Ouch!

Ok so now that I'm back from vacation, I was finally able to join my volleyball team - the "Janitors". Now... we aren't REALLY janitors, that's just a name. It's a name with an interesting background. It comes from a brief exchange from several (is it 4 or 5 years now?) years back. An unnamed engineer/software person from my office was talking about the difference between business areas, and telling how the engineers/software types are the main driving force of our business. He then went on to talk about the other areas that supported the engineers, just like "... a bunch of janitors." Thus the name for a volleyball team was formed, and has stuck for many years. We even let "non-janitors" play with us on our team. But I digress, this was about the actual volleyball. So we played tonight, and it was only 2 games, but a good warmup for the season (it was everyone else's 4th game). Obviously I need practice since I did this on the court...



Yes it hurts, but not as much as it looks like. After cleaning it up the gravelly texture remains however. Hopefully that will heal up smooth. Normally I would be going back for more self-abuse tomorrow for our next game, but I will be in Leesburg filming and photographing my little dog run some agility training.

In other news the bed of seedlings is coming along, and despite a late start it looks as though I still have a prospect at some home produce. Except possibly the bell peppers... for some reason they are completely dormant rows on the seed tray. Perhaps I stored the seeds poorly, though all the others (onions, cucumbers, yellow squash, tomato, spinach, and pumpkin) are all doing ok. I'm a little excited to see how the pumpkin does, assuming we can find enough space in the yard to grow it. The seeds germinating as we speak are from my GIANT pumpkin a few years back which weighed in around 90+ lbs. (Boris is pictured for reference, note: he is about the same weight as the pumpkin here.)



After checking the date on the photo, it was actually 2003. Where does the time go? That was the summer of GIANT and/or prolific vegetables. We missed harvesting one yellow squash until it was the size of my wife's lower leg. And so many squash, cucumbers, and tomatoes that we had to give alot of it away. I mean... there's only so many ways to cook squash... I stopped just shy of squash soup. I'd had enough. It was excellent on the grill, sauteed, fried, in salads, in pasta, I even made a champagne/mushroom stuffed dish out of the bigger ones (those were really good), I checked online recipes and used some of them as well. I'm sure Bubba or Forrest would've had many many more ways to prepare squash. Note to self. Only plant 1 to 2 vines of squash, not 1 to 2 ROWS.