Chris’s house hunting trip to Chicago was a quick success. He ended up in a community a little west of downtown called Oak Park. It’s fairly close to public transportation, little Tommy, Trader Joe’s and Costco so what else could a guy want. The apartment is a 2 bedroom, one bath just remodeled place overtop a retail store – a typical city setup similar to the place we lived in Philadelphia when I was a kidling. It includes a garage which is a major bonus there and it’s half the cost of his Jersey City dwelling. The plan is to sell most of his furniture and just move selected pieces in a small U-Haul and bank his relocation moving allowance. Great plan. He’s got a one week training stint in Houston, a one week corporate meeting in Las Vegas and then opening in Chicago by the end of August. Nancy and Joanne already have plans to visit in early October, before the snow flies. Chris really sounds happy with everything so it’s going to work just fine.

I’ve mentioned that we’re getting more than typical rainfall. According to the weather folks, we’re already at levels last seen in 1944 and we’ve got a week left in the month. I’m ready for it to stop and let us dry out for a few weeks.

The new grill is really getting a workout. Without a doubt the old one had deteriorated some time back but did so gradually and it wasn’t noticeable – until the new one came on line. It’s cooking much hotter and the product is back to being picture book material. Good thing too – this has been the busiest guest month ever. The Brosan’s, Barbara and Renee came for a few days, Joey and Mark came Saturday, Olivia on Sunday, and the Edwards’, Megan, Brandon, and Alli arrive at the end of the week. The weather has been cooperating, giving us plenty of lake time. What hasn’t cooperated is the air conditioner – it crashed. What makes it particularly bad is that one of our guests is in a constant state of hot flashes. I suggested she just hang out down at the lake and take a plunge when it gets to hot. She’s gotten in the water a couple of times but is uncomfortable sharing space with turtles and fish. She just knows there are gators lurking and that we are just not telling her. Last night we ate at a place on the St. Johns and a large, large gator swam up very close to the restaurant which, she said, proves her point that there could be large gators in our lake. I suggested that 7 miles was a long way for a gator to travel overland but don’t think she accepted that.

Nancy is whipping up a large batch of stuffed peppers. Green peppers are the last remaining crop of significance in the garden. The heat just doesn’t bother them and they keep putting out fruit until something gets them. There are two plants out there that made it through last winter making them almost a year old. I’ll start new plants from seeds next month.

Chris will be spending this coming week in Chicago house/apt hunting. It just so happens that Tom will also be there (on business) from mid week and, of course, little Tommy lives there so there will be more Carbone’s in Chicago than Florida. Something wrong with that picture!!! So far the one sure observation is that he won’t starve to death and has already found several exceptional feeding spots.

The rain continues with regular, heavy afternoon storms and the lake is rising fast. In the last couple of weeks we’ve logged 7-8” which is well above average. If you sit on the edge of the dock and hang your legs over, you’re ankle deep. Another measure – the water is half way between the top step and the next one down; If you’re in the water with a drink, you can just set it on the dock as a bar. That means we’re 2007 deep early in the hurricane season so there’s a decent chance the dock will be submerged before it’s over. George actually has standing water now in his yard up to the garden. In 2007 the garden was squishy and the plants died but I’ve built it up with compost since then and everything is still alive and looking good. My guess is that the pepper plants will not last much longer with their roots in the water. But the big impact is an explosion in the frog population – not down at the lake but in the jungle around the house. They start croaking right after dark and continue until sunrise. It literally sounds like they’re in the house, that’s how loud it is. Nancy doesn’t hear it but it drives me crazy.

I had a blood test the other day in advance of a routine annual physical. Usually everything turns out normal with one or two marginal exceptions- just slightly high or low – “nothing to worry about but something to watch”. They now post the results on a secure site and sent me an email telling me I could check there. As best I can tell, everything was “normal”. Nothing even close to the edge. I wonder if my ninja green drinks have had some impact or is it related to global warming. Maybe that new wine label we found – Low Hanging Fruit is the new factor. I’ve been doing more surf fishing and getting the Mocha Latte at McDonalds on those days. I’ve also been getting weekly fresh peach milk shakes from Chick Filet to go with the Spicy Chicken sandwich. I meet with the doc next week so I’ll get his opinion.

