20 Year Old Time Capsule

I was cleaning out one of my dresser drawers and I came across this old receipt from 2005.

I’m not sure what the total of this order would be today, but I know an Ultimate Cheeseburger is about eight bucks today.

I just thought this was an interesting little time capsule to get out there.

Dump Run

We spent Saturday and Sunday working the front yard. We had a lot of leaves fall this week after several days of rain. Susan raked and I used the blower.

We have a crap load of leaves to take to the dump. I estimate we harvested about 40 bushels yesterday and probably an equal amount on Saturday.

We ended up with a pretty good system to get the leaves into a pile, then into a bag and finally into the truck.

I bought a box of construction grade leaf bags. These are thicker than the standard garbage bag and therefore reusable. I think the last time I bought bags was about three years ago.

The bags get placed in a garbage can and fastened tight around the top. I used a snow shovel to load leaves and Susan used the claws.

Getting the bag out of the garbage can was difficult. We had to put the can on its side while both of us pulled a groin muscle to get the bag out. Then we put it the bag on a hand truck and wheeled it over to the truck. We had a couple of milk crates stacked by the tailgate, which allowed us to lift the bag on top of the milk crates, and then the rest of the way to the truck bed.

It worked great for us two old people who have trouble lifting that much weight.

2:04PM: We have just returned from the Waste to Energy Plant,  otherwise known as the Town Dump. When we pulled into the gate, we discovered a line all the way back to the entrance. This was going to take some time.

It ended up taking about 17 minutes to get to the scale and another ten before we started unloading. It probably took us ten minutes to dump about 15 bags of leaves.

I apologize for not getting the focus better. It’s hard with the iPad when you get up close.

The grand total was $23.24 for 580 pounds.The dump fee was $20.75 and then they added on $2.50 which was designated as a “Transaction Fee”. I’ll bet a tenth of that weight was water.

Wine Update

I'm clearly doing a horrible job of updating the progress of the wine.

We ran all the grapes skins through the fruit press last weekend and ended up just short of six gallons of must. It continued to ferment through the last week and it appears to be complete. There is no action going on in the vapor lock.

I will be checking it out, getting a gravity reading and we will probably rack the must (wine) to a clean fermenter. At that point, we need to figure out if we should add wood chips for aging and flavor.

More to come. 

Halloween 2025

We have survived another Halloween and we are again asking ourselves why we put ourselves through this. It’s a lot of work and money. 

While we put out some lights and a few decorations prior to the 31st, the bulk of our decorations go out on Halloween and get torn down once we run out of candy…or choose to shut down, whichever comes first.

Generally, we’re all pretty tired by 8:30 and ready to call it.

Between 3:30 and 8:30, we had an estimated 1,500 Trick or Treaters. My main complaint this year, as last, is that there are some really old people out for candy. If you facial hair, you are too old.

But, we had a good night and we are glad it’s over and behind us. The rest of the Holiday season is going to be a breeze.