57° and cloudy this morning, going up to 66° today. Looks like they've backed off of the 70° forecast from a few days ago. Expecting some heavy storms to roll through the area this evening, bringing more "normal" December weather behind it (highs in the 30s & 40s). Looks like snow for Friday.
Had a fairly eventful weekend. Got a flat tire (which a friend from Liverpool chided me should properly be spelled "tyre") on the way home from work Friday evening. I'd just made it across the new bridge over the Mississippi River when I heard that
whoomp-whoomp-whoomp sound coming from the right front
tyre. I did have a large buffer V area to pull over next to an exit in East St. Louis, so plenty of room to change it without the threat from passing traffic. It's been a few years since I've had to change a
tyre on the side of the road. I can say, I haven't missed it.
Got up Saturday morning and found the offending hole in the tread, so I took it to a small tire shop (his spelling, not mine) in Fairview Heights IL for a plug. While I was in uncivilization, I stopped at Harbor Freight to pick up a couple of things, and run an errand for The Wife. The little shop was quite busy that morning, and it was well after noon before I got back home. The Wife was cleaning and vacuuming out her Sorento, which only served to encourage me to do the same with my Soul ... which I did. It desperately needed it, too. That pretty much squashed my plans to engage in some leaf eradication, as we had dinner plan at 5pm. We took the boy and his girlfriend to dinner at 54th Street Grill and Bar, then to the theater to see the new Justice League movie. It was a pretty entertaining flick, and the theater is in the process of remodeling under new ownership. They've yanked out about half of the seats, and replaced them all with oversized dual loungers. I must say, that's a pretty nice way to watch a movie.
Internet photo, but our theater looked just like this:
Sunday morning was taken up with a bunch of little things around the house. The afternoon was taken by a benefit for a deceased local musician. It was originally planned as a fundraiser to help him with medical expenses. Unfortunately, about a week ago he succumbed to the ravages of thyroid cancer. I thought maybe the nice weather would have a negative affect on attendance. I couldn't have been more wrong. There were probably 500+ people at this tiny little bar in Pontoon Beach, IL. You couldn't hardly move inside, and most people were just milling around outside on the back parking lot. He had been playing mostly acoustic music the past few years, so the music yesterday in his honor was all acoustic. A bunch of acoustic duos, trios (like ours), and quartets donated about 5 hours of nonstop music, and many other popular local musicians attended but didn't play. We played for about 1/2 hour. I suspect with all the monetary donations and raffles, they raised a fairly decent amount of money yesterday. It's always an honor to be asked to be a part of things like that.
And while on the subject of how much cancer sucks, I heard this morning that our receptionist at work died over the weekend. She was diagnosed with lung cancer about a month ago. About a week ago, the doctors told her it had spread to other organs, including her brain and thyroid, and there was pretty much nothing they could do beyond making her comfortable. Her husband is our Manufacturing Manager as well. Not that there's ever a good time to deal with such a loss, but I can't imagine it happening during the Holiday Season makes it any easier.
This is certainly one of those "appreciating life" kind of days.
