So it’s been a couple days… er… months since I last wrote, I figured
\nI’d break this blog up into sections. Grab a cool beverage, put your feet
\nup and get reading!<\/p>\n
Okay, I last left you off thinking our lawn was about to become the “It”
\nspot in Falcon Crest. People would come from far and wide to see how
\nbeautiful a lawn could really be… Unfortunately things didn’t work out
\nthis way. A day or two after my last blog entry (first week of June), a
\nfunny thing happened… it rained… and when it rains it pours… We
\nended up having a stretch of three or four days with severe thunderstorms
\nand showers… you can just guess what happened, all our seed washed away!
\nWe learned two important things from this… firstly – never seed before
\nheavy rains and secondly – always know where your gutters downspouts
\ndrain. Not sure exactly what the builders were thinking, but they decided
\nto have one of the downspouts go under the sidewalk that leads to the side
\ndoor of our garage. This is all and well, except they didn’t have any
\nwhere for the water to go. We got so much rain, it created a small hole
\nwere water was coming up out of the ground. I’m glad to say this problem
\nis fixed. Our lawn guy put in what he called a “pop-up”. It’s a little
\ngreen thing in the ground that raises when the water fills up the
\ndownspout, and settles back down once it stops raining. For a small fee,
\nhe redid all our downspouts this way, which is really cool as I don’t have
\nto move them when I’m mowing the grass (once we get grass…) and we don’t
\nhave to worry about them blowing away, which has happened in the past!<\/p>\n
I bet right about now, you’re wondering when we’ll actually have a nice,
\nlush, soft, green lawn… I’m thinking the same thing myself. After the
\nseed washed away, we started getting a little growth. Some of it was good
\ngrass, while most of it was weeds… Not wanting to spray over the weeds,
\nthe lawn guy came out and killed off the lawn (for the second time now…)
\nA few days went by, then weeks, then finally he came out again to kill off
\nsome more growth that had occurred (third time…). Finally, this past
\nweekend, he brought his tiller and broke the crust that had formed,
\nre-raked the yard, and sprayed it once more (four times… man weeds can
\nbe tough =P). Right now the lawn looks really good compared to what it did
\na few days ago, it’s just missing that green stuff on top… you know…
\ngrass! Looks like rain is in the forecast, so maybe he’s putting off
\nspraying for a couple days. Boy, I’m glad I’m saving all this gas money
\nnot having to run my lawnmower =\/.<\/p>\n
If you haven’t heard we’ve done quite a few races already this summer.
\nThere was the Loons Pennant Race I had mentioned in a blog earlier, the
\nPinconning Cheese Fest Fun Run, the Dow Run\/Walk, and the Cheasning
\nRiverboat run. The Dow one was really nice, it started off at the Midland
\nCommunity Center and looped through various streets of Midland. It would
\nhave been nice if the water they handed out along the way was colder, but
\nit was a fun race. I signed up to do the 5K run and managed to finish just
\nover 37 minutes. Susan did the walk and was a little disappointed she
\ndidn’t beat her time from the Pennant race. We also learned never to
\nforget your safety pins, but a quick run to Walgreen’s never hurts! The
\nCheese Fest run was two miles and everyone that entered got a small block
\nof cheese, well almost everyone… Susan didn’t… It was a warm day and I
\nreally wanted to run the whole thing ( well as least the first mile anyway
\n;)), but I was overcoming a cold and was only able to run part of it. When
\nI crossed the finish line, the clock said “21:25”, but to get our
\n“official” time we had to hand in our numbers. The only problem with this
\nis there was a bunch of kids that cut in front of me, I managed to get my
\nposition back, but unfortunately Susan wasn’t able to and got a slightly
\nworse time then she actually finished… oh well… I ran the Cheasning
\nrace and beat my previous time… I finished in 33:03. Susan also ran in
\nthis race and almost got her time put down as a walker, which would have
\ngiven her a really good walk time, but she told them she signed up to run.<\/p>\n
Scout’s doing well, even if she hasn’t reached her recommended weight
\nyet (she might be gaining =\/). We got her back on the old food which
\nprobably doesn’t help things much, but we had so much left over we thought
\nwe’d better use it. She still begs for food and gets really annoying until
\nwe feed her… It’s been pretty warm lately and Scout’s been losing quite
\na bit of fur. To help with this problem we usually brush her, but one day
\nwe (and when I say “we” I really mean Susan) thought it would be a good
\nidea to give her a bath. Out came the small tub we use to bath the cat in
\nand the struggle began. Scout’s big enough now that should could spread all
\nfour legs across the lip of the tub and not get wet. After quite a bit of
\nstruggle, we (both of us now) got her feet wet. She wasn’t too happy about
\nthis and managed to dig one of her back claws pretty deep into my palm.
\nI’ve never seen Scout’s tail so big… it was super-puffed out. After she
\nscratched me I gave up on the whole bath thing. Susan tried to get her in
\nthe water again, but Scout was helping things and managed to avoid getting
\na bath. I think if we (Susan) try this again, we’ll be getting a bigger
\ntub! If you haven’t seen the latest pictures of her, head on over to the
\npictures of the week!<\/p>\n
I played the infamous child star in the area. He’s 16 and if he doesn’t
\nwin the Michigan championship, he’s in second! I was able to get 5 points
\nagainst him, while everyone else that tried, couldn’t get more then 2!
