Pinball Fun in Kansas

Wow, sure did hit me hard last night how much I miss my KC Pinball buddies. Brutha Burt had a small get together/pinball tournament and set up a web cam so I could enjoy the show. Was really nice to see, hear, and chat with some old friends, and relive the past when pinball parties were a lot more common than they are for me now. (Sniff). It was a late thought to grab pictures, and I only managed to get a few:


I hear Don won. Big surprise........

Seven hours in the corner

I festered all afternoon, and tried not to be bitchy to my lovely wife, but when they proactively held back my funds from the weekend (totaling over $400), I lost it. In all seriousness, I sent this:

----------------------------

I am appalled that after selling on Amazon since 2004, that after a few refunds for justified reasons, and a few negative feedbacks, that not only is my account under review and my funds held for 30 days, within a few hours my account was SUSPENDED without a valid reason. I'm shocked and angered that your policy only looks at 30 days of activity and then treats sellers in such a rude manner. Unless my account suspension is lifted immediately, I will be removing my inventory from Amazon (now at close to 1800 unique items) and selling elsewhere.

----------------------------

At 10:52PM my suspension was lifted, and my funds released. I'm not exactly certain it had anything to do with the above email, but they weren't going to lift it unless I gave SOME response. To quote them, they said: "In order to reinstate your listings, please write and provide a detailed account of the steps you will undertake to bring your performance up to our standards. ".

I wrote, but I certainly didn't give them a plan on how I was going to improve!

Sigh. Corporate drama. I miss it not.

Sorry, you apparently didn't behave.

Amazon must be teaming up with eBay and PayPal with their corporate policies. Today, for no good reason (that I agree with anyway), my Amazon seller account was suspended. Why? Well, the form letters are pretty vague, but it appears that a combination of lower sales in the past month, three non positive feedbacks, and four refunds were enough to do it. So let's analyze:

1. One negative feedback for a damaged package, the buyer is irate with me and there was no calming him down. He even called me a crook, multiple times!

2. One neutral feedback: "Everything was good, except the game won't save. And I know it's not my memory card because i can save other games on it." Certainly my fault. I'll talk to Sony.

3. One negative because I accidentally sent the wrong item, and his replacement isn't there yet. Guess he felt it was his job to leave me a negative for making a mistake. Thanks asshole.

4. A refund cause the customer returned the item (without my approval but that's besides the point). This counts against me?

5. One refund cause the customer changed their mind. Her husband bought it elsewhere. Again my fault.

6. One refund cause I miscounted items, WHOOPS! I make mistakes!! It's TRUE!

7. One cause I sold it to a local guy and couldn't remove it quick enough on Amazon and it sold so I had to refund.

All this resulted in:

---------------------

We are writing to let you know that your listings have been suspended and are currently unavailable for sale. The feedback, claims, and/or refunds submitted to your seller account profile indicate that a number of buyers have been dissatisfied with the service you have provided.

Amazon sellers should maintain refund rates and negative feedback rates of less than 5% of orders, as well as A-to-z Guarantee rates of less than 0.5% of orders.

Your seller account will remain accessible to you. Please take steps to resolve your pending sales.

We encourage you to review your processes in order to identify any operational deficiencies that may have contributed to increased negative feedback, guarantee claims or returns submitted by your transaction partners. In order to reinstate your listings, please write to seller-performance@amazon.com and provide a detailed account of the steps you will undertake to bring your performance up to our standards.

We look forward to hearing from you.

---------------------

Blame me to be grumpy?

We'll miss you Amber....

Sad day Saturday, Amber went to the land of incredibly huge and colorful Frisbees. Her fight with cancer was super short, and apparently surgery didn't help. We'll miss her. Plenty of tears in Reno.....

Something you didn't know

Cat pukes stains concrete. I'm not trying to follow a theme or anything, just making an observation.

Before

And after!

Welcome to my mansion. Watch your step.

