There are two main things that make a pizza a St. Louis style pizza. One is it has a very thin crust, but it does not get soggy. Secondly, and most importantly, it does not use mozzarella cheese. It uses a special cheese you can only get in St. Louis called Provel. It is a blend of cheddar, Swiss and provolone. It is very creamy and you do not get the strings of melted cheese tugging off the rest of the toppings when you take a bite. It was pretty good. Imo's claims to be the originator of St. Louis style pizza.

I had a pretty good crab cake po' boy last night. It was almost all crab meat. I don't think it had any bread crumbs. Not sure how they held it together. Good flavor. Slight spice.

I am finally going in for my one-hour birthday massage today at noon.

This picture made me laugh.

This is my tomato patch I planted a couple weeks ago.



Sheri planted a couple flats of flowers but ALL of the ones in the front rows died for some reason. The impatiens are doing well.



This is along the back edge of our yard.



Our goat's beard plant.





I don't know what the problem is with our ligularia. In the past if it doesn't get enough water it will wilt and look like it is going to die. You give it a big dose of water and it literally perks back up in an hour or two. That didn't work this year. I think it might have been damaged by a frost we had and is having a hard time recovering.



Our ornamental grass had a slow start last year, but this year it has taken off. Notice our hostas are intact thanks to our smelly rotten egg-based rabbit repellant.

Our shish kabobs on the grill.



All cooked up and ready to eat.

The shish kabob turned out excellent! Better than I expected. Before we left the house this morning around 10 AM I cubed the steak into bite-size pieces and put them into a bowl of teriyaki to marinate.

When we got home at 1:30 PM I cleaned the mushrooms, but them in half and let them marinate in teriyaki for a bit. Mushrooms are very absorbent so I only let them marinate for 10 – 15 minutes.

After I got the mushrooms going I cleaned and quartered two large sweet onions. Actually they were so big I cut actually cut the onion into sixths. I skewered these without marinating, but the next time I would let them sit in teriyaki for a bit. The salt would have helped to break down the cell structure a bit and make them more tender.

At this point I started the grill, and then skewered the mushrooms and then the sirloin cubes.

The mushrooms and beef were cooked perfectly. The onion was sweet and little smoky/charred tasting, but I would have liked it just a little softer. It was still good though.

Of the three we both liked the beef the best. I expected Sheri to like the mushrooms the best, but the meat was really really good. I think the secret was the small size of the cubes. Because they were small I didn't have to cook them very long. I have had kabobs that were cut too large and they get dried out because you have to cook it too long to get the centers done.

The sirloin we got was normally around $9 per pound, but it had a sell-by date of today so it was only $4 per pound. It was a great piece of meat.

I don't know why but I have never prepared kabobs before. This is great summer food. Easy and quick to prepare. Light. It doesn't heat up the kitchen. Low carb high protein. Lean. Delicious. What more could you want?

We are going to keep an eye on the butcher shop and whenever they have sirloin on special pick some up and make kabobs.

That is going to be our main meal of the day. We have a few ears of corn and some peaches for later on tonight when we get hungry.

The outside thermometer says 92 degrees right now, but we have the blinds on the south side of the house closed and with a fan on it is fairly comfortable. No air conditioning yet, but I don't know how long that will last.

We picked up a sirloin steak, a couple big sweet Vidalia onions, and a large pack of whole fresh mushrooms. Tomorrow we are going to make shish kabob and some corn on the cob for lunch. We also got a few fresh peaches for dessert. After we eat that we are going to settle in and watch the soccer game.

We went to Meijer to pick up just a few things, and for something to do, after a nice dinner in our downtown and strolling around for a bit of people watching. We ended up spending over $100. All good stuff though.

Sheri is on call this weekend so we are sticking close to home.

For the longest time my weight was holding very steady around 232 – 233. I started to get complacent because I could eat something I wasn't supposed to and my weight stayed the same. I started having more treats because my weight pretty much was stable. Over the last four weeks or so though I added about five pounds.

I am back down to 235, but my goal this summer is to get below 230, and if I do that then get to 225. I think it is totally doable.

We planned on watching a movie tonight, but by the time we got home it was almost 9 PM so we are just putzing around the house. I put the lawn sprinkler on when we got home and I have to go turn that off soon.

A vendor is going to demo a GPS camera for me today. The latitude and longitude are tagged on every picture you take, and then there is software that automatically positions it in our GIS. We could shoot 100 pictures of construction sites in a day, come back to the office and have them all be linked in a web-based map before we went home for the day! I am pretty sure we are going to get one.

I bought a sheet of these stamps at the post office today.

I got my 12 tomato plants planted in the garden this evening. Better late than never. Of course last year I don't think I got them in until July!

I meant to pick up two packs of traditional red tomatoes, but I picked up one pack of yellow tomatoes by mistake. Oh well.

None of the sunflowers I started indoors a couple months ago made it. There are a couple holding on, but I don't expect them to do anything. I still have a bunch of seeds, so I am going to plant them around the edges of the tomato plant patch and see what happens, and maybe some other random spots around the yard. I just have to make sure Sheri doesn't go after the seedlings with her Weed-B-Gone. Maybe I will mark them with popsicle sticks.

I have purchased all of the materials I need to make this bicycle map holder. I will let you know how it works out. Here are the instructions.

I only have about one more month until my sixth-month probationary period is over at my new job. w00t!

Things are going really well there and I am thoroughly enjoying the job.

This morning we got a pretty early start. Sheri had some strawberry shortcake on the patio and did her crossword for breakfast. I made some French press coffee and started working on the pile of mail and bills that I let accumulate this week.

After Sheri finished her crossword she cut the grass and then did some touch-up around the yard with Weed-B-Gone. After that she was ready for a break so she went out for a bit of clothes shopping. She didn't get anything, but on the way back home she got an oil change for the car.

After I got done with the bills I did a few more chores around the house. Chopped up the pineapple we got a couple days ago; applied some rabbit repellant around the yard; and a couple other things I can't remember.

Sheri was so anxious to get the bikes out that she brought them up from the basement without my help. I got the tires inflated and the plan was just to go for a short ride around the neighborhood. We decided to ride to the little shopping strip that is about a mile from our house to mail a letter. When we got there we discovered the mailbox had been removed.

We had a quick conference and decided to backtrack and go to another mailbox a little farther away. After we got the letter mailed we had another conference: go home or explore the new bike path the city is about halfway done building. We decided to see where the new bike path led.

We ended up biking all the way to the nice little downtown of our city. We went to our local independent coffee roaster and each had an iced coffee at the sidewalk tables and watched all of the people walking up and down the sidewalk. Really nice.

Before we got up to leave we started thinking about what to do for dinner. We decided to stop by the grocery store on our ride home and pick up a few things. I got a few pork chops, fresh salsa, and fat free sour cream. I grilled the chops and then sliced them up in thin strips and we made tacos with some excellent fresh tortillas we discovered. We ate on the patio and had strawberry shortcake for dessert.

We ended up riding about 10.5 miles. I also used the heart rate monitor I got last weekend. It worked great.