A hike in the woods

This busy September is drawing to a close, and we are settling in.  Kristine's soccer season ended, Katie got a good behavior kudo at school, Karen's student teaching seems to have had its smoothest week yet, and I finished off a small grant proposal.  None of the craziness of teaching/attending Sunday school this weekend, either.  The weather has been nice, too.  Yesterday morning I retrived sizable branches from the woods behind my house and cut them up.  Today, the family went to the Forest Park Nature Preserve to hike.  I picked a 2.5 mile round trip hike that I did back in May, 2008.  The trail climbs up and down the bluffs along the Illinois River and was a little tougher than I remembered (but I am pretty out of shape).  We found one of those huge puffballs - intact, it would have been about the size of a volleyball.  It was the first hike we have done since June or July, and it was pretty. I also include a pic of deer and redbud blossoms from that May, 2008, hike, because I like it. 

Pictures not taken of new sights (to me)

We were at Kristine's last soccer game tonight (hard-fought, close playoff loss) and were looking in the general direction of the setting sun with dark trees as a backdrop when we noticed lots of strands of spider silk wafting in the air and being lit up by the sun.  We also saw strands of spider silk sparkling in the grass.  Apparently there were tiny spiders "ballooning" to new homes.  One tiny spider briefly landed on me.  I have heard of spiders ballooning but have never seen it before.  Another sight I saw a few weeks ago that I did not get a picture of was in a field near Kickapoo Creek in the morning.  There was low fog in the field lit up by the sun, but what surprised me was a couple of shafts of light angling UP through the fog as sunlight  was reflected by a couple of puddles in the field.  I saw it two mornings in a row - never before, not yet again.  The trees are starting to turn colors around here.

Ghostly fingerprints

I was dropping the girls off today on a (rare) street that was paved with bricks.  In the morning light I noticed that the bricks were full of sets of four fingerprints.  I suppose that these might be associated with laying down the bricks, but I think they are from people handling the bricks before they were baked.

First Frost

Scattered frost on rooftops and some grass this morning.  I'm not sure we are ready for this cooler weather.  Last year on this date it got to 99 F in Austin.  Last week I came back down to earth from that JCE cover picture (see previous post) - I have revisions to make on another manuscript.  Also, last week I did my 80th show in the Demo Crew project.  It was one of the larger shows, with ten student demonstrators and an estimated 350 middle-schoolers in attendance.

Cover picture

The October, 2012, issue of the Journal of Chemical Eduation came out recently.  I have two papers in it: one from work done at Bradley University "Take-Home Nanochemistry: Fabrication of a Gold- or Silver-Containing Window Cling", and the other from work at the University of Texas "New Nanotech from an Ancient Material: Chemistry Demonstrations involving Carbon-based Soot".  A picture from the soot research was used for the cover.

Of Pumpkins and Pennys

Karen and the girls and I are keeping busy settling into our respective roles in Peoria. Last Saturday was the Bradley Chem Club's first big science demo event in about 16 months.  It was a little chaotic and took a bit more prep than ususal, but it went well.   Kris's soccer team tied a second game in their season (last regular season game is tomorrow).  Sunday school has also begun at St. Anthony's - we have 8 kindergarteners.  Friday night we made a few quick s'mores in the backyard. Yesterday, Karen and the girls went to the Morton Pumpkin Festival and had fun.  Katie catapulted a candy pumpkin.  Yesterday Karen's dad came to visit - that was fun, too.

Bastrop revisited

Today is the one-year anniversary of the Bastrop wildfire.  At 33,000 acres burned (city of Peoria is 28,000 acres), it was the largest in Texas history. We saw the smoke plume from that fire (and others) from Austin that day.  I thought it was pretty scary.  Katie and I visited Bastrop State Park (almost completely burned) last winter - the area is slowly recovering.

Labor Day Weekend

Busy first full week of classes.  I presented a seminar on Thursday describing some of my sabbatical research.  A couple people said they liked it, so I guess it went OK.  This weekend we got almost 3 inches of rain from moisture leftover from hurricane Isaac.  Looking back through my blog entries, it appears that central Illinois got moisture from two hurricanes in close succession in 2008.  Nearly 2 inches of the rain fell between midnight and 8 am on Saturday, and on Saturday afternoon there were tornadoes and funnel clouds a county or two to the north.  On Saturday afternoon we stopped by Lakeview Museum for its last day at its current location.  In less than 2 months the museum will open at its location near the Peoria riverfront.  Yesterday, there was the K'nex exhibit and many other activities to do for free, and I got a last look at the mineral exhibit to which we contributed LEGO models and the room where we have done demo events over the past few years.  We plan to do demos at the new location. This evening I did a little seasonal decorating.