Believe it or not, I was taking a whiz the other day when it struck me about something I've been meaning to blog about for a long time, and now enough time has passed since I left "my old job", I think it's safe. In the days where I did a lot of hand-holding computer work (downloading pictures from the camera, how to burn a CD, cleaning up spyware), I ran in to a lot of disgusting, weird or just wrong things. A lot of these people lived in very expensive multimillion homes, but money doesn't make you normal or smart, that's for sure. The following memories are from a half dozen people over the course of a few years:

1. In one home, the teenager's toilet was jammed very close to the tub & shower. The white shower curtain was pulled back towards the toilet, I couldn't help but notice it was yellowed at the bottom. You figure it out.
2. In the same mansion downstairs, one of their two retrievers (I assume) had taken a big dump in the middle of the oriental rug, it looked like it had been there for awhile.
3. Same house, different kid about 12 years old, had a porn DVD (and a rental to boot) in his non working PC. Don't ask me what I did with it, it's a secret.
4. You know those Folgers pre-measured coffee-in-a-filter packs they sell, for the people that have the money and are too lazy to measure their own coffee and put in their own filter? Convenient? Sure! So when I was asked if I wanted some coffee, she got out the filters, got out the pre-measured coffee packs, slowly tore one open and dumped the contents in to the new filter....
5. A week later on a follow up visit, the turd was still there.
6. Oh, and they put their old nice golden retriever down, why? "Well, we were going on vacation..." Nice.
7. Once at another mansion, I was called because the printer didn't work. It made no sense, that it would just stop working, but it seems like I was always being called to this house to fix weird problems. And not for the first time, the young bratty son who obviously had his dad's prick like attitude is saying to Mom as I'm standing right there: "Mom! We don't NEED him. We need to get a new computer! How much is he going to charge anyway?!". From what I could surmise, yeah, he wanted a new PC. One that downloads porn faster I bet! In this case I found the problem. The printer port had been disabled. Huh!? Wonder how THAT happened!?!?!?!
8. I once had a nightmare virus cleanup at a house with three PCs. They had twins, and their PCs were side by side, and the third was on another floor. They all got one of those damn pop up virus programs that make using your PC impossible. I was able to spend about 3-4 hours and cleaned it all up, and was even thanked with a bottle of expensive wine. I sent in my bill, and I did get paid, but with it was a note that said "Todd, here's your money. We paid a neighborhood kid about $25 to fix the email problem that you did not. He fixed everything and more in about 20 minutes".
9. I had this one lady who was well, just dumber than rocks. To make her feel important I guess, she scheduled "Lessons" with me. I'm not teacher, and I'm not always patient, especially with DUMBASS people, but I tried. These lessons involved me standing behind her for an hour or so while I instructed her where to click on the screen while the PC prompted her. Sometimes I even had to take her hand and move the mouse for her. We're talking copying pictures off her camera people, not complex Excel pivot tables! And not one lesson on this, MANY lessons. She didn't read the screen, and didn't seem to retain anything. I also set up her stereo while there once, and sometimes spent a lot of time cleaning up her Internet messes. The last call I spent there actually was challenging, seems like a driver update made her new HP printer stop working properly. She refused to pay $150 of the bill I sent. Why? I was told by her husband's secretary that she felt I didn't do the work, that I should have known better about the problem since I was a computer guy.
10. One job I had to do was simply to set up an online stock portfolio in Yahoo, and then teach the same secretary how to update it. Picture this now, I'm given his entire investment data, worth in excess of 5 million, and later his wife doesn't pay me $150. I always wanted to send him a thank you card.
    
11. I informed one lady (I mostly dealt with the wives ya know) that I had family over Thanksgiving and thus would be unavailable. Do you think that mattered? Cell phone rings, few minutes later home phone rings, then a few later cell phone rings (sigh!). So I answer. It would have been just a WEE bit nicer to get "Sorry to bother you" but the conversation from the adult son went something like this: "Todd. I forgot my password. I need to get online".... "Uh, OK, but you don't have a PC password?"... "No, no, to SPORTSGAMBLING.COM, I gotta put in a bet for the Denver game". Whatever dude, thanks for bothering me.
12. Not computer work, I was hired to set up a pinball machine is a restaurant owner's newly remodeled basement bar/gameroom. This area musta been 4000 square feet, and it was really cool. To be polite, I took off my shoes. While on my hands and knees under the pinball machine leveling it, the unmistakable smell of piss in the corner was overwhelming. This came to be known as "The Cat Piss House"
    
13. That seems to be a pattern too, pinball machines in the corner, new houses and piss or pooh. Setting up a pinball machine at another time, in another new house up at a new golf course, I asked for a coupla paper towels to clean up the mini-pooh Barky Von Schnauzer left in the corner. Little dogs are like cats dontcha know!
    

Ahh, the goood old days. I did have a coupla good customers that I was always happy to see, but I gotta admit, I'm glad I'm out of that business. It wasn't worth the hassle.

Mover update again

So I got an anonymous post today asking about a move update... WHO ARE YOU!?!?!?!?!

