June 12, 2011

Wow...this week was a real character builder! Early in the week the temperatures soared into the 90's and then Thursday morning...the power went out...and we got another 100 year rain. My power went out just before I left for work. I quickly went into the basement, got a few things up off the floor, ran an extension cord from the sump pumps out to the garage where the generator is. I fired up the generator and plugged in the sump pumps. In only that amount of time, water started backing up into the basement before the generator started running the pumps. Since my neighbor is always up, I went next door to ask him if he would just check my generator every couple hours so that it would not run out of gas because I needed to go to work. I got to work and things hadn't hit hard yet but around 9:00 AM the storm hit with a fury. I left work early and all of Oak Lawn was practically under water. It took me an hour and a half to get home - it usually takes about 40 minutes. When I did get home, my neighbor told me that he forgot and let the generator run out of gas. So, thanks to that idiot, my basement flooded big time. The garage also had a couple inches of standing water. Thankfully, at least the rain had stopped by the time I got home and I could start the massive clean up.

The basement got so wet and my old dehumidfier was barely working anymore, so I did end up having to buy a new dehumidifier. I got the biggest one that Lowe's carried. It is amazing how many buckets of water that dehumidifier has pulled out of the basement already.

Friday I left work early to do a wedding in Stormtrooper costume for a donation to Make-A-Wish. The wedding was a Friday afternoon affair...very odd. The couple were very nice and it was kinda weird to do a wedding again in Stormtrooper. I have not done one of those in several years. Due to the fact that the wedding was early on a Friday, only 3 of us were there in costume. The photo on the right shows the groom with me behind him. And the photo above is me on the left, Tom Schaefer in the middle, and Remo on the right. All in all, it was a nice and laid back event.

I got up very early on Saturday morning and got all of my running around done before 7:00 AM. Thank goodness for 24 hour Wal-Mart and Dominick's and also Lowe's that opens at 6:00 AM.

At 7:30 AM I went to the workday at HCB-Schmuhl School. I didn't bring my chainsaw as I am trying not to use is so much anymore....my hands are shot from all those years of sawing. I loaded up some herbicide and went down to the sedge meadow and worked down there for a time and then joined the others where they were working after I got done. When I got home, I did some clean up around the house.

This morning I got up really early again and made three kinds of jam. The stores had some great fruit on sale for really cheap so I had blueberries, strawberries, peaches, blackberries and raspberries. I made peach jam, raspberry-blackberry jam and blueberry-strawberry jam. I think all of them set up pretty good so I will have more stuff to auction off for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer in a couple months. I also bought a pineapple and some mangos as I wanted to make mango/pineapple jam. The pineapple was very ripe, but the mangos...well...not so much. So, I had to cut up the pineapple and freeze it till the mangos are ripe enough to make jam out of...besides that...I am out of jars...AGAIN!

I then mowed the lawn, did some weed control and packed up my butterfly net and went to butterfly monitor. Conditions were pretty miserable again to day and while out, I noticed some wild parsnip in flower...not good. I went home and mixed a batch of herbicide and went back to HCB to spray the parsnip, some teasel and reed canary grass.

By the time I finished all that, it was starting to get late...so I am about to wrap things up for the day.