\nHe’s been playing since he was 5 and is extremely talented. Even though I
\ngot banged up the other night (took a racquet to the face, hit myself in
\nthe leg with my racquet and got drilled just below the rib cage on a
\nserve that was long anyway =\/), I still try to get down to the courts to
\nplay once or twice a week. I even got to play doubles a couple times…
\nwhich at first seems like there’s a lot of people on the court, but it’s
\nactuallypretty fun. I’m really excited for the ladder season to start up,
\nsounds like Mittag will be doing it too!<\/p>\n
Work’s been going great, I’m getting a lot done and my boss says I’m
\ndoing a good job. I’ll be a full time employee (for real this time) on
\nSeptember 15th and am pretty excited for that! Susan’s job has been kind
\nof hectic lately… she started up a new process not too long ago and was
\non call for the DeHate family camp out… She thinks she may have found a
\nlead on solving a problem she’s been working on for awhile now.<\/p>\n
Once we get the data converted properly, we’ll be deploying our software to a
\nclient for beta testing. It was suppose to happen this week, but some
\nissues needed to be fixed before we could go… maybe next week… The
\ncompany picnic is this weekend, it sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun!<\/p>\n
Even though Susan couldn’t go, I went out to the camp out for the day.
\nInstead of a canoe trip, this year we had the DeHate Olympic Games. We all
\ndrew from a hat to pick teams. The I’s and H’s looked pretty similar and
\nwe had to figure who was on which team. We *cough* rigged *cough* it so my
\nmom and I were on the same team. We also had another team mate who was
\npretty young (and pretty annoying…) There was horseshoes, mini-golf
\n(from hell), water balloon toss, bocche ball, cornhole, mini-basketball,
\nand ladder ball. Each station you met up with another team and played the
\ngame together except for cornhole. Depending on how well you did, you got
\na gold, silver, or bronze (aka pink) star. The team with the most gold and
\nsilver stars was the winner. Our first event was the mini-golf, and man
\nthat was tough, it was one hole at the bottom of an eight foot incline
\nwith all kinds of roots growing out of the ground… we got the bronze
\nstar on this one. We did pretty good on the other events, and when we got
\nto cornhole, we ripped it up. Not having played the game before, we
\nmanaged to get quite a few in the hole… “CORNHOLE!!!” yeah you have to
\nsay it for it to count! \ud83d\ude09 The food was really good, especially Susan’s
\nPizza Pasta, and pretty soon it was time to go. Next year, we’ll be
\ncamping (hopefully… if someone isn’t on call.)<\/p>\n
We have been making good use of our season passes so far. We even got to
\nbe chaperones for one trip. That was kind of fun, except for the annoying
\nbus driver. Dow Corning treated all their interns to a trip to the park
\nand Susan signed us up to be chaperones (even though technically I should
\nhave been a guest \ud83d\ude42 ). The plan was to leave early on a Saturday morning,
\nthe only problem with this was sometimes plans don’t go according to the
\nplan… We headed over to the meeting spot for the two buses, only problem
\nwas, there was a total of four people there… yup the buses were in the
\nwrong spot (or 50 interns were, you pick =P). So after getting to the
\nright spot, the day snacks were no where to be found (oh yeah, we got
\nfed!) So we waited around for the food to arrive, packed up the buses, and
\nwere off, about an hour later then the plan. The bus driver told the same
\nstory over a few times, but it was a good trip. We got to watch movies,
\ngot to go to the park for free, got to eat for free, and didn’t have to
\npay for gas, can’t hardly beat that!<\/p>\n
Our last trip wasn’t as much fun as the others though… Someone said it
\nwasn’t suppose to rain, someone was wrong… We got to our camp site (same
\nplace as last time and probably will be the last time there…) and it was
\nincredibly muggy out… and the bugs were out. After getting the tent set
\nup, I was pretty dang sweaty, and hopped in the shower, while Susan
\nattended to all her bug bites… The next day we went to the park, and it
\nwas pretty cloudy. It rained a little, and a lot of the rides shutdown.
\nThen, near the end of the day it started to rain a little harder, we
\ndecided to go, hoping Sunday would be clear… it wasn’t, we packed up our
\nwent tent and came home… almost without getting lost. We were coming
\nback and past an exited I thought we should have taken. Well being
\nadventurous, I decided to stay on the road we were on – that’s the way the
\nbus driver did it afterall. All was good and well until we got to Toledo,
\nI missed another exit I should have taken… after driving around and
\ncircling back, I managed to find that exit again and was able to get back
\ninto Michigan, from there it was easy and all while my avigator was
\nsleeping… Halloween weekends start in September and you better believe
\nwe’ll be there as much as we can!<\/p>\n
Okay, so maybe you didn’t need a cold beverage to get through this blog,
\nbut atleast you won’t be thirsty now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So it’s been a couple days… er… months since I last wrote, I figured I’d break this blog up into sections. Grab a cool beverage, put your feet up and get reading! The Lawn Okay, I last left you off thinking our lawn was about to become the “It” spot in Falcon Crest. People would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,4,3,20,14,19,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}