I have no clever title.

A few weeks ago I decided to revive the blogging only to find out that I now needed a gmail account and afer much circling around with google password assistant, can now get into this again, honestly how does one end up with so many ridiculous accounts on the web? I should nix some of my emails and consolidate but general laziness prevents me. Let me say gentle readers...and not so gentle readers, that I miss you all and in quiet moments at home wish for your visits but the idea of actually scheduling a visit in advance that works for both or several parties gets to be as daunting as consolidating emails and instead I quietly water the trees, take care of the cats, hang out with Andrew and work on my various hobbies, most occupying, photography.

I hope you like the most recent round. I spent like 100 bucks at Cord Camera this week because they were having dirt cheap 8X10s and 5X7s so I tried to catch up with prints of my pictures. I still have some wonderful fledgling robin pictures from this spring to put up so bear with me.

Another recent interest is my continued obsession with our bread machine and now our food saver. I have been making soft onion sandwich rolls, cinammon rolls, and even biscuits (which I don't use the bread machine for but am lumping together anyway.

It's now gotten to the point where Thursday night, while we had the daily show and colbert report on, that I bustled about the kitchen making the dry mixes to several receipes and then food saving them (www.foodsaver.com) shut in ball jars. Seriously. I try to do one new recipe a week. If andrew and i both like it, or if I like it, the recipe goes in the book or not, gets trashed.

I've also been using my foodsaver on sweet corn. Even though raccoons came by to "test" our ears on two different evenings, we managed to evade the raiders and supplemented by Mom and Dad's excess of corn have a couple dozen neat servings food saved away in the freezer.

I know what you are thinking. And I have an answer for you. NO BABIES!!!

Except of course, for our cat babies, Tweeker and Molly who get along very well. Molly still refuses to be picked up but takes to cuddling at night and most of it. One of her favorite activities is to jump on the edge of our oak dining room chairs, the one closest to the kitchen counter specifically, and after a few seconds of balanceing and stretching out one leg then another, she leaps onto the kitchen counter, trotting as far as she can before we catch her. It's hopeless. Rest assured friends that if you eat anything I make the counter has been disenfected and I bake on wax/parchment paper to be sure.

Andrew has nearly finished laying his own hardwood floor in his room. It took him a couple days to get into a groove I think, but using an air compressed power nail gun helped and it's now a bad job at all. He didn't have quite enough boards stained but can stain them now that they are laid. The next project, I will participate more in, we are getting some cabinets for our laundray room wtih counters etc. To stain and place. We will probably go tommorrow and pick them up as Lowe's is having there buy so much no interest deals.

Lately I have been obsessed with Doris Day. Seriously. You may remember one of my earliest blog postsrecommending the book the Thing About Jane Spring. Well I've recommended it to folks at the library so much that I thought I should meet Doris myself. I've watched Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back. I am watching Send Me No Flowers but don't like it as much.

Other books I have listened to and loved:

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb
AustenLand by Shannon Hale
Con Ed by...oh I forget and am, too lazy too look it up.

I haven't had a satisfying print read in a while. I read Connie Willis' Passage but found the ending deeply unsatisfying. I read Stray by Rachel Vincent, but it was just okay. I've been spending most of my evening reading learning about North American mammals, trying to become quite the naturalist I suppose and white tails are my preoccupation right now. Dad is letting me go up in treestands with my camera and last night I saw a doe and two fawns, the doe caught my fidgeting though and they did not stay long.

I hope this give you a feeling of being caught up. No more pictures for a while, except for maybe the robins. I have high hopes for some decent deer pics between now and hunting season.

See ya, Jules

So Jules, what the crap have you been doing?

Well working, and working and working. And other stuff too.

Basically Summer Reading is in Full swing at the library and I've had a crazy schedule there. Plus since we have had very little rain in the past two months I spend a lot of time watering our trees. Our sycamore totally didn't leaf out on the limbs and is starting new limbs around the trunk so basically we are just trying to keep him alive. The pine trees are growing like gang busters and so are the crab apples. I find taking care of the trees very satisfying. It's a real stress reliever to quietly water them after 8 o clock whenit has cooled down a little. I like being able to see them physically grow and they don't have the temporary aspect of flowers. Most likely these trees will outlive me or at least some of them and I find that very cool.

Our garden is doing well. It's just watermelons and sweet corn this year and I am growing two onions in a pot. Andrew's orchard is up to six trees now and they are doing well.

We adopted a kitten from the Union County Humane Society about a month ago. She's a little tortie and very fiesty. We are keeping her in the guest bedroom until she gets a little bigger and take her out to play at night. If Tweek doesn't think we are getting her out soon enough he cries at the door.

We got a grill a couple of weeks ago and use it pretty often. After 4 years I've broken out the bread machine and am quickly becoming obsessed with it. It just smells so good when it's baking and I can control the ingredients. So I've made Italian Herb Bread and Cinammon Raisin and I have like 6 cinammon roll dough recipes that require little or no butter. We have an electric knife too which is like essential otherwise (or at least in my case) the sliced bread looks hacked off. Actually an electric knife is kind of like a chainsaw, only for bread.

I've been taking some pictures and doing lots of laundry. Andrew is well. He got a punching bag and stand for his birthday so is building up quite the home gym.

That's really all the news that's fit to blog, and maybe not even then.

Jules

Vacation that is sort of a Vacation

So I took this week off from work to help Mom at the Tax Office, today (Tuesday) is a lot less hectic than yesterday with the calls but I'd like to think I am still helping Mom quite a bit. Because I just took five days off with the sore throat and infected tonsils from Hell, I am still trying to keep up with the most critical things at work through email and I think doing okay.

There really isn't any interesting or earth shattering news but in an effort to blog remotely regularly I am now typing. It is really really cold here but like 90% of my readers--yes all 6 of you, probably already know that. It's snowing now. Dad picked me up with Mom this morning so I will mostly stay through the late evening with them. We shouldn't get asm uch as Cincinnati at least. Tweeker continues to get fat and the other night slept with me when I had the mattress pad turned up enough.

I have most of our old pictures in antique frames hung up in the family room. I think it will look pretty cool when it is done, I have as few as three and as many as four left to hang. Last week we got a picture of Andrew's grandparents scordato wedding picture and it is really, really cool so I am going to put it in an antique frame that matches our wedding frame.

I moved great grandma perdue's trunk underneath the pictures and put on of our older quilts on top so I think it will look quite nice when it is done.

Not much else to post really, I hope to have some pictures to post once it gets a little warmer. Jules

um you know that Sore Throat...

Hi, that sore throat turned out to be

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/tonsillitis/DS00273

And it sucked.

Last week I took a whole week off work.

And my tonsils were really really gross.

I couldn't even swallow a tylenol.

Andrew took really good care of me, I ate jello, scrambled eggs, soup and drank a lot of gatorade. I watched 5,000 movies, read 4 books and generally felt sorry for myself.

that is all

jules

With the Ice Cream Maker we are Unstoppable

Well it's nothing but appliance joy at the Scordato household. We finally busted out the bread machine (yes that one we got at the wedding) and made some bread last week but are going to what on major production until we get an electric knife. So far we have made like 10 quarts of ice cream and sherbert. So far the strawberry I have made with lactose free whole milk is my favorite. I've ussed my kitchen aid mixer twice and have started experimenting with my digital camera. I can take pictures in black and white and sepia tones.

Not much else going on--oh wait yeah, I was really sick last week. What started as a sore throat...