A Rich, Colorful, and Multi-Textured Post

Due to a power outage in part of the city yesterday, I wound up with the afternoon off. So I decided to enjoy the extra sunshine by going for a hike at a trail near the McHenry dam. While I was there, I took a picture of a frog.


It turned out a little blurry, which is too bad. But he was such a friendly guy, and he held his pose so perfectly still, that I thought he deserved his own picture.

Also while I was there, I happened to run into some of our neighbors, who were just finishing their walk. They're an older couple, and have lived in the neighborhood for many years, even before our house was built. The conversation naturally shifted to annexation, which is still a hot topic here. The city has proposed to annex our neighborhood, with the promise of improving our water system, but also of raising taxes to help offset the costs. The city is currently deciding whether to put the deal to a vote, or just drop the proposal altogether, since a fair number of people in the community have raised objections. If it goes to a vote, Wendy and I are in favor of the deal. The couple I talked to are opposed to it, though, since they're retired and are on a fixed income. Despite our difference of opinion, the couple is very friendly, and we're pleased to have them as neighbors.

On the house front, we now have a freshly painted living room and dining room, a new light fixture in the dining room, new living room furniture, and a new shower in the master bath. The shower looks fantastic compared to what we had in there, and we had a great experience with the installer (we went so far as to write the company a letter telling them how much we appreciated his efforts).

Of all those things, painting definitely took the most work. It wasn't the act of painting, though, it was mainly deciding what color to pick. We wound up getting samples of several colors, and by the time the final decision was made, we had created this:


The winner? Grand Stand Tan. The verdict? We dig it. And apparently other people do, as well. When we were buying the paint at Ye Olde Home Improvement Mega-Store, the clerk mentioned it was a very popular color.

So, there you have it.

Things We Have Recently Learned

1. Lake Michigan is one cold motherf- Shut yo' mouth!

We went to the beach again for Randy's birthday at the end of July, more than a month later in the summer than we went with Abby. We were really looking forward to it, especially because it was a really hot day and we thought the water would be nice and cool and refreshing. Nope. The water was, if possible, more frigid than it was in mid-June. So we sat on the beach until we were sweating, then we stood in the water until we couldn't feel our legs. Repeat as necessary. (Overall, it was a good time, just rather more punctuated with temperature extremes than was perhaps ideal.)

2. Annexation and cattails are the big news in our neighborhood.

We went to our first neighborhood association meeting last week. The good news is that we've got very friendly neighbors. The bad news is that no one really knows anything about whether or not our neighborhood will be annexed by the city of McHenry, and no one really knows how much it will cost to send the cattails in our lake (which have been proliferating as the water level in the lake drops) to sleep with the fishes, but it didn't stop anyone from expressing an opinion about either thing, sometimes in great detail.

3. The UPS Customer Center in Palatine should be avoided on Friday nights.

We missed the delivery of Randy's new phone (e-mail him if you need his new cell phone number and don't have it), and we weren't going to be home during the "We'll try again on..." time, either. So we drove out to Palatine, figuring we'd be able to run in, grab the package, and head right back home. Um, no. The line to retrieve packages was probably 20 people long, and we waited for more than 30 minutes. I shudder to imagine holiday-length lines.

4. Mowing goes a lot faster when most of the grass is dead.

See also water level in lake, dropping of.