Fall Break

A few days of vacation

Dennis and Isaac are both on fall break -- Dennis from his school job, and Isaac from college. Dennis still has to go in to work a few days, and Isaac has to work at his job a few days. I don't go back to work until Saturday, so I have more days off than either of them, for once. This is my R&R before the craziness of November and December at my workplace.

My goal tomorrow is to stack the firewood that Dennis has been hauling home and pitching into a big pile. He's been cutting wood a few hours each afternoon, and he's hoping to cut a lot more this week. A friend is having three dying or dead old trees removed, and Dennis is cutting up the branches as they are dropped. Two of the trees are white oaks and the other is a hickory. It's going to be excellent firewood.

Isaac and I are going to take a small trip to Henderson, KY, and Evansville, IN, during his time off. Evansville and Henderson are across the Ohio River from each other, or nearly so.

A lot of people go to Evansville to gamble on the riverboat, but we're just planning to go to the mall.  We also want to visit the World War II ship that is docked at Evansville. It is the USS LST-325 which was manufactured at the Evansville Shipyard in the early 1940's.

UPDATE 10/14/08: A reader has written to tell me that the USS LST-325 was actually manufactured in Mississippi, but it is like those manufactured at Evansville.

UPDATE 10/16/08: We learned during the tour that the LST-325 was manufactured in Pennsylvania.  Evansville was selected as its permanent docking site because of the enthusiastic support when it visited there on tour.

In Henderson, we want to go to the Audubon Museum at the state park, and I want to do the walking tour of the historic district. Henderson was once a major shipping port for dark tobacco, and it has some beautiful old homes that were built with the money that flowed through town from the tobacco trade.

A couple of my other projects for the week involve paint. I still haven't finished painting the baseboard in the bathroom, so I'm hoping to get that done.

I also want to spray-paint an old file cabinet. I'll do a little sanding to take off the loose rust, wash it good with soapy water, and then use Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer, followed up by Rustoleum Hammered paint. These are both spray products. I used them on a similar old file cabinet recently, and the finish looks like it was done in the factory. I was very pleased.

The other thing that I really need to work on is a trench coat that I've promised to sew for Isaac for a Halloween party. It's supposed to be an easy pattern, so maybe I can get it done in one day of dedicated sewing.

I'm looking forward to doing all these things, except for stacking the firewood. However, there is a certain satisfaction in admiring a big, tidy stack of firewood, securely tarped to keep it dry until the cold days of winter when it's needed. It's a worthwhile chore.