MSU - November

I went to the MSU vs Minnesota last week with John. First i parked in front of my old house on Gunson and Linden. It looks the same.
Stopped by Sparty.
Then watched the game. (click to view full size)

Backyard Stuff

Charlie caught a mouse and tried to bring it in the house... it was still sort of alive.
Eating potatoes and sweet corn from the garden.

Bat Wakeup

Imagine that it's midnight and you are asleep in bed. You wake up because you hear something flying around your bedroom. In your sleepy haze you think it must be a moth or large bug. Then after a second you think wait, is that a bird? You turn on the light and come face to face with a bat. To say i freaked out is an understatement.

After being trapped in my bathroom by the flying mammal, i escaped and went over my options. The first thing i did was grab Charlie (the cat) and threw him in there. He was absolutely zero help, just sitting there watching the bat fly around. He showed some interest when the bat flew into the closet but 2 minutes later he came running out of the room. I was disappointed in him. No tennis racket and no fishing net meant i had to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. I went to the obvious choice, the Pumpmaster 760 BB gun.

As the bat circled the room, looking for a place to land, i was at the door. He landed once above the window, i shot and missed high, not wanting to break a window. I missed him a couple more times, then finally hit him when was perched on the door frame. Thinking he was dead i went to pick him up with a garbage bag. He wasn't dead. He let out an amazingly loud bat screech. Once again, saying i freaked out is an understatement. I ran back, got the gun and finished it.

It turns out he got in through a tiny crack in the attic door.

Here's what he looked like:

As far as i'm concerned, here's what i saw:

House Price

I checked the value of my house last week on Zillow.com it was not good. Then i checked it 2 weeks later and it went up $5000. That's still not good but going in the right direction.

Gutter Drainage Again

The first drain pipe in installed by the side of the garage works perfectly. 1st drain pipe The second one i made doesn't. 2nd drain pipe

There's 2 reasons why it doesn't work. First, all the soil in my backyard is clay, which doesn't let the water drain. Second, is that my backyard is basically flat, which also doesn't let the water drain.

So i tried extending the pipe another 10 feet.

Then instead of just backfilling the trench with clay i added, then compacted, logs and grass clippings. I then put the dirt back on top of that. I'll probably have to fix this again next year.

Banana Tree

I'm surprised how well the banana tree grew in my house. It had lots of roots.
With it now being 80 degrees i decided it was safe to move and replant outside.
It likes a lot of water. I've noticed that even watering it every day outside isn't enough, the leaves sag a lot and turned brown. But a water pan underneath it's doing better.