| leatherman's log |
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October 2011 |
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| Week One: |
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| Lions and
Tigers and Bears, Oh My!! |
| With a chill in the air
(here comes Fall) and beautiful sunny skies on tap, Bill and I got
together this weekend for a mini-trip. Since Bill lives half way
there, I spent the night at his house. The next morning we headed on
down the road to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC. |
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| Two studs on a bridge |
To read about our trip and
to see all of our pictures from
the zoo,
click here or click the picture of the zoo sign |
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| MISC. |
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| While the kids in the Jon
Bivens family are all running, some of the kids in the Don Bivens
family are doing stuff too. Kayla is part of the flag troupe in the
marching band. (she's in the very center of the pix) |
Mom had a big ol' mess around her desk
and wanted to change things up. So Bill stained and urethaned a
board for her; and I rearranged it all to fit. Hopefully this will
work out well for her. |
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| I don't have any pictures,
but I also produced/wrote/edited the Fall edition of the quarterly
client newsletter for Catawba Care (that's a whole year now that
I've been writing that for the agency), had my yearly review with my
case manager, and spent an afternoon with Bill putting together
condom packets. I figured it was only fair for us to help out with
that some as he and I have been passing out soooo many over the last
couple of months. LOL |
| Around the
Yard |
| The garden is nearly all gone. That's
fine though as the upcoming frost will finally do it in anyway.
Right now though, I've got one ripe tomato along with a few green
ones, and a few bell peppers. |
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The last butternut squash is done for
though. Obviously, a rabbit, deer or squirrel got a hold of it, and
now the bugs are finishing it off. |
The garden rose bush, just like the
morning glories,
are still putting out a few last blooms. |
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| The zinnias though are
still going gang-busters! |
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Can you believe it?!?
Here, at the end of the season,
a lone cosmos plant has appeared. |
| The Last
Goodbye |
| A few days ago, when the
weather started chilling off, I got out and cleaned/scrubbed the
pool cover and the liner one last time to hopefully keep down any
mildew that might try to form over the winter. |
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So after starting today
off with some barfing ( 
I know! What's that about? I haven't puked in soooo long. Stupid
meds!), I went outside to fold and pack away everything. |
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| Folding and packing the
liner up was a tricky process. |
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So now the pool, pump and
all the toys are packed away for the season.
The sn@w can come anytime now. ROFLMAO |
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| I'll have to pack this
tarp away so the Winter weather doesn't destroy it; but I think I'll
wait and let nature help me clean it off with some rain. |
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Week Two: |
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| Fall is
Trying to Creep In |
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| Little by the little the
woods surrounding the house are starting to take on Fall colors. |
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There's always some work
to do in the yard. Today's project was to take down a large tree
limb that has been shading too much of the flower/plant bed that is
right across from the front picture window. The shade has been
stunting some daylilies along with the Japanese maple.
Holding the chainsaw up to get at the branch didn't do me too much
good though. I pulled a muscle in my side that hurt for several
days. Ouch! |
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| I'm still working on
digging the holes to plant several crepe myrtles. There are 2 whites
and 2 beautiful reds that I'll be putting into the ground soon. |
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| The morning glories are
still going strong now that the weather isn't as hot. |
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WOW! I had totally
forgotten I had planted these asters last year.
What a nice surprise to see them put out some blooms! |
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| An
Improvement Project |
| My friend Bill has a beautiful
fountain, and a beautiful courtyard at his house. The courtyard has
an interior border planter filled with sedum. Clipping it back for
the winter, he sent home grocery bags full of sedum that I could
plant at my house. I decided to use it to redo the area where I had
my fountain. |
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| This area is too small to
be bothered with mowing, and the mulch has been slowly washing away,
so something needed to be done. I started by blocking the area off
with some fencing to keep the dogs out. Then I rebuilt the brick
support and moved the fountain to it's new location. Afterwards I
had a whole new area to plant sections of the different sedum. I
went out into the woods and gather several rocks to place around in
the area too. |
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| I can't wait to see how
this area will look next year when all the sedum fills in this area. |
| Speaking of fountains, here's the one
outside of Bill's courtyard. It's about 4 feet wide and several feet
deep - and very nice. Much nicer than my old swimming pool pond back
in Ohio. LOL |
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| Catawba
Care @ "Welloween" |
| Doing my duty for the area
and for Catawba Care, I worked at another health fair event. This
one, held in the gym facility at Winthrop, was billed as the "Welloween"
Health Fair in honor of Halloween. It was a pretty cool event on
many levels. We had quite a few interested visitors to the booth, a
group of sociology students came to learn from me about the exhibit,
there was some great free food, and there was a costume contest. |
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| With about two dozen
tables set up in the space of two basketball courts, there were a
lot of vendors present for this event. Many of the people that I
have met through United Way (of which Catawba Care is a partner)
were there representing their organizations. |
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| The morning started with a
buffet table set up with orange juice along with apples, oranges,
bananas, granola bars and bran muffins. Later on at mid-morning, the
drink was changed out to lemonade and the fruit was replaced with
goldfish crackers, an assortment of grain crackers, and a delicious
assortment of 10 kinds of cheeses. |
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As always, our booth was filled with some
goodies
along with a bunch of good information. . . |
| . . . Plus we had Spiderman to hand out
the condoms! |
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I didn't come wearing this outfit
because I didn't want to be a dork and be the only one in a costume;
but once I saw a few others I ran over to the men's locker room and
suited up in my Spidey outfit.
It was a little chilly that morning and kinda weird because it felt
like I was running around in my pajamas or something
(those costumes aren't made out of much some that a bit a spider's
silk. LOL).
However, it was worth it!! I won a $20 gift card in the campus
bookstore for being the first place winner in the costume contest. |
There were only a handful
of us that dressed up; but we all had a good time. |
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Week Three: |
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| A
Project for Some Plants |
| The chill and the frost of
Fall will soon be upon us, which means I have some outdoor plants
that will need to become indoor plants for a few months. The problem
is that I really don't have anywhere to put them. My dragon palm
comes in and sits on the table beside my bed catching the sun from
the bedroom window, while the living room picture window is nearly
filled up with all of mom's indoor plants. |
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| I dreamed up an idea and
Bill helped me put it together. We built some shelves that would fit
between the bookcases in the den. Crossing in front of the window,
they would provide a great area for these plants coming indoors,
along with still allowing plenty of light into the den. |
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| Thanks Bill! |
| EAC's new
T's Go Everywhere |
| My friend, Tara, is
working hard to promote her auto body repair shop back up in
Massillon, Ohio. Besides getting set up on Facebook, and having me
work on her website, Tara got T-shirts with the new logo to help
with advertising. |
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Ella ,
Tara's youngest,
models the latest in EAC wear... |
...while Austin (on the left), Tara's
oldest,
and his friend model the T's at Cedar Point. |
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When Tara sent me a
t-shirt, I knew I needed a special picture to help out the
advertising campaign, so I made sure to wear it a lot - or rather a
lot of me's decided to wear it.
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| Make sure to give Tara's
Expert Auto
Collision website a visit, along with her
Facebook page for the shop. |
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Week Four: |
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Sticking with the Tried and True |
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Well, I tried a new cookie recipe -
kind of a cut out cookie recipe - but it didn't really go too well. |
| Oh, the cookies are edible; they just
didn't turn out very well though. All the flavors of orange, lemon
and cherry seemed to have baked right out. The basic taste wasn't
very sweet either. These cookies wouldn't be bad with icing; but
frosting them would cover up all the pretty Fall colors. |
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So I returned to my basic shortbread
Chinese Almond cookie recipe which is okay without icing. |
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