Another month down.  Still riding the scooter, although I have to think that will be coming to an end pretty quickly now.  About time to start the three-month banishment to the Metro.

That wasn’t an all bad weekend, considering I was oncall.  Given that qualifier, I’d go so far as to call it a good weekend.  Friday was something of a bust I guess.  I headed straight home and hit the couch to sort of get in the “oncall” mode.  Watched a few Halloween movies on Netflix, and called it a day.  The first selection, Rumplestiltskin, was predictably horrible.  I watched the whole miserable thing though.  After that was Day of the Dead, which was marginally entertaining.  (Can’t go wrong with the zombie genre.)

Saturday we got up (relatively) early and headed to the gym.  That’s a solid start to a day;  Kind of gets you in the mood for some productivity.  Case in point, on the way back home we stopped by Sutherlands and bought some lawn bags and electric hedge shears for some long overdue shrubbery maintenance.  It took a few hours to knock down all the bushes in the front yard and get it all cleaned up, and then it was on to the back yard to tackle the Shrub From Hell.  We’ve only got one lonely “bush” in the back yard, but it’s a doozy.  I’d guess it is more in the weed family than an actual shrub.  I have no idea what it is, but it’s quite resilient.  We’ve cut it to the ground at least twice, but it just comes back even bigger and uglier than before.  I gave it a good hacking this summer, but it had already bounced back and was a good nine feet high.  So, I drug out the ladder, some loppers, and the new electric shears, and went after it.  I beat it down to a manageable level I suppose.  Donette gave the work a thumbs up, but Kane was none too pleased with the effort.  That was his hunting blind, where he liked to stalk chipmunks from.  At his age and fitness level he’s never going to catch one anyway, but he does like to try.  Oh well, it’ll grow back I’m sure.  After I got that mess cleaned up, the Missouri game was well underway.  I figured I’d earned a break, so I rode my bike down to the Brooksider and hung out on the deck watching the rest of the game.  Bah, disappointing outcome.  I hung out there for a while enjoying the nice weather anyway, then headed home for a delicious spaghetti dinner Donette cooked up.  After dinner I tried to watch Dolls;  I think I might have made it through the first ten minutes before falling asleep.

Sunday we kicked off the day with a good breakfast down at Sharp’s.  It ain’t no Eggtc, but I didn’t feel like driving all the way down there.  (It’s at LEAST another mile, possibly even two.)  I knocked off a plate of biscuits and gravy, then headed back to work in the yard again.  The project that day was leaf clean-up.  I only made it through the front yard, but that was quite an accomplishment.  Whew, lot of leaves.  I missed the first half of the Chief’s game due to that chore, but caught the second half.  After that nail-biter, I watched the late game and monitored my Fantasy Football teams.  My season is shaping up nicely;  I’ve only lost one week to the wife so far, and won most match-ups in a most convincing fashion.  I would expect this is largely due to my superior male sports-genes, as well as my grasp of the game in general.  I’ve been instructed not to gloat though, so I won’t mention it.  Anyway, later in the evening, we actually turned on our porch-light for a short bit and handed out some candy.  We probably had a dozen or so kids come by in a few groups.  We didn’t stick around long though;  We turned out the light and headed over a block to our friends Tom & Nancy’s for their annual Halloween party.  Their street must be something of a Halloween destination.  There were tons of cars and kids roaming around, and lots of driveway parties going on.  We hung out for a while, then headed back to our boring block to watch the baseball game.