Regardless, here's the update. NOT MUCH!

Once again I thought they'd gone away and written it off. Nearly a month has gone by since my last rebuttal to them, and I hoped it was over. The last email I sent was the first time I mentioned that we would sue it it was pursued, their response last Friday (they LOVE ruining my weekends) was pretty much 'too bad' and gave me until the 24th to pay up.

There is more though. Saturday I picked up the phone and called my so called friend, the branch manager there that promised to take care of me. I've not heard from him since I moved, he's never returned my calls, never emailed. My message wasn't nasty, but it was to the point: Thanks alot BUDDY! I wasn't sure if I'd get a response, but I did. A page back Sunday at 3AM Central Time. Maybe someone else couldn't sleep.

So, there's more to come. Today we actually talked, and from what I can gather, he's never taken the time to read any of the emails or really has much clue as to what is going on. So for now, I wait.....

Garden Patience...

...I really didn't have much. Seems like it took forever for stuff to grow, but in the end, unless it freezes here in the next few weeks (not likely), WE'VE GOT TOMS! I mean honestly though, it's almost October, talk about slow! I've been picking tiny cherry toms for a coupla months, but it's not the same as a thick sweet red Brandywine. Here's a coupla shots of the whole mess of toms.


Peppers have been AWESOME, the pics below are even after I picked a few dozen. Last year they were not so prolific, this year we have tons. What I'm going to likely to is pick them, grill and chop them up and freeze.

Crap in my yard

And by this, I don't mean Dog Logs, I've got plenty of those. What kind of crap do you find in your yard? Mine?!? Me?? It's tons of nails, staples, screws and nuts as seen below. That handful took me 2 minutes of looking around. The staples I'm not sure of, maybe used to put up insulation? The nuts are from the foundation, and I've literally tossed hundreds of them. Why can't the reuse them? Why can't they throw them away. Nah, much to easy to just leave them. Good thing we don't run around barefoot much.

Mover update

Just again when we thought it had gone away, Friday afternoon came and there's an email from the moving company. (See, they like to do this, send an email about mid afternoon Friday to make us worry all weekend. I am not kidding, every single email from them comes on Monday, or Friday, it's the Friday ones that are after a silent period of weeks.) This time it's been since Friday 8/1, and they are making an addition "goodwill adjustment" for $300.

Three Hundred?

We have already told them they owe *US* near Three Thousand, and they are now only wanting us to pay THEM a little more than that. They make it sound like they are losing money, with no regard for how much we've paid, much, much more than they ever told us we would. All the areas we point out are us paying for their mistakes, but that doesn't seem to matter. Once again I outlined how we were overcharged, and Friday is just around the corner. Man it's lovely.

eBay stock sell off

eBay announced another change the others day, and again not in the Sellers best interest. They are no longer going to permit the Sellers to accept money orders, cash, checks or cashiers checks, ONLY PayPal. Get this: eBay *owns* PayPal! This means when you list an item, they are guaranteed basically double commissions, because eBay charges 5% and PayPal gets 3%!!! Now, on one hand I prefer PayPal over money orders, especially for small items, but when I list an expensive item like I have in the past, say a $4000 game, why should I be FORCED to pay an additional $120 to have Big Brother eBay launder the money? In this case, it's only better for eBay, not the Buyer, not the Seller. This doesn't mean the Buyer has to have a PayPal account either, they can use a credit card and it's filtered to the Seller via their PayPal account, still with the same fees. I can tell you this isn't great. A customer of mine didn't recognize my name that showed up on their credit card statement, and thus they filed a dispute, my money was seized instantly. I do mean wham bam gone. $93 in limbo. When I emailed the customer, they realized the mistake and retracted the dispute, but here it is almost 30 days later and it's still pending, PayPal says it can take up to 90 days. They blame the credit card company.

Bull SHIT people!! You should put my money back as fast as you took it.

Just another example folks. I'm getting out. eBay can stick it up their ass.

Gimmee Dat STICK!

Super shorty, Abby got the stick. Last month in the heat in the Truckee River. RRrrrrrrroooooooowwww

There are some good customers....

A number of weeks ago, I sold a dish receiver on eBay.... for 99 cents. Yippee. It was a normal transaction, I got paid, I shipped, that was it. Then I got the weird feedback:

"WILL SEND $20 MORE. EMAIL MAILING ADDRESS TO @NETZERO.COM. THANKS"

Huh? Describing what I thought is hard to put in to words, but I just smelled some sort of scam. I mean, the person could contact me in a variety of ways, why through feedback. Curiosity got the better of me, I emailed back asking what was the comment, and the reply was in essence, they expected to pay more, so they'd like to send me more money.

