time flies

Time flies when you’re having fun. And when you are not having so much fun as well. Time does seem to flow by faster with each passing year. With the arrival of another birthday, all I can say is, “Already?”

While heating a cup of coffee in the microwave this morning, I was struck by how frivolously we squander little bits of time without a second thought. I stood there watching the seconds of my life tick off, counted down by the microwave timer. How often have I done that in the past? How many days of accumulated microwave watching have I allowed to slip away unnoticed?
Waiting for the red light to change to green is another sliver of time that gets away while our minds wander aimlessly. If there is no traffic coming why not just run the light and save those 5 seconds to be used more productively somewhere else. How often have I picked the slowest checkout line at the supermarket? How many hours of lost time have accumulated there? I don’t want to really think about it, but once start I can’t stop thinking about all the little bits of time that have escaped before I realize what has happened.

If I have a slightly above average life span and live to celebrate my 80th birthday, I have only 18 more years to go. Not a lot of time. I tell my two children, both married and still delaying the grand child production I’m looking forward to, that if they don’t start pretty soon, I won’t be around to see my grandchild graduate from high school. They don’t seem to grasp the urgency that weighs on me.

So here today, as I celebrate my 62nd birthday, I can only hope that I don’t allow too much more time to pass, wasted and unnoticed. I don’t really like to think of another birthday as cause for celebration, since it is really one more step on the ever quickening journey to the end. I’m ready to stop keeping track and start using more of those precious moments that are still there for me. Stop counting already.

winter doldrums

Now it’s time again for the winter doldrums to set in. The football season effectively ended yesterday when the Packers lost. College football is already a distant memory. Basketball tournament time is still a couple months away.
The icy temps outside are decidedly inhospitable. I haven’t ventured out of the house for nearly a week now. except to shovel and blow the 8+ inches of snow we got last week.

My sore back is making the most rudimentary human moves nearly impossible. I’m swallowing Advil by the fistful all day and adding a dose of Baclefen at night so I can get through the night without excessive screaming. The Parkinsons tremors are gettingmore and more difficult to control. Probably need a meds adjustment there.

Despite all my whining, I still manage to get into the workshop on a regular basis. If I didn’t have that I would almost certainly go crazy. Just spending a couple hours a day creating interesting and sometimes wonderfully beautiful things is the elixer that keeps me going.

I've beeb turning some bowls out of the remnants of a tree that was cut down at the cottage a couple years ago. I don’t know the species of tree. The logs have been lying in a pile outside ever since the tree was cut and the wood has weathered and decayed with the help of ants and other intruders into some interesting figures and grains and patterns. The pieces are a challenge to turn because of the extensive rotting that has occurred. The resulting bowls have a wonderfully primitive quality to them. Here are some pictures of those bowls.






I still have about a dozen usable chunks of that tree still to play with, so at least I have that to take my mind off the nastiness of the winter season.

disappointed and disgusted

Duped. Betrayed. Disappointed. Disgusted. All these are how I feel when the name Tiger is now mentioned. I have been a great admirer of his talent and success on the golf course and naively believed that he brought the same skill, discipline, and honesty to his private life. His public image is now shown to be a sham, a product of clever marketing. His private life is revealed to be a shambles, a journey through debauchery and dishonesty. His cultivated image of loving husband and father is one of the great marketing successes of our time. But what a lie. I ask myself how can an athlete who is so disciplined on the course be so undisciplined away from the course. Apparently ready and willing to screw anyone who moves within reach of his dick, he has shown himself to be the epitome of hypocrisy. He must have felt that he would never be caught, probably believing that because he was so successful on the golf course, that no one would care what he did away from the course. He is just another example of the pro athlete who feels entitled to behave beyond the rules of decent behavior simply because he is an athlete/celebrity with a different set of rules than the rest of us. And while it seems that the sort of bimbo he was involved with is readily available to his kind, that doesn’t excuse him from participation. Just because the temptation is there does not mean you have to succumb to it. I used to look forward to seeing him play whenever he was in a tournament, knowing I would see amazing shots being made with remarkable skill. Now I don’t want to see him play anymore. I just want him to go away.

shop update

There are quite a few pieces that have come out of workshop since I last updated. Rather than trying to show them all here, it would be better to click on "gallery" on the sidebar and see everything in one place. Or you can click on "my flickr", also on the sidebar, and select the turnings and sculpture sets. Thanks for looking.

careless

I've always prided myself on being very careful and aware when working with the tools in my shop. Power saws and routers and sanders require a concentration that is unwavering if the operator is going to work safely and avoid injury. Yesterday I disobeyed that rule and now I'm paying for my lack of concentration.

