"Tis Friday the 28th

Yep. That day already. I've been trying for days to do a control burn of junky wood but the winds have been way too high. We've been averaging 20 mph with gusts anywhere from 30 to 40. Ain't gonna burn with that going on. Today I will be helping my girlfriend take her doggie to the vet. She's a rescued dog and whenever you take her somewhere she seems to think that you are taking her somewhere to get rid of her. She's probably going to be getting a prescription or two so by the time all that is done the day is pretty well shot. Oh, well. I have been doing a lot of cleanup and reorganizing the log yard. As we all know as time passes some of it goes bad so gots to get rid of it. Ah! Yes, that leads back to the controlled burning. Tomorrow is supposed to be quite rainy so we shall see about that.

I will make a visit to the Hereshoff Museum in Bristol Rhode Island. Hereshoff designed many of the America's Cup racing boats. My friend works there and I am invited to a special day. I can get to the behind the scenes actions that the museum goers don't get to see.

Also, I will get closer to finished on some custom shelves for a customer.

If time permits I will start on some cabinet inserts to continue the Osprey CNC machine upgrade to vertical clamping. That will give me an enclosed and dust free environment for the water cooling system, as well as 3 nice drawers for CNC related tooling, like clamping, collet wrenches, collets, and other workholding items.

Catching up on many personal tasks. Mostly mundane like laundry, but try as I might 'abracadabra' is not working! Getting ahead of some tasks to get ready for vacation next month. Been busy spring cleaning the rig. Glad I feel well enough to plug away at that. All these tasks are done as I have energy to do them, thus taking a bazillion times longer than they used to. Slow but sure, I am feeling better and learning the difficulty of pacing myself and saying 'no' as needed.

Ahhhhh....getting old sucks. Life has certainly taken a huge left turn the last two years.

After I pick the kids up from school and my friend Bryan gets done with work we're taking on of my son's friends to Saint Louis, MO for a martial arts tournament. Unfortunately his parents think that jobs are overrated and beer and cigarettes are more important than doing anything with their kids so they "can't" afford to take him. Anyway, we'll go over and stay the night before taking him to his tournament bright and early - then the rest of us will be off sight seeing at the arch, maybe a museum or two, and maybe the brewery depending on the weather and our energy level haha. We'll grab him at 4pm and head out for the 3 hour drive back home. A little sleeping in Sunday morning maybe and then we'll watch Bryan's 2-week old granddaughter so her parents can have a little break and a date!

If the weather cooperates, I should finish a baseball bat, and get in some golf practice, and watch baseball.

Garden stuff. Got a few yards of mulch to spread to keep the weeds in check.

Mostly running errands with LOML this morning, then we're driving to Valdosta for late lunch at Red Lobster. When we return, I'll work on assembling a spray trailer we picked up this morning.

Saturday will be shop time - milling some MDF to build a base and sled for routing my slab flat - also milling a bit more cherry for a diploma frame for my daughter.

Sunday - the usual - I prepare brunch, then chill out until NASCAR at 2pm.

Dinner with Shelly out tonight. Hunting Turkeys tomorrow and Sunday morning with old friend. Cleaning the bike.

tying up loose ends on the honey do list. I laid the new wood floor in the living room a week or so ago, now need to put in the trim and baseboard. Been delayed because my size was out of stock locally for a couple of weeks. Should be in this week.

Also trying to get some landscaping done prior to the gathering. Our house is surrounded by an apron of river stone that varies from 4 to 8 feet wide and 2 to 4 inches deep. A lot of stone! Unfortunately the person who put the stone in piled it so high that it covers the first inch or two of the siding. Not a good thing for the house. So we are taking out MANY tons of stone a bucket at a time. We've been loading it into our little garden tractor trailer and finding places to dump it. A couple of loads went into an area of the drive that was showing some erosion. I think the rest might go into the river. I just back the trailer across the dock and dump it in. I don't think I'm breaking any laws and I'm told the fish like it.

Will also try to spend some time in the shop getting things ready for Sunken Wood.

It's a 4 day weekend for me. Got up and around this morning and Google Fiber came to do my installation. They were here about 2 hours and things seem to be running smoothly. I have a few other errands to run today, then may run some of the old equipment back to Comcast, and then maybe over to the shooting range to break in a couple of pistols.

Tomorrow is our grandson's birthday party, then watching him this weekend, then visiting with family on Monday.

My weekend's pretty free at this point. (We played a show earlier this week, so no band gigs planned.) I may do a firmware upgrade on my guitar amp modeler. The company that makes it (Fractal Audio) is constantly improving and expanding the capabilities. This particular upgrade improves several aspects of the amp modeling algorithms, plus they've added a model of one of Eric Clapton's favorite Fender tweed amps, bringing the total number of amp models to something over 260.

Probably won't be doing much in the yard this weekend. Temps are supposed to go a little below freezing. All of the mountains around here are going to get snow dumped on them. Springtime in the southern Rockies.

Just got home from a morning of a demo by Alan Lacer. My turning club (Wood Turners of North Texas) have him in for a week doing small classes each day and today he did an all day demo - free for club member, $10 for non-members. We do one of these a year. It's a little over 2 hours from my shop to the meeting place so I went over yesterday. Hit Woodcraft and Rockler since I was in town. I only stayed for the morning session because bad weather was moving in and I didn't want to get caught on I-20 when it hit. I now know more about using a skew than I ever thought I wanted to know. I'm going to sharpen all my skews - the right way - then practice some until I get better and more comfortable with it. The last hour of the morning was on end grain hollowing - not with a skew. Very timely. I have a half started end grain bowl on my lathe right now. Great time and good folks.