Batchin' it

My blog post frequency rate dropped a little this week. Things are rather quiet on the home front, Dad (moi) is mostly working and attempting to keep up with farm chores. Debby and the kids left last weekend for a two week trip to visit family and friends in Virginia. John will be staying with Mamaw and Papa in White Stone and going to camp for a week.

John is very much looking forward to camp and spending time in White Stone with his grandparents, he did this last year and had a great time. Plus, for the last week he's not had any boy time, he's been with his mom, his nanny, his aunt, his sister, and his girl cousins.

Most of all though the kids miss Pup-pup. When I talk to them on the phone and try to engage them in witty kid conversation such as "which pokemon do you think is Hannah Montana's favorite?" they cut me off and say "I really miss Pup-pup, can I talk to him". So I put the phone on speaker and they talk to Pup-pup who wags his tail and sniffs the phone.

You'll note a distinct lack of pictures lately on the blog, I must explain and apologize. I know that the blog is boring without pictures and that no one really wants to read the text. Debby has the digital camera and in a money saving move I removed internet access from our cell phones. Hey, with gas at $4/gallon you gotta cut back somewhere. But don't fret, pictures o' plenty will soon be back. In the meantime I'll provide some ASCII art, it's a tree OK?:

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I don't watch much TV, or sports, but I do like the Tour de France. So, I've been keeping up with the tour by watching the versus channel on DirecTV. Today was the final time trial and Carlos Sastre did well and was able to retain the yellow jersey with a 1 minute lead in the race. Sastre should be the race winner tomorrow in Paris.

DirecTV: A few weeks ago we had a thunderstorm that wiped out our DVR receiver. A technician came and replaced it, however that receiver had a problem where every 30 minutes or so it would basically reboot. So the nice folks at DirecTV sent us a new replacement DVR. I installed the new DVR last night and everything appears to work well except for the remote. The remote only works from distances up to about 3 feet. The remote works great on our other receiver at long distances so the problem is not the remote but likely the IR detector circuit in the DVR. DirecTV is sending out a technician again next week.

One comment about all this, the DirecTV customer service has really been excellent. When I call them I get a real person very quickly and they have been very polite, knowledgeable, and helpful. I think we've just had a bit of bad luck with hardware.

One other note, we've found that once you experience DVR, which allows you to record, pause, fast forward, etc. that you don't want to watch TV without it.

It rained here last night and it's been cloudy and drizzling most of the day. I think we are in a cloud. The new barn roof appears to be performing well.

A few days ago it was 54 degrees here in the morning, very refreshing. The weather has been generally nice, we are not in a drought like last year but I think our rainfall total for the year is still 4 or 5 inches below normal.