We had weekend guests and enjoyed every minute of it. My nephew Glenn and his wife, Lynn, moved their son Andrew from Hattiesburg down to Orlando where he’ll be attending Valencia Community College, working at Kay Jewelers and then, if all goes according to plan, transferring to UCF. We didn’t do much of anything but eat, talk, and sit on the dock but it was full time catching up. Grilled a pile of ribs, made a giant garden salad and a big bowl of green beans plus the obligatory pan of Mac and Cheese.

I’m starting the summer garden repairs which is mostly redoing the path’s between the garden rows. It doesn’t sound like much when you put it down in writing but each row takes me an hour or two and pulls about 2 gallons of sweat so when I’m done, I’m really done. Nothing much on the social calendar this week so I should be able to finish the job, weather permitting. In about 2 weeks I’ll start planting seeds indoors getting ready for fall. That will include tomatoes, peppers and egg plant to start. I wasn’t going to do eggplant again but Nancy made an incredible parmesan using a new variety and that changed my mind.

Big garden dilemma – soggy compost piles. We’ve been getting so much rain that the piles are literally too wet to turn. What we need is an old fashion hot, dry week. There’s not much growing in the garden and the beds have been mostly prepared for fall planting so a good solar treatment would roast the nematodes and get the compost piles cooking internally. You want the pile to heat up to kill weed seeds and decompose more thoroughly. If things are right with the pile, internal temps can be 150 degrees. With these soggy piles getting hit with cool water daily, not much decomp can be happening, just your basic rotting.

I read a new report on the penguin situation in Antarctica and it’s thrown my world into a tailspin. I thought it was a given that with this global warming thing, all iceberg critters were seeing the end in sight. For some reason polar bears have managed to increase populations but surely not penguins. But alas, the findings were record populations of both the giant Emperor variety and small Adelaides. Not just a few more but two to three to five times as many as expected. Combine that with recent reports of record numbers of whales and sharks, all endangered, and you have to wonder if maybe this warming thing is actually good for critters; or maybe it isn’t really warming. Another winter like 2014 and there will be another batch of scientists pushing the return to another ice age – and trust me they’ll have plenty of charts and statistics to prove it.

I think the reason soccer fans get so unruly is because they are bored to tears sitting in the stands waiting for something to happen.

This breakdown phase won’t quit. Our neighbor’s well pumping system went down the other day and we hooked him up to our system. At that point he made the observation that our’s wasn’t working properly, over cycling. It seemed to me to be ok but I trust his judgement and asked him to send the guys working on his to check it out. Apparently the bladder in the tank, essentially the tank, had a leak and the relay/contactor electrical box was corroded and not long for this world. Fixed, at no small cost to us. We also lost our TV signal which I traced down to the connections exterior to the house from the outside amplifier. I was able to make it work, sort of, but not for long. So that added to the list of recent equipment issues. I guess all this stuff is 12 years old and that’s a good run for exterior items so to be expected. Just wish it wouldn’t all happen at once. If I rationalize that we have no water or sewer bill but have to replace a major component every 12 years, that’s not so bad.

TV fixed. You may recall several months back I posted that the Antenna amplifier power supply had been totally buried in a huge fire ant mound which had caused a total loss of signal. I had tie wrapped the power supply up about 3’ on the antenna pole to avoid that ever happening again. The repair guy first tried replacing the connectors that I suspected were the problem and they were certainly gone but that wasn’t the problem. He opened the box and it was absolutely full of sand from the fire ant nest and it had corroded the circuit board to the point of eating off the legs of a couple of capacitors. He didn’t have a replacement power supply so decided to try to repair this one with a couple of spare capacitors he had. He cleaned it all very well then soldered in a couple of new capacitors and away it went. Just like new. I was impressed that he would even try that level of repair in the field and equalled impressed that it worked. In hind sight, I should have opened the box the first time but never for a minute did I think it could be full of grib. Same rationalization as with the water system – we have free TV, year round so an occasional breakdown is not so bad.

