A year or two ago, my Dad's septic tank needed work. He'd just bought the house, so they weren't sure where to dig. That is, they can look at the outlet pipe and know the direction, but to find the right location they probe with rods.

Except the primary crop around here is stones, so probing got them nowhere. The backhoe went to work, and after digging a trench a dozen feet long, they finally found the tank, and fixed what ailed it. Then the backhoe piled all the dirt back into the overly-large hole.

So today, in that whole section, there's little grass, as all the stones on the surface give grass no purchase. I got out a wheelbarrow and a shovel, and dug out a section to a few inches deep. The rocky soil got dumped in a low spot in a wooded section that doesn't have any grass anyway. Then I dug out a wheelbarrow-load of fine compost from the bottom of the compost heap, which was a garden before it was a heap. So we're talking primo soil.

I dumped half of the load directly, then was delivering the rest of the load one shovel-full at a time from the wheelbarrow. I tossed a scoop, turned back to the wheelbarrow to get another scoop, and saw something green. There was a big honking toad in the bottom of the wheelbarrow. He was ackwardly scrabbling up the side, trying to escape.

He was ackward because his back right leg was badly broken at the femur. It wasn't an open fracture, but it was still very much not good. So I carefully scooped him out, placed him back in the hole in the compost heap I'd been getting dirt from, and shoved a huge pile of leaves on top.

Last night was the first hard frost of the year. I figure the little guy was hibernating underground, when I shovelled him out, breaking his leg either then, or when I took a shovelfull out by the hole.

I dumped the rest of the compost I'd collected onto the low spot, then put away my tools. I feel terrible, and not inclined to dig up any more toads this fall.

I also am aware that me feeling terrible is kind of ironic, too. I mean, I did hurt that toad pretty badly. It's probably going to die. But I ate the flesh of a cow (or a steer) last night, and I expect to eat some other type of animal flesh tonight. Plus, I've killed human beings and felt no such remorse. But the suffering of this toad makes me feel guilty. The human mind is a strange thing.

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I went cruising around Buffalo today, driving along old familiar streets, going past familiar houses, and relaxing for an hour or two at Delaware Park. Then I went to UB's North Campus. I wanted to see three of my favorite professors, as well as a school employee.

Well, the employee had quit, one professor was now emeritus and only comes in on Fridays, one professor was on paternity leave, and one professor was now teaching in Texas or California (her former coworkers couldn't remember which).

Having failed at the formal reason for my visit, I found the gaming club office, walked in, and sat down like I owned the place. Which I do. I was freaking Convention Director twice and President once, which may still make me the most senior elected SARPA official.

Naturally, the place was full of kids that had never heard of me. How fleeting is fame. They did invite me to play Lunch Money though, so I showed them how it's done. The cards were battered and old, undoubtedly the same deck we had played with back in my day. It was thicker now though, as some expansion decks had been added.

During the middle of the game, the Student Union fire alarm went off for no reason. Just like old times!

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As I was driving from Albany to Buffalo, a cold front blew in. The wind and rain took most of the colorful leaves down from the trees along the NY Thruway. So I suspect we are not officially past peak fall color. Pity. I never did get a good photo day.

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I drove from Albany to Buffalo today. I took Paul's estimate of the travel time, but either he misremembered, or I drive a lot slower. (Which I doubt, my little car is zippier than his minivan. No offense, Paul.)

I'm out here to, among other things, visit my "Old Army Buddy" Raul. He joined the Army a few months before I joined the Corps, and shortly after I came back from Afghanistan, he went there. He was in the same area I was, and went to a lot of the same spots. So while we've been in email contact, it was fun to sit down, share photos, and tell tales.

Getting to Raul's apartment was a challenge, though. He gave me directions via streets I remembered: Parkside and Hertel. But when I got here, I realized that in the last six years, while I remembered the names, I could no longer remember how to get to them. That's OK, I've got a GPS navigation system! But Buffalo has a lot of redundant street names, and it took me to the wrong place. So I called him again, and we agreed to meet at Kosta's, a greek restraunt our circle used to eat at. Then I had trouble finding that, until I told my GPS to take me to the specific intersection. All's well that ends well, and Raul and I had a fun evening.

