July 5, 2014

It would seem that I have spent a lot of my free time the last 8 months cleaning up after Mother Nature.  With all of the moving about of snow all winter just about every weekend, now it would seem that it is flooding.  From the time all that snow melted, I have been flooded out 4 times and the last couple weeks have been extra horrendous. 

On 6-22-14 I got my 3rd flooding event, and it was a doozy.  The rain came down hard and fast and I was left with my entire lot under water.  Once my lot was completely filled up, the water started flowing westward through the neighbors yards.  The drains on the property were not draining at all-zero!  The flow of water from the front to the back was like a fast moving stream...which is really what it was.  All of my mulch floated everyone and I had to rake it back up from neighbors yards and put back in my beds. 

The garage was completely under water yet again, but this time I decided to hell with trying to squeegee it up and instead outfitted my wet/dry shop vac for the wet mode.  After vacuuming up bucket after bucket after bucket of water, I then put the fan in there to try to dry it out a bit more.  I can't actually get to the one back corner of the garage because of the GTO on jackstands. 

The water finally drained down but everything was a soppy mess and pretty much remained so until this past Monday night when the shit really hit the fan as a two monster storms pass through within hours of each other.  The worst part about these storms was that the power also went out shortly before midnight.  I quickly had to haul out the generator and got that running and spent the night semi-awake to re-fill the gas tank on the generator.  Around 4:00 AM it was evident that I needed to get some more gas.  I headed out in the Jeep looking for an open gas station that had power.  The power outage was very extensive.  The size of the outage really worked in my favor as I knew that an outage that large would get the ComEd crews out sooner than just a spotty outage.  Just as I was getting the generator and myself ready to leave for an appointment in Romeoville, the lights came back on around 8:30 AM.  Perfect timing and much appreciated. 

I had to go to Romeoville to meet with the FPDWC Staff there to make sure the Powerpoint program I was working on would open in their computers.  I am scheduled to give a talk this Thursday at the Isle A LaCache Museum on "Living With Wildlife".  I have spent countless hours working on that program and wanted to make sure it would actually play.  As luck (or should I say no luck) would have it, the power at the Museum was out as well so there was no way to check to see if the program was compatible.  So I left the presentation on a thumb drive with the employee at the Museum and asked that she try it when the power came back on.  As yet, she has not gotten back to me.

Yesterday was the 4th of July and I journeyed up to Racine Wisconsin for the 4th of July Parade with the Wisconsin Garrison.  The weather was perfect, sunny and mild.  The float that the WIG made was another exceptional one.  It ended up winning 1st place in the float division for the entire parade.  Also great was the fact that we were #27 on the parade agenda!  Usually we are back at around 130 or so.  It was great to be at the front of the parade this time as it cuts down on all of the hours of standing around waiting to step off.

 I walked the parade again this year as I made sure to wear a costume where my boots could make the 3 mile journey.  I was a bit concerned that I might not be able to make it as easily as prior years, but I actually made the walk very easily with a lot of energy to spare.  The joints in my right foot were NOT happy though as that foot became completely painful after I stopped walking and was on the float for the ride back to the Marina where we start out.  I was going to stay for the BBQ, but my joints were all screaming...so I thought it best to make the drive home as they would only get worse. 

The rest of this weekend is just working on various projects around the house, garden, and costuming.