A little garden breakthrough – worms. I was digging out where I had planted beans and cucumbers – underneath the trellis – and started finding regular earth worms. That’s a sign the soil is good. It’s been bugging me for a couple of years since I know the soil is getting richer but still no worms. They’re often in the compost pile and I had just naturally assumed that as I transferred compost into the garden, worms would surely follow but until now, it hadn’t happened. I don’t know how widespread the phenomena is but maybe I’m working in a hotbed of new residents just cranking out good stuff.

That tree cutting job I mentioned in the last blog turned out to be quite a bit more than I counted on. The top of a large bay had broken off and I wanted to cut down the remaining 18” diameter trunk. I have a wimpy chain saw but the tree was dead so I decided to give it a go. By the time I was finally able to topple it, I was worn out, totally soaked in sweat, and had somehow pulled a muscle in my thigh. I headed for the lake, stripped down and dove in – my body needed instant cooling and that’s about as instant as you can get. The thigh cramp eased a bit so I was able to swim around until my temp stabilized at somewhere near normal. The bad part popped up a few hours later. I must have gotten involved with some foliage that I’m allergic to or is generically poisonous. From my wrists to my elbows, both arms, I started itching. By the evening it was swollen and I was coating it with every anti itching salve we had and popping Benadryl. The only relief was rubbing it down with ice cubes. Miserable night…………. I’ve had this several times before and it usually involves a trip to the doc to get a Z-Pack of prednisone and a shot of something. I got this even though I was wearing a long sleeve shirt and gloves just for this reason. I woke up Sunday morning and my face and arms had fairly well swelled so that my left eye was closed and my right about half way. Off to the emergency room for a shot of something, a dose pack of prednisone and some other anti itch pills, all of which are supposed to me stronger than the off the shelf stuff I’d been using to no particular end. I should have learned by now just to head to an instant care place as soon as the symptoms show up. This always seems to happen on a weekend or holiday to maximize the inconvenience.

We’re really getting the Florida summer experience. That means a serious rain storm every afternoon. By serious I mean we get an inch of rain in about 5 minutes then it slows down to produce a total of 1.5 to 2.0 over the next hour. We’ve had 5” in the last 3 days bringing the lake up to the highest of the year. If memory serves, this is the highest it’s been in about 7 years and if the current trend continues, we could be looking at all time highs.

Had a great few days when the Yearta’s, Lindsay, Charles, and Grace, visited. It’s really fun to see how Charles and Lindsay’s careers are blossoming and Grace is changing from a toddler to a full grown kidling. We did all the usual lake things, swimming, kayaking, and enjoying a cheese and wine social hour on the dock where we solved the world’s most pressing problems. Now that Lindsay has her doctorate and Charles is well on his way toward his, we can make the conversations slightly more intellectual when discussing what bait is best for bream. Grace caught 38 by the way and was feeding the fish from her hand out of the kayak. The turkey family did it’s job by showing up a couple of times. Ditto rabbits. Luckily we all missed a mid afternoon bear show about 2:30 Tuesday afternoon on my neighbors property. Grace spent a good deal of her time sewing with Aunt Nancy, who was more than a little impressed with Grace’s ability to “fussy cut” material. Apparently that is usually not something little people pick up so soon. Hope we see them again before next Easter.

