Apparently, my approach to blogging mimics my approach to everything else - all or none. My wife rightly points out that for an educated man, the meaning of ‘moderation’ seems beyond my grasp. In the two months since the election, I’ve been occupied with three things: home, work and family, and extremely grateful to have all three.
At home, my wife still manages a winter garden, though we’re down to greens for the most part. But how nice it is to have fresh salad off the land every night, even in January! The chickens are fine, though one of my Jersey Giant ‘pullets’ turned out to be a cockerel. Apparently though I found a home for him today, with another local Jersey Giant owner who is rooster-less. There was a fair amount of tinkering of late, an icemaker with a stubborn leak, a leaky sink, a chainsaw that leaked bar oil…..sensing a theme here? All eventually were resolved. I also spent quite a while re-building an old ten-speed bike for a friend who’s done me a million favors. Replacing all the cables, switching to upright handlebars, and lacing up new wheels took me back to the days when I worked in a bike shop, back in the pre-industrial days.
The big project occupied all of last weekend: taking down eleven pine trees near the house and hauling the sliced rounds, etc. away. This is the sort of project that a sane man would leave to the big boys, but in addition to being questionable in that department, I’m also extremely cheap. I did get an estimate a couple of years back for an expanded version, but I have a better use for $7K. All things considered, it went pretty smoothly. I didn’t get killed. I didn’t hit the house. And I didn’t even do major damage to the surrounding hardwoods. But some of the drops were not exactly ‘textbook’. It helped that I used my homegrown method for encouraging the trees to fall where I wanted them to; namely, getting a stout line fifty-plus feet up the tree to pull in the desired direction (or at least prevent it from falling in the wrong direction). The trick is getting the line fifty feet up the tree for adequate leverage. That’s where the slingshot comes in. I use a 3/4 ounce lead sinker with a swivel, attached to 40# monofilament fishing line. I soot that over my limb of choice, then use it to haul a heavier line, which I then use to haul up the final line. Attach to come-along or tractor and start cutting. Anyway, it was a frisky weekend and ibuprofen is my new drug of choice.
The holidays were great. I am grateful for the family and friends that I spent them with, and doubly grateful that all of them live withing driving distance (or at least flew my direction rather than expecting me to fly to them). Only one member of my circle had recently lost a job and no one had lost a house. May our good fortune hold.
Finally, the main reason for my silence here in blog land, has been a radically ramped up workload. All good; my day job has more meaning than it has had in the last couple of years, but the next several months will be busy ones. Yesterday was a ten hour day at my desk and I was still working on my to do list at ten last night. But again, all good.
Happy New Year to all.
Posted on January 6th, 2009 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
