Visit to Springfield

I had a meeting at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield today. It's not bad for a free museum, and the Illinois fossil collection is pretty good. It is very close to the capitol building. I'm including a picture in case our governor has forgotten what it looks like. The gas prices continue to drop - see the picture.

The weather has been overcast and cold and most of the leaves have dropped. We have had flurries, but nothing has stuck. What a contrast to last weekend - November is definitely here!

The REO Speedwagon concert is on PBS again - I feel old again - but I still like it.

Show yesterday

In addition to the big election yesterday, we did an early and fast demo show at a local elementary school for roughly 400 kids. I have a soft spot for this school, because it's in a not so great neighborhood. The day before we did some demos for a group of visiting Russian high school students - working through a translator was interesting. So much has changed since the days of the cold war, and of course some things still need to change.

Beautiful fall day

We had pretty warm weather considering if was November 1. We enjoyed the leaves, Kris played at a fall festival at Peoria Christian School, and we roasted hotdogs on a bonfire tonight.

Pumpkin pic

The cold snap knocked out our remaining pumpkin vines, so we drew on our last three green pumpkins and set them out. The cold knocked most of the leaves out of the walnut tree while they were still pretty green in the space of about a day - it was a surprise to walk into the back yard and see that!

This evening, the local Extreme Makeover: Home Edition wrapped up with the family coming home. (See the October 26 entry - I guess the house is only one story, but it is pretty tall). None of us went, but some people I know tried to join the crowds of spectators.

Roller coaster

Yesterday Karen and Kris finished building the K'nex roller coaster that they have been building - it works well (the car is in mid-loop in the picture).

The weather turned cold and windy this weekend. Our neighbor has lost all of his leaves from his big tree; the three trees in our yard are still mostly green! Last night I saw a few snowflakes falling at about 11:30 pm, and today I saw them at about 5 pm when I left from early voting. I feel like I need to take a shower after doing that voting thing. Too much dirt!

Extreme Makeover: (Pekin) Home Edition

We are fans of the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, so when we found out they were doing a house in Pekin (it's all over the local news), we stopped by. The show had filmed near Seattle when we lived out there in Fall, 2004, but we would have had to travel a bit to get there so we missed it - I guess you never know what the future holds. Since traffic in the once-quiet neighborhood of the house was a mess, we went to the local (small) Sears to catch a shuttle bus. We asked at the Sears (big sponsors of the show) if the designers had done their big shopping trip there that seems to pop up in every show and we were told that they went to the one in Peoria. We were able to get to the viewing area (with bleachers) across the street from the house. To get directly across the street from the house you had to have access to the VIP area. The construction has been going for several days, so the old house is gone and a brand spanking new two-story house is in place. (It sticks out like a sore thumb in the neighborhood of one-story houses.) We overheard Pekin's mayor telling someone that at one point construction was 12 hours behind but things are back on schedule now. We did not see Ty Pennington; we heard that the hyperactive lead designer and show host was in Pennsylvania wrapping filming of another house building. Apparently two houses are built at about the same time, then there is time off, and the whole thing starts again. We did however get to see Michael Moloney (a designer who has been with the show since it started) and he autographed a tote bag for Kris. He seemed like a pretty nice guy. The whole circus was interesting to watch, and though some neighbors have complained, I think it is pretty cool. The "reveal" is on Tuesday, and the show will air sometime early in 2009.

Chemistry and zucchini

Today Kris and I and three students helped out at a National Chemistry Week event at the Children's Museum in Normal, IL. The picture is of Kris and I in a really cool climbing area area at the museum. Karen opted to stay at home and turn about half of our zucchini into bread - that's 64 mini loaves and 8 big loaves!