Wednesday, September 18, 2013

September 18, 2013

Good lord, it has been a month again since I posted here and it is tough to remember what went on the past month.  One thing for sure is that I have spent the last 3 weeks or more sick with another horrendous cold.  I have had worse, but this one is once again just hanging on.  I lost my taste buds for over a week at the onset of the cold and was beginning to wonder if I would ever taste anything ever again.  After a couple days, you get a little crazy.

Labor Day weekend came and went also and as usual, all I did all Labor Day weekend was labor.  I started the job that I have been putting off for 2 years - painting the outside of the house.  It didn't look too bad until I started to get a fresh coat of stain up and then you could see how really bad it looked.  I took down all those cheesy window "shutter-like" things I made and don't know that I want to re-paint them and put them back up again.  They look ok except for the fact that they are supposed to be a deep forest green but are now almost aqua due to fading from the sun.  They sure have been up a long time so that is to be expected.  I have the East, West, and South sides of the house done and the North wall with the back door but I still have the North Wall of the SW room to do yet.  That is the wall with the 2nd story peak and I will need to get a taller ladder to finish.  I hope to finish up this weekend. 



On 9-7-13 I went down to Pekin Il to do a Star Wars event.  We did the Pekin Marigold Festival Parade and then we had the Star Wars Academy Game set up in the children's area.  The parade stepped off at 10:00 am and I could not believe how many people were along the parade route....it was amazing.  We marched with two SW Celebrities who came in for the event.  I was walking along next to a Jeep with one of our members dressed as Chewbacca sticking out of the sunroof and that is all I heard all down the route was..."look...it's Chewie"....lol.  It was a really hot day again and in Pekin they have really had no rain in a long time so everything was super dusty.  I just felt completely gritty after the parade and 3 hours of Star Wars Academy. 

This past Saturday I did the Sharefest workday at Hickory Creek Junction.  We had a good number of volunteers show up and got a nice bit of work done.  I was the only chainsaw operator and my saw was giving me no end of grief.  I finally got fed up with the saw.  I hit a piece of barbed wire that I didn't see and that took out one chainsaw blade.  I put a new blade on the saw and promptly hit the dirt with the saw running....that effectively took out the second blade.  The saw also didn't want to stay running.  Since the warranty is still in effect, I took the saw in to get looked at on Monday.  I never really wanted to buy a Stihl saw because I know they are "fussy", but at this stage of the game, I needed the anti-vibration that the saws have built in.  I feel like it is a no win situation.

I did a couple more butterfly monitoring routes and am calling that task over for the year.  The butterfly counts have really been pretty dismal this year.  A lot of times in the fall I have a LOT of skippers in the yard, but this year there are hardly any at all.  Speaking of the garden, I am really ahead of the game in garden clean up, I am actually pretty much done at this point and there won't be as many leaves to deal with this year as the big ash tree is gone next door and so is that crappy poplar. 

Last Sunday I took a bunch of my Star Wars stuff to ToyCon to sell.  I didn't sell a whole lot, but I definitely got rid of some things.  I was especially grateful that a lot of the small stuff is gone.  Most of that was really worth nothing and certainly not worth putting on e-bay.  If I didn't get rid of it at ToyCon, I was pretty much gonna throw some of it away. The Star Wars room is looking a lot more empty, but there is still a whole bunch of stuff I want to get rid of.