Caught in the act

Yesterday I volunteered at the St. Louis Area Food Bank with a number of my work colleagues, assembling CSFP food boxes. It was done assembly line style and we put together 600 cases in about 150 min work time--about one case every 15 seconds! Here is a picture someone took the last time we volunteered there. This time we were sorting out donated food items. Someone captioned this picture, “Hey – I’ll trade you some beans for those Ramen noodles!”


Several Saturdays ago (October 4) I flew up to Chicago and back for the Midwest Enzyme Chemistry Conference. This is a great one-day meeting frequented mostly by academic researchers (I was the only one there I noticed from industry) and with no registration fee. The organizer recently posted some pictures from the event, and here I am, helping myself to some refreshments.

Wet Cement

I came home from work today and found that the driveway was finished.

The contractor said we could choose between a regular broom finish, or, for no extra charge, a swirled pattern. He seemed interested in offering this, and I think the swirled pattern looks pretty nice. Here is a closer view, which also shows what appears to be a lasting impression from one of our neighborhood animals.

I hope the deer stay away.

Landscaping

It is rather amazing what they are doing to the Sexton's front yard to try and bring it up to the grade of the street.


They have also been dumping dirt in our front yard.

Looking to the other side, the Sexton's house almost disappears.


In other news, we have decided to take advantage of the reconstruction to replace our old asphalt driveway with a new concrete one. Ellisville will pay for the first 10 feet (which they were going to do anyway) and we will pay for the remaining 28. It turns out that concrete is actually a little less expensive than asphalt (because of the escalating price of oil). Getting the job done at this time will allow the entire length of the driveway to be regraded so that it slopes evenly to the new street elevation. They said that weather permitting, they could start working on it tomorrow.