Wish Kirk Luck!

Kirk left this morning for Colorado. He'll be defending his Master's thesis in Fort Collins on Tuesday- wish him luck! The title of his thesis is *drumroll*

Differential Sputtering Yields Of Refractory Metals By Ion Bombardment At Normal And Oblique Incidences.

You'll have to ask him what that means. :-)

Creepy

This spider has made his home over our compost heap. The web is really neat, but the spider is kind of...creepy.

We stained the deck!

It was a good day to do it, nice and cool in the morning and not so bad in the afternoon. Jeremy helped us as well, which made it go much faster. We miscalculated how much stain we needed and had to run to Lowe's for another gallon.

Before:

That's Kirk's air compresser in the middle of the deck. He cleaned out the cracks with it.

Kirk says hello!

Side view

After:
It really needed to be stained.

Another After Shot
I can't belive how much better it looks!

Fruit Salad on a Stick

We had a BBQ for Labor Day weekend. One of the most popular dishes we served was this fruit salad on a stick thing I made. I hollowed out a cantaloupe, and put the cantaloupe pieces with some other fruit on those cheap-o wooden skewers, then stuck the skewers into the empty cantaloupe shell. It drew oohhhh and ahhhhs like crazy, and it could not have been easier to make! But if anybody asks, it took hours.

Weekends in Kansas

On Sunday Brad (Jeremy's coworker) took us to his parent's compound to to shoot clay pigeons. Kansas folk are huge fans of their guns, and the guys were universally appalled that we did not

1. Have our own guns

and

2. That Cathy had never shot a gun.

We did bring our own bullets, which Cathy and Jeremy went to buy at Wal-Mart. It was pretty funny! Apparently, there are different types of bullets, and anybody who does not know all the types is either a woman or has The Gay. I get a pass because they did not want me to hurt my pretty little head, but I'm sure they were waiting for Jeremy to head off to the accessories department to buy himself a new pink feathered purse to go with his boa and heels.

Here Kirk and Jeremy are in action:

Kirk with one of the smaller guns. He shot a rifle as well, but the picture did not come out well.

Jeremy and Eddie, shooting Clay Pigeons.

Cathy did shoot both the small gun and the rifle, but there are no pictures of it. Jeremy was holding a loaded gun at the time she shot, and Kirk was in charge of one of the younger children wandering around the compound, so nobody had a free hand to take a picture. Cathy did hit a clay pigeon! Since she was not aiming at anything in particular besides "over the cornfield" she was as surprised as everybody else!

They also had goats. This was a particularly friendly one!

It was fun, but we're glad to cross it off the been there, done that list.

It's finally happened...

Kirk finished his thesis! He does have to add some appendixes, but that is a copy and paste job. The copy will be sent to Dr. Williams this week!

It is HOT!

I don't know about Colorado, but Wichita has been beyond hot the past few days. It reached 105 (with the heat index) on Tuesday and they're expecting it to go that high again today. It makes me glad I work in an overly air conditioned office now!