Yeah right!!!

I was very surprised when I did get a check for $20 in the mail a few days later. Thanks Kris, very cool. I guess there are some decent people out there!

Sidewalk project

Here's the next project, in compacted form. This below you is a flagstone sidewalk. It's 3.5 tons, yes tons, of rock, that I get the pleasure to move and lay out in my already rock and dirt covered yard. Why? I'm not sure. And I paid for this! Oh, and those are peppers.

Barky Dog, Episode IV

We've turned in paperwork and met with the Animal Control officer, and the neighbors gave statements, one which was KILLER, see below (click to enlarge):


See? It's just not us! Thanks Rod.

Things are changing for the better, finally a little silence when we're outside watering or have the windows open or pleasantly taking a morning dump. The Animal control people seem to act quick, and this has been observed at least twice to my knowledge:


That's Officer Heidi's (she's about 4' 9") truck. Go get 'em Heidi!! Amy the mail lady has been spying for me :)

The only other thing to mention is that last Saturday, while watering on the hill, a dog was yipping on the OTHER side of the Yippee Dog's house. The Teacher Beacher was out there and saw Tracy on the hill and yelled over (but actually nicely): "I just want you to know that's not *MY* dog that's been barking!!"

Yeah, we know. Amazing you can tell the difference though, ain't it? Why can't you hear your own dog bothering the neighborhood!?

PS: Did anyone catch the Star Wars reference?

Lawsuit coming?

Well, after more than a year, Gr. Moving has laid down the line and given us until the end of the month to pay them an additional $3900. We've bantered back and forth in emails and while never agreeing 100% with our logic, they've backed down from $6100 due to mistakes they made. We finally time-lined it out and put some figures down and without getting nit picky, we feel they owe us $2400. What's so frickin' frustrating about this whole debacle are a number of things:

1. I made the mistake of thinking that the branch manager was a friend of mine, he has never returned my calls.
2. I made the mistake of trusting the verbal and handshake contract.
3. The blame is often laid on me, I said this, wouldn't do that, wanted this, moved more than I said. All lies.
4. The amount of money we paid already is double the initial estimates, with money paid to Gr. Moving and PODS.
   
5. And lastly that this has caused a lot of stress and sleepless nights for the both of us.

Will I move again? You bet! Will I ever hire a moving company? Not likely. I've learned a lot, but the biggest thing I learned was it doesn't cost $30,000 to move.

Will I have to bail Tracy out of jail?

Good neighbors! Since we've moved in to this house, we've been battling a little shitty Jack Russell terrier and it's owners. The dog is a yipper, and they leave it outside and it yips from sun up to sun down if allowed. Because of the triangular property layouts, they live in the next cul-de-sac, but the corner or their property meets the corner of our property, so there's really one house and very little space between us.

The first problem was partially resolved. Many months ago, the dog would just walk through their fence (bar type, not wood or chicken wire), cut across the three feet of the other property (which is a neighbor that also complains), and lands on the top of our hill and comes down and barks at my three quiet dogs and me whenever we were out. Apparently we are a threat. No exaggerating, if I opened the back door and my dogs went out, the yippee dog could somehow hear them walking and the barrage of yips were on. It kept getting on our property, and when it took a crap on my patio, I had enough and went over and had a little chat. They put up chicken wire, which stopped the doggy trespassing, but didn't solve the yipping.

Fast Forward to June. YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP!!! At what time? 11:30PM!!! Tracy was heated, she was looking forward to sleeping in and was about to go to bed. Not now, a dog is barking! In her robe, she stormed over and pounded on the door. No answer. Chicken or no one home? 6Am the next morning: YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP!!!! Oh man is she pissed now. Walked over again, pounding on the door, no answer. She's had enough. Calls to the HOA, calls to Animal Control; yeah, they know the house. Letters would be sent, etc etc. Not good enough for Ms. T. She started a petition. On the Saturday before Father's Day, we walked around their cul-de-sac and attempted to get signatures. Of the two people that answered their doors, neither wanted to get involved (spineless people!). One guy said he didn't hear it (wha???????) and an immediate next door neighbor said "I don't want to go there". Regardless, the lady got word of it. Sunday while I was talking to my Pop wishing him Happy Father's Day, I hear yelling. Seems that Jennifer thinks it's our problem, and has come over to bark at Tracy herself! The conversation went something like this:

Are you the lady with the three Golden retrievers?

