Forecast for tomorrow: sore everywhere, with scattered achy

There was one thing that I had hoped to get done on my vacation, and that was yard work. We're officially in early autumn here in greater Chicagoland, but the casual observer or visitor would not have surmised that based on the temperatures, it was late August. According to some websites, the area averages nine days per month with high temperatures over 80 degrees F (26 C), but this year we had fourteen. Only the last three days of the month saw highs below 70 F (21 C). We also had thirteen rain or thunderstorm days. So, not a lot of yardwork got done in September.

Earlier in the week, I mowed the front yard, but it was hot so I left the back for the following day. The next day, it rained. Of course. I swear I cannot make this stuff up.

The following day was warm and breezy. I did the back. Yay... the first part of my work was done. The next part, though....

Today, Saturday, started off as the perfect autumn day for yardwork. While Jennifer prepared a much anticipated breakfast of pancakes, sausage gravy and effs over easy, I made a cup of tea and got out of the way. Schwarz came out and sat down on the picnic table. I savored the moment, taking in the cool humid air while catching up on Words with Friends and sipping my tea. The local high school (American) football team was at home, and occasionally I'd hear the spectators cheer or the band strike up a tune. As I'd completely caught up my games and the tea was gone, I went back in and had the most incredible breakfast!

The next hour or so was taken up by a long overdue project: removing a line of concrete blocks I had installed many years ago to separate a narrow strip of garden from the lawn. Once they were removed, I backfilled the resulting trench with compost. Which means that... most of the yardwork is done!

In Lego/data news, the Ferris wheel is moving along slowly, as I had anticipated that it would. I experimented last night with creating supports for the spokes, and I have a promising system... pics to follow if it works!

In other Lego/data news, Sensei Wu has an upgraded Bō. Astute observers are probably wondering at this point why I'm messing with Minifigs when they are clearly not an area of interest for me?

Well, for starters, Wu is a cool-looking character, and his hat is a fairly rare part (yes, I'm one of those AFOLs [Adult Fans of Lego] that will buy a set based on parts rather than the model). Wu seemed to beg for an upgrade, though, and the best one I could think of was to turn the Bō into a scythe. No problem- Mr. T and I eventually came up with the True Neon Green x346 part, but the process of finding the part was tedious. I probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-100 of these in various colors, but none of them are in a dedicated parts drawer.  We located the green one in a drawer dedicated primarily to Bionicles, but with so few Bionicles currently assembled, the drawer needs to be sifted through. An inventory and better parts organization would have probably saved me ten minutes.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.