Beth worked all this week and her work was interesting and boring at the same time, sort of. On Monday morning first thing she found was there was no internet service in the building, which also meant that ther was no phone service. So all she could do was wait for people to show up. She couldn't take cancellations or anything since nobody could call through. And it was slow slow slow all day. By lunchtime she asked if I could run a book out to her. It was back on Tuesday so after that it was super crazy! Tons of messages to catch up on. After that it was more or less normal for the rest of the week. 

There was a Feed my Starving Children mobile pack event this past week at the high school. My group from work manned a table and cranked out bags like crazy. I was on the sealer and packing cartons this time. I don't know how many bags we packed altogether but it was a lot. ZB wasn't in the top 3 corporate partners for bags packed per person, so I'm not sure how the other teams operated, but we had the line humming. The group went to lunch beforehand at a Caribbean restaurant that's new in town called Pina & Coconut, which was really good. I brought Beth there on the weekend for a lunch date.  

Saturday I was helping the Burgess' move most of the morning and afternoon. They've had some drama with selling their house and buying a new one, so most of their stuff was in storage while they lived temporarily elsewhere. So Saturday a bunch of friends came to help unload 2 storage units (they had two  U-haul trucks and several friends' trucks including mine) and haul everything to the new place. They have a farmhouse out near Mentone with a few outbuildings (stable, tractor barn, dog kennel) and most of the general stuff besides furniture and clothes were just unloaded into the tractor garage to be taken in and unpacked at a later date. Even so, moving everything that a family with 6.5 kids has takes a while.

Sunday I made a big trip to Menard's and got a bunch of things for my fall projects, which I hope to get to before winter. First off, more 12" pavers for behind the garage where grass doesn't grow and all the neighborhood cats think is a litter box. Get the last 6 feet of that area covered with the pavers. Then some pressure treated 2x4s and plywood to rebuild the doors to the garden shed which look terrible. I got the first door rebuilt and hung and I think it looks pretty nice even if it is different, and it's certainly better than the second crappy one that I need to get to soon. I didn't have time to set any of the pavers, or even to get the stuff to fill some more cracks in the driveway concrete, which I've been wanting to do but haven't done for months, years now... (I dug out all the weeds in a big run of the cracks last summer but never got around to filling it and they all grew back)

 Soup season is in full swing. With Beth's bad back (although her knee is better this year) she's been dreading getting back into it but she's been doing pretty well with it. I've also been helping a lot more than usual, mostly with getting the jars washed, refilling containers of ingredients, taking recyclable stuff away... just the general stuff that needs to be done but slows the process down a lot. With me doing the running we're finding that the soup-making part goes really fast. We've cranked out a dozen soups of various flavors in no time flat. The first show is November 2, and she's thought for weeks that it was next weekend so she's feeling good about that too. 

Not much else to report here for the week, except that there's a super rare comet in the sky and Beth and I have been trying to see it and failing. It's apparently low on the horizon after sunset and only visible for a while before it sets itself. We drove all the way out to the country to try to see it on Friday night, with no luck. Either it's just too faint or it's not really there....

The Heartline Donut Dash 5k was this weekend. I'd been waiting to see what the weather was going to be like before committing to running it but things were nice all week so I did. About as soon as I registered, it started clouding up and light drizzly rain moved in. It was pretty much done by the time the race started, though. I did well, won my age group and finished in 25:24 officially, which is a pretty fast time for me. I ran the course twice around to get a good 6 miles in, of course. 

Speaking of the rain, today was the day I was planning to finally get the camper folded up and moved back into the garage for the winter, and then move the pool into the garage on top of the camper for the winter. The rain put a short kibosh on that, but I just had to wait another day for them to dry out again. 

Beth and I had a date night of sorts on Saturday, we tried out the new sushi restaurant in town (it's the same as the old one, apparently, it just moved... and the same people work there) and spent the evening hanging out with the Zastrows at their house. 

Not a very busy week this, I've still got the camper unfolded in the driveway drying out from our wet camping trip, and cleaning it up a bit. I got some more of that mildew stain remover that I used on the canvas last year, and also got some waterproofing spray because I bet that the mildew killer I used last year is why water leaked through the canvas onto my pillow twice this year. Nothing like trying to sleep on a wet pillow. So cleaning up the canvas and waterproofing it, plus I've discovered that they sell a plastic tape with the RV curtain hangers riveted into it on Amazon so I could replace the old cracked and broken ones with new. I'd need to pick out some new fabric for the new curtains and add some blackout fabric, but then I could sew the hanger tape onto it and voila. Maybe a winter project. 

Speaking of projects, summer is officially over because I started draining the pool once we were home from camping. The water was still pretty clean but also absolutely freezing. I've got it emptied and turned upside down on all the outdoor furniture to dry. 

Saturday was the annual Wiessner chili cookoff, which we haven't had the best luck with of late (see 10/8/23). Since last year Beth spilled the chili all over, this year I got to do it. Beth made what she was calling "pantry chili," because she just threw everything together from things she already had in the pantry, or "panic chili," since she hadn't made any kind of plan and was just throwing it together from whatever she could find. The chili seemed to come together nicely though, smelled good, tasted good, and we had it all loaded into the Instant Pot for the trip to Michigan. Missy drove up from Muncie to come with us, and we left around 5:00 or so. When we got there, I got out to unload the chili, and the pot rotated out of the lid when I turned, the full pot fell to the road, and everything dumped out. You could see a big steaming pile of chili in the road from Ric's backyard. So a big chili fail once again. She would have won, too....