Mike’s World

Well, today was day two in IL. My sister was able to spend a bit more time today. We went out to an air museum in another city near by in IL, and it was very interesting. The facility was a old air force training center, that was decommissioned with cutbacks. They had a museum showing the history of the training center, and also an air museum showing older (mid to late 1900’s) military aircraft. Was a good way to kill a afternoon. Went out for a walk around the area with my sister and the dog, and then she had to run off to work, and I had to run off home. It was a very long drive home and I got in at about 3am. It was nice to visit my sister, but it was also nice to get home.

Well, overall not a very exciting day. My sis is working the night shift, so she got off work at like 9:00am or so. Hung out for a bit, then went to drive around the excting town of champaign-urbana. This place is stuck in the middle of a sea of cornfields. In one case, we hit a wal-mart, and like a block later, it was a corn field. The entire area is like that. We went around campus, went around the nice neighorborhoods, went around the getto areas, and around the shopping areas, that was about the city.

We got back, relaxed for the day, then I went out for a walk. I found a real nice path which follows for what the most part is a drainage ditch. I followed that until I reached a empty field, then I went down the street until I reached another empty field, then went back. place is filled with empty fields.

I am taking the next four days off of work (wow, I am taking days off of work?) to visit my sister down in champain-urbina, IL. I decided to rent a car and drive down instead of flying, wonder if that was a good decision. The basic route is 94/90 all the way through wisconson, then 39 and 74 through IL, overall about 550 miles. To start off with, I was up late last night, so this morning I got up an hour later than I was planning. I then went to get my rental car.
I decided to get my car from MSP airport, it was very convinient. I walked a block and a half, to catch the bus. took the bus to Mall of America, then I took the light rail train from the MOA to MSP. This worked out very well.

I got the car, and got home and packed. Normaly, I spend about 15 minutes packing. This time around, I spent a good 2 hours packing! Got everything all packed up, and then it was off to hit the road 2 hours late (about 10:15am instead of the 8:00am I was going for). The driving went on for ever, and ever, and ever, thank god for audiobooks (book name. author). I went down 94/90 for ever, thinking wisconson would never end, make it through wisconson, to discover I still need to make it halfway through illinois!

I made it to champagn-urbina at about 7:00pm, had dinner, then went for a walk to downtown urbana. This is mosrly a collage town, so downtown consists of basicly bars. We ended up going to the bus depot, then taking the bus back a bit.

After we went to visit my Sister at work. It was so cool seeing her in her Dr robe, all ready to work. She showed us around the animal hospitial. It was much larger than I was expecting. I normaly expect the type of thing that is at the normal smaller animal hospitals. This had a dedicated ER, exam rooms, full blown lab, pharmicy, etc.

After visiting with her for a bit, it was time to head back and get some sleep.

As fall continues along, so comes the task of leaf management. I spent the day cleaning out the leaves in the front yard as well as the sides. I have a nice dark maple tree in the back yard that likes to keep its leaves until like the last week of November, so I am going to leave that for another two weeks or so. The neighbors tree is still dropping stuff all over the place, so I think I have quite a bit more of work ahead of me.

Just doing the front yard and the driveway, I managed to fill up my 64 gallon container and then more.