Well, the temperatures have been dropping daily, so I thought I'd do a little fall decorating on the outside of the house. Since we have very strict rules about seasonal holiday decorations, I couldn't put out anything Halloween-specific until a couple weeks before Oct 31. Trust me, I'm not exaggerating... several neighbors got nasty notes about their blowup ghosts and goblins they put out before Oct 16. Sheesh. I figured if I would have gotten a note, I would have said that was produce from my garden (maybe they wouldn't notice there are no vines attached).
October is usually when the snowbirders head back to Arizona. My friend, Molly, is leaving this week. When she's here in the summer, she's a big biker, but when she goes back to Phoenix, she plays golf with the golf club. On this particular day, we cheated and drove to the coffee shop rather than bike it, partly because she'd messed up her back and partly because I'd been struggling with allergies (the ragweed is horrific around here this time of year).
But I did get in a couple short bike rides this week. Unfortunately, I think every construction worker in town is focusing on tearing up the ground right next to the bike trails (more Colorado orange-cone syndrome). The left photo is a giant hole for a storm drain they are running under the Cherry Creek Trail. The right photo is actually a picture of the Platte River renovation. I'm not sure where they diverted the river water to, because they put up those big pylons in the background and then drained all the water away so they could get their front loaders down to the riverbed. I just hope it's all completed by spring. We'll see.
One of my teacher friends, Eric, came into town to take his son to the Paul McCartney concert. We met at Wendy's for a soda and a gossip catch-up. We would have gone for a bike ride, but on the drive over to meet him my brake light came on. After our visit, I headed straight to the dealer and had to get new brake pads. Seems like it's always something going wrong.
Courtney and I did some online painting together this weekend. This demo was called Bending Perspective. The presenter was obviously from Chicago, and it was an interesting take on drawing downtown buildings. Of course, if you couldn't draw a straight line, you could always fall back on this technique to draw cityscapes. This weekend was Chicago's Architectural Open House. If I would have remembered, I would have flown there and drawn the real thing.
I've been looking for a project to do at the Craft Club. Every other meeting is devoted to chatting and doing your own projects. Most of the people knit or crochet, so I ordered some yarn from Amazon to make a baby afghan. This color was called peach, which I thought would make a nice gender-neutral blanket, but it looks a bit orange-y to me. Maybe I'll get it finished by next Halloween so it can go to an October baby.
