Remember these dates for winter's arrival

Although temperatures last week felt more wintry than autumnal, it is fall, as evidenced by the changing leaf colors and piles of leaves that have already fallen.

If you're one to take the time to rake and collect the leaves out of your yard, East Dundee has a number of options for disposal.

While the village still allows for leaf burning on the second and fourth weekends of the month, the village's garbage collection contractor also picks up yard waste every Wednesday with the regular trash pickup.

So, if you don't want to wait until Saturday or Sunday between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. to set the yard waste ablaze, you can bag up the leaves into a big brown recycling bag - available at Walgreens - and leave it on the sidewalk next to your regular trash. Allied Waste will collect yard waste from now through November, when no doubt the freezing weather would have settled in.

But before we jump ahead to November, there's an important date to remember: Saturday, Oct. 31, Halloween. Trick-or-treating hours in Carpentersville are from 3 to 7 p.m. The villagewide Trick-or-Treat hours in West Dundee are from 2 to 7 p.m. And from Oct. 21 to Nov. 1, Santa's Village in East Dundee is hosting a haunted trail.

Also, Nov. 1 is the end of daylight saving time. Although it is still a good 10 days away, forgetting to reset the clocks and watches at home, in the car or at the office, is a problem I deal with every year. But I must say living in a country that calls autumn "fall" makes it much simpler to remember which way to turn the clocks.

"Spring forward and fall back" has a much better ring than "spring forward and autumn back," which is what it would be in Australia.

With winter fast approaching, or at a rate that I detest, many villages will soon implement winter parking bans. In West Dundee, the winter parking ban is in effect from Nov. 1 until April 1, 2010. The ban prohibits parking on village streets from 2 to 5 a.m.

If you have short-term guests or an inoperable vehicle, permission for overnight parking may be requested by calling the QuadCom nonemergency number at (847) 428-8784 and providing the vehicle's location, make, model and license plate number.

If more than two inches of snow does fall, a vehicle may need to be moved and/or ticketed at the expense of the owner so as to not inhibit snow removal operations.