I’ve taken some Summer time pictures of the garden. We have herbs, herbs, and more herbs. You can only eat so much herbs and Shannon planted a bunch of them! Just go to the Photos tab at the top of the page and you will see the Album with all the Summer pictures.

I really like the changes they made to WordPress 2.6 but unfortunately they are only visible while in the administrative areas of the blog. It’s much easier to get around and everything looks sharp!

I’m trying out a few new plug-ins to see if I like them. The Who’s Online and Tags. I don’t know much about the Tags one so I’ll have to get use to using it.

I have been working hard on two other web sites so I have neglected the AtomicMrX Blog badly. One is a make over site and the other I’m just trying to incorporate the blogging software into it to make updates much easier to do (especially the photo albums!).

Work is starting to pick up as we approach the election. We will be doing a lot more overtime in the next few months. 

Happy Birthday Mom!

I love you!

I’m sure most viewing these will not find them interesting but I know there are a few leftover 80’s alternative/punk fans that will so here they are:

Grace Jones - Corporate Cannibal

Nina Hagen - Future is Now Live

Nina Hagen - TV Glotzer Live

Ultravox - Vienna [stereo]

Ultravox - The Voice Live

Ultravox - All Stood Still Live

Thank you for your time… end of transmission.

Here is Tiny Tim and Super Bush:

We should have nice red tomatoes by the end of next week!

I still have to do one software install for him. For some reason it didn’t work right at all. It could be how I duped the files. I’ll retry from the original.

When I got home from Jim’s; Shannon and I went to the River Front Park and watched the fireworks. It was crazy packed with people. They gave shuttle busses of people rides from the River Market to the River Front Park. There were probably about 12 or so very long school busses making the circuit.

I didn’t like being around that many people in one little area. It was weird. Kind of felt like a sci-fi movie and we were all fleeing the city with the only transportation left. As we sat in the school bus going over the bridges; people were walking along side the bus in hordes. It was very surreal.

Jaki handled the fireworks very well this year. I don’t think there was as much illegal stuff shooting off this year as in the past.

I hope everyone had a safe and fun filled fourth!

Finally at 4:55 I was taken to a little room to await the doctor. The A/C was not working right and I was hot in the room! I mean hot! Well, I waited and waited and waited and waited. I thought everyone had left at one point and forgot I was in a room but then at 6:15 (yes that is six fifteen!) the doctor came in to do the follow up on two ingrown hairs that she gave me some ointment for (which did nothing). She spent about 2 and a half minutes with me telling me I was stuck with the little bumps unless I want to get them cut out which would leave a two inch scar (let’s see a bump the size of an eraser or a two inch scar…. hmmmm). That was it. I waited for an hour and forty-five minutes to see the doctor for 2 minutes. I think she felt bad. She apologized numerous times for making me wait.

I left the dermatologist just furious and agitated. There had gone three hours of my already short evening. By the time I got home it was 7:00 (I go to bed at 8:30). I got a call from Shannon at 8:00 (got off from work) and went to get him then went directly to bed.

To make things worse, a storm was moving through at the time I went to get Shannon from his work and bring him home. The winds were so strong it made it hard to see out the windows of the car - they were a sheet of water! Plus it had nocked the power off at some of the major intersections and suddenly everyone was stupid and either sat at the intersection not knowing what to do or ran through blindly!

I’m taking some Personal Time today at work (probably two hours) so I can go home and just do nothing! I think I need a vacation (which I can’t afford). Everything seems to irritate me lately. I’ve eaten really badly this week and that is making me mad too. I need to get back on track.

Here is another video of Toki Tori:

After the Slimy Sewer levels I’ll be at the last level: Bubble Barrage. There are ten puzzles per each level.

With all this rain, the garden is growing like crazy and so are my upside-down tomato plants!

I finally broke the 200 pound mark. This week I weighed in at 199 which also makes my 20 pound loss mark as well. I am now about half way (ugh)!

I got the Wii Fit and have been using it every day. It is a good work out for a person like me (totally out of shape). The Yoga and Strength exercises are really making my thighs work! I can feel it and then some! I have really good balance and posture (at least that’s what my Wii Fit Instructor keeps saying) I just need to work on my core so I have better balance. I tend to sway when the exercise requires me to balance on one foot. I just need to build up the muscles in my feet. I use to have fairly strong feet in college but that was over 25 years ago (I AM SO VERY OLD! - sigh).

Jaki is loving the backyard. She runs around out there whenever we are working on the gardens and stuff. We don’t leave her back there unattended because there are some VERY big dogs that could (and have) jumped our fence and would easily think she is dinner.

Shannon put a lot of time into our gardens and it shows! I will take some pictures and post in the next week!

I used Mr Clean on the floors yesterday and I am very impressed! I use to use Pine Sol and thought it was good but we used it all up and I happen to have some Mr Clean left over from apartment days (over 5 years ago) so I used it instead. The floors have never been so clean, shiny, and feel great on the ol’ bare feet! The Pine Sol would tend to leave the floors sticky if you got the ratio off on water to product.

I had a great concoction last night. I wanted a smoothie and I didn’t have all the ingredients to make a Weight Watchers recipe so I made one up base on it. It was like a shake and kind of like sorbet. Very good and I ate the whole thing (I need to make a smaller batch next time!). Here is the recipe and it is very easy and simple.

1 package of Sugar Free - Fat Free Instant Vanilla Pudding & Pie Filling mix
16 oz package of whole frozen Strawberries
2 Cups Skim Milk

This makes 2 rather large servings or 4 one and a half cup servings (I went with one humungous serving!).

In a blender, put the milk, Vanilla Pudding & Pie Filling powder mix, and frozen strawberries; blend on high (scrapping down the sides often) till nice and smooth. This will thicken as it sets because of the Vanilla mix. It’s part of the Core plan for me so I don’t know how many points it would be for the Flex people.

It was so good - I thought I was cheating! I also bought a Chocolate Fudge Pudding & Pie Filling mix and can’t wait to try that one out!

Work has been very slow which is very unusual. We are normally doing over time because of the political season and the Memorial Day holiday - but we are not. We barely have work to keep us busy during the work day! I hope things pick up a little bit more as we get closer to election day!

I downloaded a free demo of DS Crosswords and it was a lot of fun. Made me think about spelling (which I’m horrible at) and wasn’t too hard to make me feel discouraged. It’s a cheap game too… only $20! That is unusual! I think I may pick it up - I need to keep this old brain a thinking and a little practice at spelling words correctly wouldn’t hurt either!