crawdad pad

Phew!  We're finally home from our week-long Chicago convention. 

It's always exhausting, but great to see old friends!  :)

It was a TON of work, but we had help from some amazing people, and we had our best show ever!

I enjoyed seeing the costumes, as usual.

Here's an unusual one.  This guy...

...is supposed to be THIS guy...

...from some obscure 1978 holiday special.  Major points for creativity! 

The weather was awful.  It snowed almost 7 inches at O'Hare and the airport shut down.  Meanwhile, in Indiana, spring came.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the windows are open!  But we've definitely been too busy to hike.  Not only have we been swamped with pre- and post-convention work, but we've got just over a week until closing.  We've got millions of contractor quotes to get before then, because we're planning major renovations in the first 6 weeks.  Todd has already been over to the house to meet with roofers and returned with a mystery.

"These were in the yard and in one of the barns," he said, puzzled.  "The homeowner has no idea what made them."  Having grown up in the country, I immediately recognized them as crawdad, er, crayfish holes.  But they weren't anywhere near either pond.  Doing a little reading, I discovered that sometimes crayfish seek out an underground water source, not just surface water like a pond.  Interesting!  I'm so excited to resume my "property walks," as I made so frequently in South Carolina, to find these little oddities.  Todd also mentioned that there's already a resident barn cat (!!!) that the homeowner was hoping that we'd continue to keep and feed.

Another cat!?!? 

Need I say more? 

It's a whirlwind of activity around here, punctuated by long periods of glazed-eyed couch slouching.  We don't have the luxury of our usual post-convention pajama week, but at least the work we're doing is exciting and moving us toward something amazing.  Little farm, here we come!