Good morning or good evening, wherever yo may be. It is just past 5:30 a.m. in "The City."

Whew! The Cubs closed the gap to 3 - 2, with coincidentally, a 3 - 2 win over the Cleveland Indians Sunday night. Jon Lester surrendered a home run early in the game that allowed the Indians to take the lead. But Kris Bryant finally broke out and deposited a home run of his own into the basket in left field. The Cubs' bats came to life long enough to give them a 3 -1 lead that was eroded to 3 - 2 by the Indians, the final score. The next game is Tuesday night in Cleveland @ 8:00 p.m. EDT.

It is now Halloween here in GH. The city is sponsoring an indoor Halloween party @ the community center for the ghosts, goblins, superheroes, princesses and the other assorted characters that ply the mean streets of "The City" on All-Hallows Eve. The downtown merchants offer a trick or treating opportunity this afternoon between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. Trick or treating is allowed in the neighborhoods between 6:00 p.m. & 8:00 p.m. As a grown up, I understand the desire for safety, but when I was a wee bit younger, I would have chafed at the restrictions placed on my chance to gather as much candy as possible. How times have changed.

Collectively, Mary and I accomplished quite a bit between indoors and outdoors. Mary was busy in the kitchen part of the time while I took on the task of bagging the leaves that have fallen so far in and on the lawns and gardens of the vast PE. Mary and Ginger came out to join the fun and Mary cut back the various perennials that will be resting through the long winter months. I moved some lily plants to another location in the gardens that will allow them to grow more easily. While we haven't bagged all that much fall detritus, yet, we made a good start. I also got started on planting some grass seed too. We have more to do, but my yak feels fine right now and I am thankful that Mary was the voice of reason and kept me from my own inclinations.

We have recently been experiencing a fly invasion. Mary was and is trying to ameliorate the attack in her kitchen, as am I, but it is a tough fight. We're using fly trapping strips, but they are more a trap to us in many cases. Hopefully, the flies will soon be dead and gone.

Today I have to make the filling for my homemade pumpkin pie in preparation for making pies from scratch. We purchased the pie-pumpkins recently and so I have everything on hand that I should need to make the pie. I"ve go the crust down cold, so to speak, but it has been a while since I made the filling. I looked at various recipes on the web, but I think I'll be using the tried and true recipe found in Mary's Fanny Farmer cookbook. That book has never let me down.

The morning safari with the fur-children will take place as usual, but Ginger just went out @ 5:30 a.m., so she and the intrepid one should be good until later this morning. The two girls are learning to get along, but it is a process to be sure. STWD is not happy about having an interloper intrude upon her once solitary preserve after nine years of having the run of the house. We find ourselves saying, "Can't we all just get along", to paraphrase Rodney King.

John, our handyman, will be back today to work on the painting. We have to be sure that the doors stay closed to eliminate or reduce the chance for further fly invasions.

The current temperature is 40° under partly cloudy skies. We are anticipating a high-temperature today of 56° under those same partly cloudy skies. That should be good weather for the trick or treaters. Tuesday's high temperature is forecast by the NWS to be a balmy 64° under partly sunny skies. As the day progresses on Tuesday, the NWS is forecasting showers/T-storms in the evening @ 60% that will be the lead-in to the 100% chance of rain on Wednesday.

We plan to go nowhere on Tuesday, but Wednesday we are scheduled to go to the Tri-Cities History Museum for the monthly book club meeting where I'll hopefully be sharing my pumpkin pie. The sun will rise today @ 8:18 a.m. and set @ 6:37 p.m. Ciao.