You must be Jennifer.

What do you do with YOUR dogs when you're not home?

What does THAT matter?

If you've got a problem with my dog, you need to come TALK TO ME!

*I DID*!!! I came over TWICE! AT NEAR MIDNIGHT AND at 6AM!

Well I wasn't home, I was whoring myself out at a bar! (Note 1)

You need to control your dogs. I'm tired of them barking and waking me up!!

Oh yeah, what are you, from California? (Note 2)

Huh?

My dog isn't the problem, YOU'RE the problem. And we BOUGHT a bark collar! (Note 3)

It's kinda blurred, but there were a few "F*** you's" thrown in, and then the lady went to the neighbors and started crying "Don't make me get rid of my dogs again". Yeah, it's happened before.

Note 1: I kinda assumed this, I may be wrong.
Note 2: This was really said, help me here.
Note 3: If it's not a problem, why'd you buy a bark collar?

So this is a month ago. It got AMAZINGLY better very quickly. How nice. Wow. But not for long. Whether the dog got used to being shocked, or the batteries went out, or they took it off, I dunno. We also saw it with a muzzle once, but the yipping is back. What we know is they don't care.

This morning at 6:15, it was yipping again, protecting whatever it is it's in fear of losing. YIP YIP YIP! Tracy stormed to the top of the hill and glared over. The Boy-Toy that lives there came out, brushing his teeth (or teefe), and the FOLLOWING ensued:

Tracy yells over "6:15!! It's a little early isn't it?"

To which the BT replies "The problem is... you opinion is one we don't care about"

Nice! More phone calls are being made today. Fun huh?!?!

eBay, you're just wrong

I've been an eBay member since Jan 1999 and nearly 10 years later, I'm about through with them. I'm also a stock holder, having a fairly significant number of shares since 2000. Now I'm considering selling them, all of them. Why? In a nutshell, I no longer believe in the company. It's not the smartest thing to do to look at it that way, as opposed to looking at it as an investment, but I've always kept investments in companies I believe it, and I'd feel like a hypocrite otherwise.

They've done TOO many things in my opinion that are in their best interests, not the customer. And I mean the real customer, the customer that SELLS on eBay, not the one who buys. The seller pays the fees, the buyer doesn't. I'm a renter, I rent space. I pay my fees and I sell my stuff. eBay doesn't care about me anymore, they only care that the buyer has a warm and fuzzy experience, and keeps coming back. They've gotten so many sellers, who cares if they lose a few right? Here's the four points that have gotten under my skin:

1. Feedback: I've bitched about it before. Changed back in May, Sellers can only leave positives for Buyers, but Buyers can do what they want. Example: I listed a video game and sold it to a person in New York. Weeks of no or poor communication, excuses, and no payment, I stopped hearing from him. Can I give him a negative for non payment, wasting my time and making me eat the eBay listing fees? No. Can he leave me a Negative cause he wants to? You bet!
   
2. Net Neutrality: Buyers now also rate my shipping and handling costs and time. Costs are posted up front and they see that before bidding. I ship almost always same or next day, using tracking in most cases, and feel I'm very reasonable on costs and timeframe, better than many. Yet get this. Today I'm rated a 4.3 out of 5 stars in shipping, and since I'm below a mandated 4.6, my "Search Standing is Lowered", yeah, in RED. What this means is if someone searches for something I'm selling, they will see other Seller's items first, even if I'm a direct match, cause I didn't hand deliver, ship for free and kiss ass. This isn't in my best interest, and it's not even in the Buyer's best interest, to steer them towards someone with a better RATING than a better match? Wrong. Equate it to this: "Hey, where's a place to eat around here?" Answer? "Uh... Try Taco Fred's" Fred's brother says. It's 10 miles past 20 other good restaurants. I can't rate the buyer in any way, how quick he pays, IF he pays, how his communication is (doesn't matter does it?) or anything. Sellers need to be able to warn other Sellers about bad Buyers. Nope.
   