That tree cutting job I mentioned in the last blog turned out to be quite a bit more than I counted on. The top of a large bay had broken off and I wanted to cut down the remaining 18” diameter trunk. I have a wimpy chain saw but the tree was dead so I decided to give it a go. By the time I was finally able to topple it, I was worn out, totally soaked in sweat, and had somehow pulled a muscle in my thigh. I headed for the lake, stripped down and dove in – my body needed instant cooling and that’s about as instant as you can get. The thigh cramp eased a bit so I was able to swim around until my temp stabilized at somewhere near normal. The bad part popped up a few hours later. I must have gotten involved with some foliage that I’m allergic to or is generically poisonous. From my wrists to my elbows, both arms, I started itching. By the evening it was swollen and I was coating it with every anti itching salve we had and popping Benadryl. The only relief was rubbing it down with ice cubes. Miserable night…………. I’ve had this several times before and it usually involves a trip to the doc to get a Z-Pack of prednisone and a shot of something. I got this even though I was wearing a long sleeve shirt and gloves just for this reason. I woke up Sunday morning and my face and arms had fairly well swelled so that my left eye was closed and my right about half way. Off to the emergency room for a shot of something, a dose pack of prednisone and some other anti itch pills, all of which are supposed to me stronger than the off the shelf stuff I’d been using to no particular end. I should have learned by now just to head to an instant care place as soon as the symptoms show up. This always seems to happen on a weekend or holiday to maximize the inconvenience.

We’re really getting the Florida summer experience. That means a serious rain storm every afternoon. By serious I mean we get an inch of rain in about 5 minutes then it slows down to produce a total of 1.5 to 2.0 over the next hour. We’ve had 5” in the last 3 days bringing the lake up to the highest of the year. If memory serves, this is the highest it’s been in about 7 years and if the current trend continues, we could be looking at all time highs.

Had a great few days when the Yearta’s, Lindsay, Charles, and Grace, visited. It’s really fun to see how Charles and Lindsay’s careers are blossoming and Grace is changing from a toddler to a full grown kidling. We did all the usual lake things, swimming, kayaking, and enjoying a cheese and wine social hour on the dock where we solved the world’s most pressing problems. Now that Lindsay has her doctorate and Charles is well on his way toward his, we can make the conversations slightly more intellectual when discussing what bait is best for bream. Grace caught 38 by the way and was feeding the fish from her hand out of the kayak. The turkey family did it’s job by showing up a couple of times. Ditto rabbits. Luckily we all missed a mid afternoon bear show about 2:30 Tuesday afternoon on my neighbors property. Grace spent a good deal of her time sewing with Aunt Nancy, who was more than a little impressed with Grace’s ability to “fussy cut” material. Apparently that is usually not something little people pick up so soon. Hope we see them again before next Easter.

The local weather newsies are going crazy over a small storm off the east coast of Florida. It’s been a few days since we’ve had any rain at all here at the lake so I’m hoping it gets closer to us than now predicted. I also noticed on my last beach trip that the seaweed is quickly disappearing so a good, offshore storm could help replenish my stocks. Although as I’m typing this post, we’re experiencing some serious squalls and I’m seeing some dead trees and branches breaking off and some not so dead trees uprooting. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day with the chain saw.

It’s official – Chris is transferring to Chicago as a District Manager Trainer, effective next week. He’ll be doing a house hunting trip the week of the 14th and then commuting from NY to Chicago for a month or so. The plan is to be on site, living and working there by Sept 1. So now we’ll have little Tommy and Chris there to visit. From my perspective he has an attraction to bad places but he just prefers big cities with bad weather to regular places with nice weather. Go figure.

Just about finished with the tomatoes for the season. Nancy produced the final batch of sauce this morning so we end up with roughly 10 x 2 quart bags of sauce in the freezer to carry us over to the next season. There are also a few smaller, pizza size bags so we should be in good shape.

My interest in soccer dropped to zero after Simon retired from the game – age 5. I have soccer right up there with the winter Olympics and the Daytona 500.

Surprise, a recent poll finds Obama as the worst president since WW2. I think I mentioned that about a year into his first term. The poll is a little suspect since it didn’t show Jimmy Carter as a close runner up.