Warnng: This post is only marginally related to personal finances. Proceed at your own risk.

One thing I noticed in recent years is all the different free skin cancer screenings they used to do at area hospitals are now nowhere to be found. They are usually held in May. Yes, I could make an appointment with a dermatologist, but I probably wouldn't bother unless I had a pressing concern. Still, I like to take advantage of the free clinics just as a peace of mind thing as I do have fair skin and have my share of freckles and moles.

So after wading through the many online notices of such clinics from 5 years ago (wish they'd take those things down already), I managed to find one for this year in a town about 40 minutes away, down county, and I decided to go.

I was also trying to schedule a possible walk, workout and coffee with a friend of mine after we'd already cancelled once. This is a friend who lives literally around the block from me but whom I don't see very often, just once in a while. Still, she is so appreciative as I've helped her get serious about her bone health and exercise; she's a nurse, but works these crazy hours and has a lot of demands on her time. She also is very health-conscious, as I am, so we have a lot in common. She told me yesterday that I was her inspiration and that she was so glad she met me. Which kind of melted my heart.

When I told her about the skin cancer clinic, she really wanted to go, so she joined me, and we were able to fit in some extended quality time together on the ride down there. Then we walked downtown to a local coffee shop with a lot of personality (kind of a funky vibe going on, which was surprising in such an upscale town) and ended up having a light lunch there.  I dropped her off back home and we reconnected again at the gym around dinner time, even getting one of the trainers there to show us the proper form for doing a Romanian deadlift. All in all, a fun and productive day!

Today is a day I set aside for yard work and more mowing. Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to an afternoon program on the battle at Gettsyburg. Seeing as how I just returned from a trip to Gettysburg Nat'l Park, I thought it would be interesting to see how the speaker at today's program either reinforces what I just learned about that moment in history, or adds to it.

Then on Monday a small group of us from 3 different local environmental groups are coming together (thanks to me!) to walk a section of a local high vaue river and tape knotweed, the hope being we can return after July (optimal time to treat with herbicide is July-October). 

It's in a very sensitive riparian area, so we won't do foliar spraying, which is very nontargeted, nonspecifc and harder to control.  (You can't dig this stuff out; the roots go down 10 feet.) We may use an injection method for the herbicide (depending on how much knotweed we find, it may or may not be feasible), or possibly paint it on with a small paintbrush.

I have also ordered, for my own use at home, 100 very small mesh bags with a drawstring attached (typically used for wedding party favors). I plan to use these on the cut stems of an invasive vine I have in my yard. Out of an abundance of caution, I will attach these small bags around each cut stem I treat with painted-on herbicide so that no insects are harmed by landing on the stem. So I'm going to ask the people in these other groups if they'd want to use them also. They're very inexpensive. However, we have not secured any permits from the town or state yet, and that could really delay us big time. We have the town land use director joining the walk so am hoping he agrees the need to tackle the knotweed is urgent.