3. Guilty until proven guiltier. I've been tagged four times in the past coupla months for violating "Policy Compliance" and/or selling someone else's "Intellectual Property". There is no appeal. Get this, in the first two cases, eBay changed the rules for minimum prices on Buy It Now items. They changed it and I relisted some items (and they ALLOWED IT) and a few days later? BAM! "Policy Violation: Fee Circumvention". Yeah, for a 99 cent item, they think I'm ripping them off. On the 3rd and 4th cases, it was satellite receivers I was selling. They've given the power to companies to say, without question, "this guy can't sell this, it's mine". On one of the auctions, it had been sold and closed for 3-4 days. Yet, no warning given, I'm red flagged again and have two strikes. I don't know for a fact, but if I have one more, even on a closed auction, I'll be suspended.
   
4. Big Brother! This is just enough to bug me. Someone emailed me a week or more ago asking if I'd take $50 for something. People do it all the time, and it can be legit. I could have changed the auction to reflect his price, let him to the Buy It Now, and done deal. But, I just said no. I didn't know what the thing was worth, and as it was, sold it for $31. So last night I get a big long doom and gloom email from eBay, warning me about his email and offer. Yeah, they are monitoring email. Get this! If I DID sell it outside of eBay, they want me to fill out a long form. I would not be surprised if it's so they could get their commission. They go on to mention contacting law enforcement, your credit card company and the US Postal service about mail fraud if you got ripped off. On one hand maybe they are trying to be helpful, but on the other, they're accusing the person asking me a question of breaking the law, possibly. Guilty again.

So again, I sign this: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The year milestone

It seems very hard to believe that exactly one year ago today, at near this hour, I buttoned up the house, loaded up the dogs, hugged the neighbors and looking like the Clampett's, we started our road trip here. One Year!! Man does time fly, even if you're often bored. Do I miss KC? You bet. Do I regret it, no. Not at all. There are times in your life you have to take chances, and this was it for us.

The dogs knew they were home!!


Ah, that first drink of CRISP Nevada water:

Sittin' Pretty in the once empty garage:

Had to explore everything, right?

Happy Anniversary!

Yahooooo it's the 4th!

Yahoo is only slightly embarrassed of the US right now. They show a patriotic banner the first time you hit their site, then it goes back to normal unless you highlight or click on it.



The 4th was pretty quiet here, no neighborhood fireworks (Get Caught, Go To jail), certainly no neighborhood cookouts, and pretty much hill work. It's looking better. Much more work to do tomorrow, and that's when I'm cooking, so more and pictures later.

First Toms of 2008!

I fertilized, and the plants are doing a wee bit better. Needs more I suppose. Regardless, an Early girl and a Supersweet 100 have already borne fruit, we picked the first two last night.

Camping in the Tahoe National Forest

We went spur of the moment camping this past weekend with our new friends Jed & Ayla and had a super great time. Having lots of things to still get done at home, we only went for one day & night, but now knowing what's there, we'll stay longer next time! Only an hour away, and right by the Yuba river. Jed has his own secret place which he discovered years ago, and it's perfect. Lots of woods, right be the river and just nice. Here's a shot of the camp spot:


Before that, we went to a jeep crawl, and it was pretty interesting. Lots of red-necks and whooping it up, testosterone was everywhere. And tattoos! Keystone didn't really seem to like the noise and climbed right up in the chair, his sanctuary I guess.


Picture of one of the crawl areas:


Oops.


Heave HO!


This is steps away from our camp. The river opens up to an Olympic size pool, that's T on the right, Ayla on the left.


Certainly no delay in getting in!



Jed and Sydney.



Another angle:



Abbytail:


Amber-Boo:



The Stone man:



Stones likes getting up on things, especially with Daddy:



In ya go!!



I love this Close up:


Cruise missiles:


No doubt you've heard of the fires in California, it was very smoky:


All of the pictures can be seen here: CLICK HERE

Can't wait to go again!

Growing slowly

1st part of it is being impatient, 2nd part is putting them in the ground late, 3rd is the dirt here, 4th is the weather. Seems like my toms should be three times as tall as they are, but as I look at my blog, it has ONLY been a month, and maybe I expect too much. But then again, it's been a whole MONTH! My tallest plant is maybe a foot tall, I'm thinking it should be three. Sigh. We water every day, and they are mostly planted in a combination of Home Depot bagged stuff, so I don't get why they aren't moving. Certainly plenty of sunshine!!

Looks about the same, don't it?

Is that a bunny? The peppers seem to be happy, much happier than toms really:

An "Ace" and a coupla Early Girls already turning:

Volunteers from the compost, makes me smile!

Today I'll dig through the cabinets and find some fertilizer. I know I've got plenty of STUFF, why not use it? Today isn't windy thank God, so it's a good time.