October 19, 2014

Today is a beautiful fall day and some of the days I love so much.  Where I don't like the fact that it gets dark early and stays dark in the morning, one has to go with the flow of the seasons.

Yesterday I had a bit of a odyssey.  I wanted to attend a Star Wars event in Mt. Vernon IL but the trip would have been really expensive gas-wise - about $85.00.  So, I began heading to Bloomington IL (about 2 hours) and met up with another costume member and then road with them to Mt. Vernon.  I began the trip at 7:30 AM Saturday morning and did not get home till 12:30 AM on Sunday.  The event was a parade for the Mt. Vernon Fall Fest.  The weather was perfect - not too hot and not too cold and there were certainly a lot of people along the parade route.  The hostess was one of our members who lives in Mt. Vernon and also owns a local Irish Pub.  We had an entire back room of the Pub to suit up in and to hang out.  The place was huge and an awesome old building.  Loved all the old buildings along the downtown parade route.  I wore my Hoth Trooper and apparently (as posted on Facebook) the costume had at least one fan along the route.

Last Sunday I did the "Best Evah 5K" event again.  This was a fundraiser for the Max Lacewell Foundation.  We had fewer participants this year, but still a nice, short trooping event.  I wore my Endor Trooper for this event and I chose that because there was a Scout Trooper along. Always like to do the yin/yan thing with Rebel and Imperial costumes.









I have been working on finishing up the fall garden clean up and am really in pretty good shape thus far.  I am almost done with the cutting down of things and have distributed some of the season's compost.  This morning I mowed and also took in the last of the geraniums that were outside.  We did get a frost last night and some of the tender stuff got hit.  Thankfully, the geraniums I have are pretty hardy and didn't show any damage so I was able to cut them back and bring them inside.  

Last week was my birthday and as always, it was completely un-eventful.  I treated myself to a movie again on Tuesday.  I was debating whether to see "Left Behind" or go see "Guardians of the Galaxy" again.  Guardians won out as "Left Behind" looked interesting...but a bit depressing and I was depressed enough.

 Last Saturday we also finished our first ever workday at LaPorte Road Access.  It went well and we put at least a small dent in the work that needs to be done there.  I hope that work does progress as every invasive killed there will be one less that makes its way to the Barrens.

And, the big news on the home front.  On October 28th this old house gets new window!  I shopped around and contracted to have Home Depot install new replacement windows in the house.  Got the place measured and the install will be next Tuesday.  I have lived in my house since 1986 and one thing that I hated about the place was the windows.  They were old and drafty and one has been broken for several years.  They have those crappy triple track storm windows that are a nightmare to clean so I seldom washed the windows.  Also, some of them take an act of god to open and I have scraped and puttied and repainted them several times.  Where I can't afford the windows at this time, will I ever really be able to?  So I just decided to go for it and got 1 year "same as cash" financing.