week he actually leaves home – and that there are things to do, parents to be taken advantage of, and time is running out. He did get his new Macbook computer yesterday – combination graduation present/ thing he needed for school – and is thrilled with it. I’ve never been exposed to Apple stuff before, but it seems perfect for someone like Alex who is really not interested in learning “techy” things. He got it up and on the wireless network, webcam operating, etc, etc.. with no instruction from anyone.

Peter had the first football scrimmage of the year last night, and he played quite a bit – at least half the game at right guard. Jake plays football this morning, after playing soccer last night until the dark clouds and lightning ending play.

With the swimming season wrapping up tonight with the end of season banquet, we are offically in mid-summer. Mid, that is as in between swimming and football. This is our best slot for a vacation and we will be heading off for a few days shortly.

Only problem with vacation this time of year is that the garden is just coming into full flow. This means that our designated water person will be amply rewarded for coming by every other day.

So far the report on the garden would be bush beans A, pole beans B-(growing well, but the pods become too seedy too quickly). Tomatoes – still to early to tell, same with cucumbers and squash.

It has been a dry July – after all the rain before – but the past few days have once again brought on the afternoon storms to freshen up the rapidly browning grass.

A couple of firsts today : First vegetable ( fruit) of the summer – a cucumber from the one plant that I had bought and transplanted – the rest were directly sown in the ground. And the first time I have had to use my soaker hose irrigation system on the potoato bed. As soon as  I had set all the hoses up – weeks a- it has been raining almost every day. However that pattern seems to have broken and the heat is on, drying things out especially for those potatoes in the pots.

Also in the novelty department – this week has seen me take my first step in the social network of Facebook. A big hit with the kids, this is now becoming a part of at least some adult lives.  Not sure if I will keep it up, but a least I have a presence in that virtual world.

I was very fortunate in many ways yesterday. I had a relaxing day and received some very nice and useful presents. We also were able to have Nancy’s mom and dad over for dinner. I missed Peter who is away at work camp, though he did call – which was very wierd, and kind of sad, in “flash-forward” kind of way.

This weekend was also the start of summer swim season. All of the news on the swim team is available on the team web site , which I run. This was the first Saturday morning meet that I can remember that was interrupted by thunderstorms, a problem that is usually associated with the Wednesday evening “B” meets.

Alex is picking more hours as a delivery driver for Pizza Palace. Peter, as I mentioned is away at work camp with the youth group from St James Episcopal Church. Jake starts working today as a youth assistant at our church’s bible camp.  So no one is really sitting around !

Finally the weather is supposed to dry up this week, at least for the first few days. The garden is growing well, including some weeds that are in the middle of the veg beds – I have not been able to get to them without clomping in the mud and squeezing the clay soil into bricks.

Boy, this wet weather plus the end of school/graduation busyness have really put behind in the garden. However this weekend has seen at least a little catching up.

First of all I finally thinned out the carrots, which had germinated very thoroughly – perhaps because that raised, sandy bed drained very well. In contrast the lettuce did not come in very well at all – I think the seeds either drowned or were washed away.  Same could be said for some of the rows in the cutting flower patch.

I also sprayed some copper on the pototaes and tomatoes to try to avoid the bight that has been a problem in previous years.

Alex is away to the beach for the infamous Beach Week – somewhat of a right of passage for graduating seniors. We are praying he and his friends do not to anything TOO stupid, and return safe next week -even if there are stories that we will not hear about until he is 40 plus.

Beautiful weather this weekend, but more rain forecast for the week ahead.