Starting countdown to Vacation

In two weeks, Tim and I will be in the air on the first leg of our trip to Germany. I have so much to get done before we leave that isn't even related to the trip. I think our dog, Zoe, suspects something is coming up because she has been demanding lots of attention. She really misses moving the cows into the milking parlor twice a day. Most days, Mulberry comes up on her own so no chasing involved. Tim says Mulberry isn't quite as eager this month so I guess she is definitely ready for her "vacation!" We'll dry her up right before we leave in preparation for her calving date in mid-October. The garden is yielding large numbers of big tomatoes. This morning we canned 11 pints of salsa. I can't do the HOT HOT salsa anymore so I used more tomatoes to jalapeno peppers. I'm hoping it will make a nice tasting salsa. My regular peppers quit producing during the super hot weather and then cool days so are just starting up again with little peppers. We still have green beans producing so we will enjoy those until we leave.

We start computer classes September 2nd so I have to have the class handouts ready before I leave. I've put together new material since our upgrade to Office 2007 so hopefully, I've balanced the material amount to the 2-hour class time. There are two of us who teach so Carolyn will have to do all of the classes while I'm gone. I have to get the practice exercises organized and get press releases out to the media this week. Back to the grindstone.

Olympics or Sleep?

Tim and I have been watching the Olympics every night, trying to squeeze in some DVDs on Germany when we can. I really enjoy watching the Olympics but am not quite enthused with all of the USA commentary. If we're watching events with lots of stuff in-between, we play scrabble at the same time. Our scores vary alot, but we've regularly got scores over 300 this year. Sometimes it's hard to resist playing a cool word even though the points aren't great. Twice last week, I was able to use all seven tiles in one turn, scoring over 70 points each time.

Tim picked a purple pepper in the garden. I think we will have to eat that tonight to see if this variety tastes any different. The plants quit producing during the extremely hot spell but have bounced back a little this past week.

It's finally a little cooler

Although I'm not complaining since it is after all, summer, I'm relieved that the temperature has dropped at least 10 degrees since the weekend. Luckily most of our Saturday "to do" list was working in our basement so we could avoid the 100 + degrees outside. We really appreciate the lack of cement on our farm as we saw the temperature at the North Platte airport was 107 degrees.

The library computer center was incredibly busy yesterday. Not only were our 12 computers in use most of the day, but we had a higher than normal number of people needing assistance with what they were doing on the computers. I do enjoy the busyness of helping people but did it all have to come at once? If I wasn't assisting someone in person, I was on the phone helping people find phone numbers. It is frustrating that several companies will not provide telephone numbers in the contact information on their websites.

Today, the computer center is slow. I'm assuming that people are enjoying being outside since the weather service is reporting 76 degrees. This gives me a breather and time to work further on our computer class materials. Our computer classes will start again in September. Since we pay a subscription to Custom Guide, we are trying to adapt their materials to teach our classes, rather than writing the classes from scratch. Microsoft Office 2007's ribbon has certainly been a challenge to adjust to after using the menus of previous versions.

Back to the grindstone