Brain dump

The Chicago Botanic Garden is having a bulb sale this weekend, so I stopped there on the way home from work yesterday... only to find that they closed up shop at 5 o'clock.

This morning, I washed my cat's blankie, which she hasn't touched in months. I found her curled up on it just minutes after taking it out of the dryer. Fresh off that success, I decided I'd give the Botanic Garden another try.

When I turned onto Broadway, around the corner from my place, I unexpectedly found myself on a parade route. There were floats decorated in green and white, and they were populated with black people in white gowns. As a white guy in a blue Jetta, I felt a little out of place in that parade. It turns out that today, October 1, is Nigerian Independence Day -- the 45th anniversary of the day the country gained independence from Britain.

Even when I got past the parade route, traffic was terrible. It took an hour to get to the Botanic Garden.

Aside from the bulb sale, they held a bluegrass festival today, which really isn't such a big thing in this part of the country. But I guess some people like it. Other news -- in two weeks, they'll put up a sukkah in the vegetable garden. Today I walked through the vegetable garden and saw the gourds that will be used to decorate the sukkah. Some looked like brown, flattened pumpkins, some like large, green geese, some like something from another planet.

I did get to buy my bulbs. This year I took extra care to get ones that the squirrels would hate. I got Siberian squill, two varieties of Narcissus, and three varieties of ornamental onion.

Going home, I went a little out of my way to stop at the Petco in Lincoln Park (more traffic). This was to register for tomorrow's PAWS Chicago Run for Their Lives event. I acquired another T-shirt, of course, following an unwritten rule that one of these must be given out at every fundraising event.