4th of July Weekend

Wow! I knew I wouldn't have much time time to blog this summer, but I expected to get around to it more than I have been. Time just gets away from me, and here we are half way through 2009. This feels like the first weekend that I haven't been busy since sometime in May. Although I'm somewhat impressed that I managed not to be busy on July 4th weekend.

Things are pretty slow around here right now though. The temperatures every day the last week or so have been in the 100's, and my water bill is going to be astronomical. It's a tough decision every summer. High water bills or a totally withered and dead lawn. Plus the peach tree needs water.

The peach tree ended up having a fair number of peaches, but they were small and the birds and insects got most of them. I ate a couple but mostly I still spend time every evening picking up half eaten and rotting ones from the ground under the tree. That won't be for much longer though. They're mostly gone from the tree now.

I'm happy to say that in retrospect, I totally enjoyed my trip to Innsbruck. I haven't had time to think about it much, but it was really fun, and everything went smoothly. The whole travel experience, the talk, the congress, sightseeing, shopping, everything. I've got a trip coming up in a couple of weeks to Chicago whch I hope goes as smoothly. Of course that one's a piece of cake in comparison .... a single hop with no connections and a relatively short flight. My only concern will be the weight of my checked luggage since I'll be there almost a week and need clothes for semi-formal functions. I got a nice check-in agent coming back from Innsbruck who let me slide with my luggage weighing almost 24 kilos, which I'm pretty sure is over the 50 lb weight limit.

Anyway, this blog will have no pics today because I'm blogging from a laptop and all my pics are on my other computers. After dragging my really heavy laptop to Austria I decided that if I'm going to be traveling so much in 2009-2010 and I need to have a computer with me, I was going to get a lighter one. So I did. This little one is still a full computer but it's close to the size of those little toys you can get for a few hundred dollars that essentially let you surf the internet and email people. It's nice. Sony of course. I'm partial to Sony electronics, but then I've had really good luck with them, or they're made really well. Whatever the reason, they seem to last.

So here's a short blog, and hopefully I'll get back in the habit of blogging. Later.