Blue Halloween

We were invited to a Halloween Party for last evening, the 27th of October at Lord Hall's Mansion in Orefield (Lord Hall is my boss, Hugh Hall and the theme of his party was old English). Dottie couldn't go because she was instructing a turbo-kick class down in Boyertown at the YMCA, so it was Madison and me.

Madison dressed up as "Obi Wan Kenobi". I don't need to tell you who that is. She has become enthralled with the entire Star Wars saga (so early!) after having seen the tail end of Episode 1. I explained to her all about the original (Episode 4) and there began the almost nightly viewing of the entire library, then repeating, and again.

I hadn't planned on dressing up, but I found out that everyone else was and not wanting to be the odd man out, I came up with this:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Greg1992/BlueHalloween

It was actually funny how I came up with the idea. We were sitting at breakfast the morning of the party and Dottie and I were talking about dressing up and in the newspaper, I came across this:

http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/02003EBDFEDFEA26

I have always wanted to see this act live, and had the opportunity about 7 years ago in Las Vegas when I was there for a work related convention. At the time, the tickets were over $100 each and they were in the upper deck. I have seen them a couple of times on television for brief segments, most recently on "America's Got Talent" (of all places, who'd have thought...) doing a riveting performance of Baba O'Riley, by The Who. Here is a link to that performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldxg87pDlI8

Anyway, once again, I just missed them as they were here Thursday night.

We did trick-or-treat on Wednesday night and Madison made quite a haul for the brief time we were out. We did one full block of our neighborhood (about 1/6 of the total). There are a ton of kids in this area of all ages and almost all the houses participated in the holiday, some just handing out candy, but many with decorated homes, themes and the owner's dressed up to some extent. It was a fun night.

Settling In

It has been a busy past few weeks. Last time I posted, it was after finishing the floor project in the upstairs. Since then, much has happened on the ongoing process of settling in. Our furniture arrived on schedule, along with our new mattresses and while I still have some trim painting to do, the master bedroom turned out quite nice.

I took a couple of vacation days two weeks ago and finally sorted out the garage, and had a last minute change of plan an where I was going to put all my tools, bikes and related stuff. I decided that I didn't want to pack the garage full again like we did at the last two places we were, but rather to utilize some of the basement space we have. The basement has two distinct areas, one that is the larger space under what is the "main home footprint" and one smaller space that is under the family room, which is a part of the home that is part of the garage extension off the "main home footprint". This smaller part is to become my workshop.

I moved everything not related to the cars or to landscape maintenance that was in the garage to the basement. I got both cars in, quite comfortably with plenty of room to get in and out on both sides of each car. This garage is only a foot wider than the old house, but it's amazing the difference a foot makes.

So now the basement looks like a dump again, with bikes sitting everywhere, boxes and boxes of bike paraphanelia, workbench cabinets and shelves everywhere and lack of a plan for how to put it together. I am taking two more vacation days next weekend to sort it out and my first step will be to use some concrete sealer/primer on the walls and then some paint. I bought some new shop lights to put up because like everything else in this house, there is a hodgepodge in that there are 4 shop lights now in the space, they are all different and are in varying states of operation.

I'll need to hang the bikes in a yet to be determined space along with wheels and then figure out how and where to mount the workbench and cabinets. Being that it will be mounted into concrete and not easily moved, I need to get it right the first time. Down the road, I would like to get some type of durable flooring, like vinyl or even some epoxy floor coating, but for right now the space just needs to be organized and usable.

I still have a ton of stuff to do and the list is mind boggling when I look at it. Much of it isn't small things, but still the larger more obvious tasks that will have a big payoff when finished. Some of the big ones that I hope to tackle before the holidays are:

• Finish painting the last bedroom upstairs (wall paper removed and currently primed)
• Remove wallpaper and paint the master bath (wall paper is down, but glue remains)
• Paint the family room and buy new furniture (probably the biggest payoff because it is ugly)
• Remove all carpeting and ceiling tiles in the basement and bleach wash the floors to get rid of the moldy mildewy smell (history of leaky basement - now fixed)

Aside from those there a hundred other tasks all waiting to be moved up in the list, but the place is starting to feel more and more like home.

I haven't been riding much at all over the past few weeks - perhaps 4 or 5 times in the last 3 weeks. This past weekend I got out both days and again on Monday and am intent on getting back into a routine. I have been venturing out further and further on the bike each time I go and there is so much to explore over the mountain to the south of us. Down past Macungie is the highest portion of the mountain and we drove around there last weekend. The climbs are not only steep, but long. I am going to need to drop about 30 pounds if I am going to ride well around here, and there is no doubt I'll lose some of that while I am hauling my big butt up and down these 15% grade inclines. The shortest climb I have done took me roughly 10 minutes. The longest was a little over 20 and the stuff we drove last weekend could easily be 30 or more.

We were invited to dinner last week by our next door neighbor, Mrs. Smith. She is dear sweet lady who is a widow and lives alone. We have gotten to know her and can see spending more time with her. We had a great time and she pulled out all the stops. She had the fine china out with the table set just so, and we had a 5-course meal with wine in real crystal and dessert. She really made us feel special and she referred to the event as "entertaining guests". We only hope she doesn't think less of us when we have her over for dinner to our house! We may have to consider having it catered.

Madison and Dottie are doing well. Dottie has been teaching both Turbo Kick and Spinning classes at various facilities in the valley. She gets free membership at the facilities at which she instructs as well as making a little money on the side.