U-pick, U-shoot and then U-sleep

On October 12, 2025October 12, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Today’s Fun Family Time included a two-hour drive to an apple orchard up in Michigan; my wife’s side of the family has apparently been doing it as a yearly thing for forever and just decided to invite the out-of-towners this year.

I don’t know if you’ve ever used an apple cannon. I can tell you that after firing $10 worth of apples out of one, I’m going to find a way to build one in our back yard. The apple cannons were absolutely the highlight of the trip; I discovered to my consternation that despite apples generally being among my favorite fruits, when rotting apples is the only thing I can smell in a given location, it’s going to leave me feeling a bit ill, so I was fighting off a shitty mood for most of the afternoon and just mostly trying to keep a smile plastered on my face. The apple cannons totally fixed that problem.

(Also, Christ, there’s nothing that can reduce people to ‘splosion- and cannon-loving Americans faster than seeing someone hit a target with an apple at 50 yards. Wow.)

There was also a large corn maze. Despite having grown up in and spending most of my life living in Indiana, I have never been in a corn maze, and I still haven’t, because the three of us figured we were going to get lost and decided not to make the time investment. I figure you want to do a corn maze when you have time to get hopelessly lost and not when you want to be home before it’s dark.

Then once we got home, in accordance with our most ancient traditions, all three of us retired to separate rooms to recharge and not speak to each other any more, and I fell asleep under a pile of cats, which is why this post is just going up at 9:00 PM.

Tomorrow is not a day off officially, but I took one anyway. I’ve been pretty good about attendance this year and upon realizing that the wife and child would both be home, had a “fuck it” moment and called in a personal day. Hail Columbia, or whatever.

Okay so we’ve gotta fight now I guess.

On October 27, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories6 Comments

HatfieldClan Here are the rules of Raking Leaves. Well, the Rule of Raking Leaves, because there’s really only the one rule: you are responsible for the leaves in your yard, period. The location of the tree does not matter, because leaves blow. We raked leaves last Saturday. There were leaves in my yard from oak trees, and I don’t even know where the nearest oak tree is. Nevertheless, because I am a Good Neighbor, and because the two trees in the front yard I share with my immediate neighbor (in the sense that they but up against each other with no fence as a divider; it’s one big chunk of grass) are both in my lawn, I did my best to blow as many of “his” leaves as I could into our pile. The majority of them fell off of my tree. I use an electric leaf blower, and if you had looked right after we did it you could pretty neatly delineate exactly how far my cord let me get into his yard, because those areas were bare of leaves.

My neighbor’s wife and son are outside right now, blowing leaves. They (or, rather, she, because their son is in a different part of the yard) are blowing the leaves not to the foot of the lawn, where the city can pick them up, but into my yard. Where the wind is just gonna blow them right the fuck back into their lawn. And I’m, like, right here, in my living room, and I can see her doing it, because the tree is right outside my living room window. Plus the city came by and sucked up leaves today, so they won’t be here for at least a week and this is a pointless endeavor right now anyway because there are literally probably still a million leaves on that tree that haven’t fallen yet.

I do not understand people.

In which it’s all good

On October 25, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

It was an excessively pleasant day today, with October-perfect weather. We went out and bought pumpkins (the boy picked all three of them out) and the boy is so enamored with his personal pumpkin that he insisted on it staying in his bedroom with him tonight. We got the yard raked and I enjoyed it (it is so rare as to border on impossible for me to enjoy doing yard work) and acquired most of the rest of his Halloween costume. We also figured out what I was doing about my Halloween costume, which I didn’t actually realize I was wearing until the idea popped into my head.

And now we’re gonna watch the season premiere of Constantine. So, yeah, good day.

(Not “good blog post,” I admit that. I’ll try and be interesting tomorrow.)