Thanksgiving (Part 2), 2013

Hoarfrost this morning put pretty ice crystals on the cars and sparkles in the fields.  We also saw lots of turkeys in a field. We visited Karen's family in Door County and had fun.

Thanksgiving, 2013

Today was the first Thanksgiving held at my parents house in Mountain, WI.  We attended morning Mass, watched a parade and football and other stuff on TV, made a foray or two into the snowy outdoors, Skyped with my brother's family, and ate lots of food (including the traditional popcorn).

To Wisconsin for Thanksgiving

Rode up to Wisconsin to celebrate Thanksgiving. We saw a few wild turkeys on the way, but opted not to pursue them for Thanksgiving dinner. The weather was cold and windy, and traffic was somewhat busy, but we made it OK.  We saw damaged and obliterated buildings from the tornadoes on November 17 between Roanoke and Minonk (where a tornado crossed I-39).  I am thankful that we have an intact home!  .

Cleanup

The past week was filled with more info and stories (many inspiring) about last Sunday's tornadoes than I have time to repeat here.  One of the more inspiring to me involved the Washington High School Panthers playing a state playoff game yesterday against a team called the Cyclones.  See:  http://www.pjstar.com/article/20131123/SPORTS/131129638 to read how both teams, and many others, have supported Washington.  This week also featured a cleanup of a different sort: I finally finished moving out of a lab space that I have been in at Bradley University for over a decade.  The new space is still a bit of a mess, but it is bigger.  Yesterday was also the showing of the big 50th anniversary episode for the Dr. Who series.  We gathered at the home of friends for a viewing party (sort of like a Super Bowl for nerds?).  We played with their pets and had (among other things) fish sticks and lemon pudding (a reference to a Dr. Who episode).  This weekend has been pretty cold, but I needed to return a tall ladder that I had been borrowing for months, so I put up Christmas lights outside.  We will not light them much until after Thanksgiving.

November Tornado Outbreak Hits Central Illinois

Several days ago I was poking around on WeatherUnderground site, and someone posted a comment on a blog predicting bad weather along the Mississippi River valley.  Today that forecast came more or less true. After a relatively light tornado year for our area, multiple tornadoes struck the Midwest in a series of very fast moving storms.  When they hit the Peoria area, most of the kids were at Sunday School at St. Anthony's Church in Bartonville (Karen and I teach our class earlier, so we watched in the hall as it started to rain like crazy, then the wind shifted direction and it hailed a little.  Moments later, the tornado sirens went off, so all the kids gathered into the hallways of the parish hall building and prayed the Our Father.  After that passed, the parking lots were very full of water - the leaves in the storm drains probably made that situation worse.  A little while later another storm kicked up lots of wind and rain, the sirens went off again, and the kid hunkered back down in the hallway and sang a hymn (10,000 Reasons).  I am proud of my family for keeping cool, especially Kristine, who does not like that weather at all.  While all this was happening, a tornadic storm was moving northeastward parallel to the river to the east of the river  - Bartonville is to the west. The tornadic damage (those pictures are not mine, just the first 4) began in South Pekin, moved to East Peoria and narrowly misssed a TV station doing live weather updates (just 2 miles from the school where Karen teaches), then hit the town of Washington very hard before continuing northeastward.  We know several people who live in Washington, including members of a family who was at church with us during the tornado.  Their home is badly damaged, but they consider themselves blessed because it was still sort of standing and they could recover items.  Some houses were completely destroyed.  Our house (west of the river) was unscathed save for a downspout that was knocked out of place by the force of the water running through it. There are lots of other data and a few crazy stories that I have heard, but I will not ramble on too much more. Karen's school is without power, so school is cancelled for her tomorrow. I must also admit that social media like Facebook enabled us to help tabs on people.  Please keep the tornado victims in your prayers and of course the Red Cross takes donations!  UPDATE:  More stories and more pictures keep coming up.
(A good set of pictures can be found at: http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-131118-aerial-view-of-tornado-damage-pictures/). About a third of the students in my classes said they knew people who were impacted by the tornadoes.  On this side of river I have seen branches down and heard about some light roof damage.  Amidst all of this, the community is moving forward on its road to recovery.

Snowy Veterans Day

First accumulating snowfall of the season this evening.  We were surprised, but had fun.

Rocky Glen Park

Yesterday we FINALLY made to Rocky Glen.  Many years ago, a friend who knew that I liked to poke around in the woods told me of a waterfall to the south of our house.  I eventually figured out that the location was on private land and difficult to access.  Then, a little less than a year ago, the area was purchased by the city of Peoria for use as parkland.  Because the area is undeveloped, access is still limited, but the Friends of Rocky Glen have been hosting guided monthly Saturday morning hikes to the location.  Most times we have had schedule conflicts, but yesterday all four of us finally got a chance to go.  We met in the parking lot of a local bar, and shuttle bus to dropped us off close to the trail head.  We found the guides to be quite knowledgeable about the location and its history (there was an abandoned coal mine with a closed-up shaft) and prehistory (I did not know that the area was believed to be carved out rapidly by glacial floodwaters)http://friendsofrockyglen.org/.  Since we have done a bit of fossil hunting just a mile to the north of the Glen, comparisons were inevitable to other natural areas in central Illinois.  While this is not Starved Rock State Park or Matthiessen State Park, this area had larger ravines than near our house AND they were clean (no discarded tires, washing machines, and other junk).  The falling leaves added to the beauty.

.  Some of these details are posted at this website:

Kristine's in "Flowers for Algernon"

Kristine acted in the Peoria Christian High School production of "Flowers for Algernon".  The play was as thought-provoking (and haunting) as the five-decade-old novel.  The leaf colors appear to be peaking this weekend in a lot of places in Peoria.