Yesterday we got some of our concrete steps redone in the front of the house. It was a bit of a wait to finally get to this point, but today they look fantastic! We also had to deal with our furnace not working over the weekend—we bought a brand new furnace last winter, and since then we’ve had to replace the circuit board twice and something else once. It’s not promising for a long life for the furnace, but we will make sure that the company is the one with the problem. You think that if you throw money at an issue it means you won’t have to deal with problems, but that’s just not true. I guess if you throw enough money around you can pay somebody else to wait at your house for you or something?

Louie and I had off during the day on Monday due to various Fall Breaks  so we decided to go out for breakfast and then for a hike (before having to be back at the house to meet the heating repairman). We went to Southwest Diner for breakfast—one of my favorite breakfast places, I think, and then decided to go to Shaw Nature Reserve. We hadn’t been for many years—they don’t allow dogs so we never went with Mackenzie. But seeing as how the weather is lovely for hiking and sadly Mackenzie is no longer with us, we thought it would be a great idea.

We did one longer hike and one shorter hike—we started with the Rus Goddard River Trail. Part of it was closed, but this one did take us down to a gravel bar along the Meramec River. It reminded us that we never got on a canoe trip last summer and that this summer we shall try harder for that.

The hike was relaxing, the air was brisk, and we only saw one other person while we were there!

We had enough time for another short hike after that one, so we went to the Wetland Trail.

This one wandered around a pond with lily pads and had two small buildings to observe wildlife from. There was also a stretch of boardwalk to walk along.

We only had a short period of time to explore, but we enjoyed our trip. Admission is $5 per person, but if you are a member of the Botanical Gardens it is free. We talked about joining, because we’d like to belong to things like that, but we really don’t have time to go very often. Maybe if we joined we’d make the time?

I do find that buying tickets to things makes you go. Does a membership do the same or is that not a specific enough purchase?

Over the weekend we went to two concerts—one at the Sheldon: Wynton Marsalis with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and then to the St Louis Symphony the next night (we subscribe so we go to 5 or 6 concerts a year). My weekend was busy but pretty good—I have been having a hard time with my work schedule and needing some downtime, but I made it through. Barely. I may have have a series of small breakdowns but I did make it through as I’m still here.

One of the cool things about seeing a concert at the Sheldon is there are art galleries to browse beforehand or at intermission. There was a display of musical instruments.

I liked that one and imagined it would be even more amazing if the little man carved on the scroll were playing an instrument with him carved into the scroll, and so on.

I played at the Artica Festival with part of my band. It was chilly but fun.

And I managed to get some time to hang out with the cats, of course.