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Going camping

Rodney and Tony have recently joined the Boy Scouts. Since I'm no longer a scout leader, I was able to give them some of my scouting supplies and uniforms. I gave them both a sleeping bag, then immediately regretted it as I use all those sleeping bags for um . .padding when I'm camping. These old bones aren't as comfortable on the ground as they once were.

So . .an air mattress seemed like a wonderful thing to own. Off we went to our neighborhood REI store to see what we could score. Surprisingly, they didn't have anything we liked, so we went off to WalMart and found a nice air mattress, a pump, a lantern and a few other things.

Tom has the stuff all packed and ready to go -- a nice organized pile in our living room.

I only worked a couple of rows on the baby blanket project this evening. I keep trying to work in other things that I want to do -- working in the garage, painting the rest of the interior of the house and . . . . . writing in this journal!

I hope I get it finished before the birth of Rocky IV. Actually it is Roquey; either way he sounds like a movie.

Tom made a to die for seafood gumbo today. It was seasoned perfectly and had crab, shrimp and oysters in it as well as some cool crab claws.

He's frozen a good portion of it for our upcoming camping trip. We also have some of his chicken and sausage gumbo frozen and put away for the trip. Cooking is going to be a breeze on this trip, that's for sure.

Our Tropicana roses are magnificent. I guess this cooler weather has given them some incentive. There are seven blooms and quite a few buds, many of them showing color. I wish the Rio Samba would take off like that. Nothing but a few little springs of new leaves on that one.

Work is still very interesting. I'm able to go in and work and be productive all day, but there is still a lot of stuff I should know that I'm not really learning. Jeanette, my mentor, finds it difficult to train me when there aren't active problems in a given area and I guess it is a good idea that we don't go messing with a system that isn't broken. This is the first time she has had to mentor a new hire, but she seems to deal with my ignorance with good humor.

I plan to try to jump into new territory next week. I guess putting my phone on 'available' and snatching oddball issues out of the trouble pool will give me some exposure to things I've not yet had to deal with. Some of this stuff is completely new to me and the things I've done so many times before are all different. Each company has their own methodology and applying what I already know to this company's processes isn't always the easiest thing in the world. I hope Jeanette rescues me when I'm in over my head which is where I certainly intend to go.