I was using the router mounted on a router table -as I have many times before- to cut a dado in a piece of zebrawood. I was in a hurry and that should have thrown up a red flag for me. Never do anything with power tools if you are in a hurry. Shortcuts create bad cuts in both the wood and any fingers that get in the way. Normally I use push sticks and jigs that help to make the particular operation as safe and efficient as possible. But for some reason I must have felt invincible and overly sure of my ability to control the material and the cutter because I stupidly used just my fingers to hold the wood in place and then advance it through the router.

I don't know exactly what happened or how it happened because it happened to quickly for me to react. Somehow two of my fingers slipped into the path of the router bit and the result is what you can readily imagine. A considerable chunk of my right index finger was ripped open and a smaller rip was made in my middle finger faster than you can say "oops". Copius amounts of blood drippings made a trail from basement workshop to upstairs kitchen. I managed to fold the skin back into place and applied lots of pressure to stop the bleeding long enough to get a compression bandage in place. I felt secure enough with my firstaid efforts to refuse a trip to the hospital.

But the wound is still bleeding a bit today and will probably take awhile longer to stop. It is nearly impossible to avoid moving the finger and causing the wound to reopen and start bleeding again. It is all very annoying. Just typing this has caused more bloodshed. Remarkably enough there is no pain involved so far. I am going to have to immobilize the finger for a day or so to get the bleeding to stop completely. What a hassle. And all because I was in a hurry and got careless.

Maybe the worst part of all this is that I have to listen to Mary"s lectures and her insistence that I stay out of the workshop forever. Geez, it's not like I cut the finger off.

just a bit early

Every year it seems the xmas season ( notice I don’t Christianize the word) begins a bit earlier than the previous year. It is not at all unusual to find xmas decorations in the big retail stores crowding out the Halloween pumpkins and Thanksgiving turkeys by mid October. Here at home I have always held out until after Thanksgiving to put up our xmas decorations outside and inside, not only on principle but also so that we don’t get sick of looking at the glitz and glimmer and twinkling before the day we are supposed to be celebrating itself arrives.

So it is with a sense of shame (just a tiny bit) that I admit to jumping the gun on my own self imposed timeline for decorating the old homestead. The wreaths are hanging in the usual doors and windows, the garlands are wound around the railings and the lights are festooned on the trees and garlands. All that was accomplished yesterday, a beautiful sunshiny warm 60 degree day with hardly an inkling of the impending winter in the air. It was simply too nice a day to not to be outside doing something. So since the season is nearly upon us, I rook advantage of the choice weather and violated my own rule.

I make myself feel a little better about my early efforts by insisting that none of the lights get turned on until after Thanksgiving. So I have not completely gone over to the dark side. Please don’t think less of me.

football fever

I am a die hard Packers fan from way back. I grew up with the champion teams of the sixties and suffered through the mediocre teams of the 70’s and 80’s. The 90’s with Favre at quarterback reignited a passion for the team and were as exciting as it gets. The last few years with great expectations that were rarely met were both exciting and aggravating.

And this season has been an exercise in frustration given the great preseason and then the lousy play that was the first 8 games. Last week’s loss to the pathetic Bucs in Tampa Bay gave rise to the anger that comes from knowing the team is better than they were playing. I admit I jumped on the get-rid-of-the-coach bandwagon last week after that embarrassing loss.

Anticipation of today’s game against the Cowboys was pretty much restricted to hoping the Packers would put forth a respectable showing and keep the score under blowout status. I fully expected the Pack to lose by at least two touchdowns while showing at least some basic competence at the game. I hoped only that they would show some progress in correcting the penalty and sack problems that have plagued them every game this season.
I prayed that the O line would somehow figure out a way to keep Rogers upright and still breathing at the end of the game. I begged the football gods to show the D line the way to get to Romo and plant his ass on the sacred tundra of Lambeau. And I was not shy about begging for a special teams rebirth as a professional unit.

Well, my begging was not ignored. My beseeching of the football gods apparently worked. The team the Packers put on the field today was the near opposite of the team we’ve been seeing up until now. The defense played like an all pro team, pitching a near shutout. The offense came alive at the right times getting first downs when they were desperately needed. The special teams played as though they were special, not allowing the big play that has hurt them so in the past few games. And when they got into scoring position, the Pack scored.

The only bad thing about today’s excellent play is that it raises expectations for a repeat performance every game until the super bowl trophy is again back where it belongs. Unreasonable expectations? Not if you’re a Packers fan from way back.