He's working as a stagehand for Buffalo concerts, as well as drilling with the Ohio National Guard. As is typical for Raul, he's broke, so I paid for dinner. He should have more money than I, as he was higher-ranking for most of our military careers, and he spent more time in a combat zone that I. But he has poor control over impulse buying, so that's probably where all his money went. He's living with Adam, another member of our circle, in the apartment that's the second story of Raul's parent's house. So I'm sure they get a good deal on rent.

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Today's drive up I-88 was beautiful. The fall colors are at peak or nearly so. But it was still mostly cloudy. I did get some photos during the occasional sunny patches, but it was mostly gray and not terribly nice.

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Last night I made chocolate chip cookies for the second time since I returned to the States.

The first time, a few weeks ago, was a fiasco. I'd forgotten how delicious chocolate chip cookie dough is. So none of that batch even made it into the oven. My brother-in-law would be annoyed about eating raw eggs. He's right, too, but the dough is so good!

As I was saying, last night I made a new batch, and managed to bake some by doing it right away instead of letting the dough cool in the fridge. I still didn't have much luck, though. The first sheet came out underdone, the second sheet was overdone, and the rest came out kind of mediocre.

So this morning I made brownies. Not that I'm going to throw out the cookies, mind you… but they're not good enough to serve to company.

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Going from my Mother's to my Father's place, I decided to let my GPS navigation system take me via "Avoid Highways" mode.

So I took Rt-96 to Rt-13 to Horseheads. There, I deviated from the route to visit Tuna II, a very good sushi place that is sadly somewhat obscure. With fresh sushi in the passenger's seat, I decided to skip the backroads, and took I-86 the rest of the way home.

It was a bit interesting to go through downtown Catatonk and Candor, two towns that I had never even heard of. I may go back to Candor sometime with a camera, as it looked to have quite a few well-preserved old buildings.

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With my compadre gone, I finished up the wiring project. (Finished for now, that is.) I went to the basement to put in a new circuit on the panel box, only to discover after much irritation that there are a couple of types of circuit breaker these days, that are internally indistinguishable, but have a design incompatability to force you to buy from the manufacturer. (The slot where the breaker connects to the power inside the box is shaped slightly differently.) With a new breaker (cost me 54¢ more than the standard one), it worked fine.

Then I went running around the house checking switches and outlets. All was good, we didn't wire any outlets backwards, but there was one room that didn't work. A quick check of the relavant brand-new junction box in the attic revealed that someone had screwed up the wire splices inside the box, and by "someone" I am refering to a person that I see every morning when I shave. In my defense, I had to work on that box while standing over the attic access ladder, so I was in significant peril of my life, and whenever I dropped something I went 18 feet down before bouncing somewhere.

With that junction resolved, all the wiring worked, but I still had to get the ceiling of the upstairs common room to work.

Wiring that light/overhead fan was a pain, as it was mounted onto the joist, instead of into a ceiling box. In the other rooms we installed the boxes, but I was running out of steam, plus this ceiling wasn't suspended like the others. And the fan had a mounting bracket that held the wire splices nicely.

The fan gave me trouble, as I had to install it three times to get it to hang level and not have the blade hub rub the decorative housing. I had actually given up after try two and was putting it back together with instructions to my Mom to not turn on the fan until I'd had another chance to work on it. But third tries are a charm, I guess.

And contrary to the post title, it's not quite done, as we're out of wire to connect one last outlet. Plus we'd disconnected a light on Circuit 13 from it's light switch, because we erroneously suspected it of misdeeds. So I need to reconnect it, but I'd like to put the joint inside a box, because the previous homeowner had just put electical tape over the splices and dropped the wires into the insulation. That's Not A Good Thing, for the record.

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We knocked off work for the night an hour ago. We're almost done.

For this project, I bought a 250 foot spool of wire. Naturally, we need 280 feet. Also, it's quite late, and we can't find the new circuit breaker that we need to install.

So, status: All wiring done except one outlet, and connecting an overhead light. Also, need to add a circuit breaker to the basement panel.

My co-worker is leaving tomorrow morning early, as he's got a bachelor party to attend. I can finish on my own though, although running wire into the outlet would be easier with two people. The other two tasks are one-man jobs.

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I owe Circuit Thirteen an apology. It was innocent of leaking current into Circuit Eight. I think what happened was that a wire going to an outlet on Eight ran parallel with a wire going to a switch on Thirteen. The live Thirteen wire induced voltage in the not-live Eight wire. Not a lot of voltage, but enough to trigger our very sensitive current detectors.

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