Yes, it’s that day where we celebrate everybody’s favorite disheveled LA detective, Lieutenant Frank Colombo. Of course, whenever I think of Columbo, I can’t help but think of McMillan and Wife, which was also part of the NBC “Mystery Movie” rotation (along with McCloud, but personally I think Dennis Weaver’s career peaked with Chester in Gunsmoke, though he did of course give a compelling performance in Steven Spielberg’s “Duel” where he was pursued by a killer truck). Mostly, I thought Susan St. James was really cute. And who knew that John Schuck would make such a good Klingon. Anyhow, whatever the holiday, it’s good to be home, especially knowing that I get to work from home tomorrow, and only have to make two appearances at the office this week.

So one big question facing me today is whether or not to take the mower off the tractor. I cut the grass yesterday, but will I get one more cut, or is it time to get ready for winter? They say we may actually get a little snow towards the end of the week, and while it won’t be enough to stick to the driveway, let alone plow, I really don’t want to be futzing around with the mower if it’s gonna be cold out (for one thing, it involves groveling around underneath the thing to unhook the PTO, and then I have to clean it off and struggle with getting it into the shed (about a four-foot three-inch opening to stuff a five foot wide mower deck through, which means I can’t just drop it in there with the front end loader).

The other issue is that while I was in that shed yesterday, I knocked over a bucket of dirt that somebody left in there (not naming names, but it wasn’t me). Unfortunately, along with a bit of dirt that spilled out onto the floor was the remains of what I assume was once a very juicy mouse and on the order of 4,237,842 squirming maggots. A rotting mouse I can deal with – a writing maggot burger, not so much. I promptly exited the shed and closed the door behind me.

Ideally, I wouldn’t go back in there until either the person who left the bucket of dead mouse in my shed – yes, my shed, where I keep my outdoor tools, mower in the winter, winter tires (in the summer) and summer tires (in the winter) and various pool-related implements. There’s another shed which in my opinion should be the designated rotting mouse shed – or the maggots totally consume the mouse, turn into flies, and fly the fuck away.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how long that’ll take and I not only need to deal with the mower, but I also have to think about getting the snow tires on the car at some point. Hopefully I won’t need them anytime soon, but you never know around here. We could have a foot of snow for Halloween.

I have a few other things I ought to deal with, too. For starters, I need to clean out the pellet stoves and do my yearly PM on them. I should also fire up the hot water heat and make sure the pump and whatnot are working OK. I plan on using the HW heat more than the pellets this year, because I did the math and thanks to fracking (just not in my back yard), natural gas actually comes out a bit cheaper than pellets (plus I can pay as I go instead of having to buy $750-$1000 worth all at once, and I don’t have to clean out the garage – a never-ending struggle – to make room for more pellets).

I should probably start thinking about putting the storm windows on, and start plastic-ing up the western facing windows.

So I guess I’d better get busy and get to work. As Ned Stark would say if they hadn’t chopped off his head – winter is coming.