#133 - Cutting up trees and reading ink on wood fibers - October 14, 2012

Sunday.

I made waffles this morning, and we got out the door to church.  Primary is fun – I’m comfortable behind the piano now.  Not that I’m good yet, but I’m getting better and I’m comfortable with my badness.  I can take all the improv the music leader throws at me, and it’s okay.  I took the time during the sharing time lesson to put some choir music into Noteworthy format.  It was nice to make some real progress.

Choir practice was okay.  I’m not quite comfortable there yet, but I’m getting better.  There’s certainly a learning curve to leading a choir.

After church we decompressed.  I played on the computer a little, ate lunch.   The kids played.  Katrina went in to take a nap, and I went out to finish the pantry wall.  Which I did.  We now have a complete room.  There is a door from the garage into the pantry, and from the pantry into the house.  No more walking through empty framing.  The room is 70% sheetrocked.  The other 30% has exterior siding and tar paper.  I have to do a little electrical work and then I can finish those walls.  And then I need to insulate the ceiling (it goes to an unheated attic) and insulate the walls between the pantry and the garage.

Then it was time for the chainsaw.  I took it out, refilled the oil and gas reservoirs, grabbed my safety glasses, and walked out to the Taconic side of our property.  The saw started up easily (much more easily than yesterday), and I sawed through 80 feet of tree.   I also got the piece that was leaning on another tree all the way to the ground and cut it up.  I’ve got a lot of maple to burn now.  I also took a walk to the edges of our property.  I found 2 large downed trunks that need to be cut up and hauled to the house.  I cut one in the middle and I’d guess it’s from the Halloween storm last year.  There’s a knoll toward the neighbor’s house, and I wondered where the property line was in relation to that knoll.  Turns out the brush fence (we have a line of fallen tree limbs that serves as our property line marker) gives us a whole new area that I hadn’t seen yet.  And there’s a great tree house tree and another tree that fell over on the October storm.  This one twisted about 15 feet up, and as it fell it hit a few more trees.  So none of them are on the ground, but this one is clearly dead.  It will need to be cleared. 

And there are a few other trees that need clearing as well.  So now I have a chainsaw, and reasons to use it.  Exciting.  I don’t mind the work – it’s cathartic, good muscle work.  Lots of thinking required, but it’s good sweaty work.  It just feels good. 

I threw the logs I cut up down the knoll, and went inside.  Light was fading, it was 5pm, time to relax.  So I sat down with a book that Aria just finished and read for a few hours.  The Giants were playing the 49ers, which is an important game for them this season, so I put the game on my iPhone on the armchair next to me and read.  Jake came to sit with me, and he pointed out words he could read.  He sat there with me for an hour, maybe more.  It was really nice.  We watched the game sometimes, we read sometimes, we talked sometimes.  He’s irrepressible. 

The book is good.  It’s called “Uglies”, and is set in a post-apocalyptic America in California.  Technology allows small pockets of people to live extremely easy lives, but the rest of the land has reverted to nature.  But along with the technology comes certain 1984-esque rules, and some people opt out of the easy life and run away to live more simply.  It’s an interesting premise, and Aria is well into the second book of the series.   There is entirely too much “kissing and lovey-lovey stuff” for her.  I haven’t seen any of that yet, but I’m only halfway through book 1.

I've been exploring better ways to start the fireplace.  I tried lighter fluid on the half-burned wood I had, but it didn't work out well.  I had a couple hot spots, but it was going to die.  So I added 5 charcoal briquettes, and blew on them until I could tell there were going to go.  An hour later, the fire was beautiful.  Hot, smokeless, lovely.  Briquettes  are so much easier than paper and cardboard.  Pretty cheap, too.  I think I found a winner.

And then it was time for bed.  It’s a good life.

A couple pictures.  We can see our neighbors now.

The sun sets left of the pool now.   This is about 5pm, looking
over the meadow.  The neighborhood below us on Gina lane
is visible through the trees.