Up to Speed

Last two weeks have been very nice being home and sleeping in my own bed. Kids have been sick but that means I get to spend even more time with them to look at the silver lining. Not having the HWN travel is nice. Don't get me wrong, it was worth it to go. Just nice not to have to worry about it. Phil and I actually hit the ball around this week for the first time in about 45 days. Except now he has a wedding this weekend and leaves tomorrow for Saipan for a week. His annual early spring trip for the last 4 or 5 years. The wife and kids will have to serve me at home for me to get my passing reps.

Had a couple of fun speaking engagements this week. Spoke at a men's forum locally on Monday. Then spoke to about 150 students at UCSB on the "Natural High" you get from sports and accomplishing things in general. Different talk for me but a very fulfilling talk. Then yesterday I went down to Hermosa to speak to a bunch of college field reps for Red Bull. That was a blast as it was a quick talk and Q&A then they played a 5X5 volley tourney. Good group of folks. The drive sucked there and back but the people made it worth it.

Now that I got the garden boxes producing well and completely weeded it should be easy to keep up with. I have 4 artichoke plants that are growing like weeds. Pun intended. They won't produce anything till next year but they look cool. I have 4 Romaine lettuce plants that have been servicing us lettuce for the last 2 months. Those plants I planted as small little plants. The other plants in one box are 2 arugula plants that are doing great, some carrots which didn't do as well as I had hoped for, 4 other lettuce plants and some Broccoli. All of those were from seed. The Broccoli got crushed by Snails but I am hoping to get it going since I poisoned the snails. The other lettuce was getting eaten too but it growing really well now. The other box is growing crazy. 3 garlic plants, red and yellow onion bulbs, green onion from seed, snow peas, swiss chard, and spinach which the snails crushed but came back strong on its own. Been a process for me but an enjoyable one. Now to start on my beach court. It needs a lot of tender loving care to clean up the weeds around the edge and the leaves and what not that have blown on it. The one good thing about putting so much sand in the court is that the weeds can only take root at the edges by the walls where the dirt is closer to the surface.