Thursday, July 10, 2020

I need to apologize to readers of this blog. I just have not been able to get a blog post up. Maybe I’m down about losing the ant war.

So where does the time go? One would think that the Covid related slowdowns would provide me plenty of writing time. Somehow, the opposite is true. It’s not like I’m taking our lizard’s approach to life. Covid hasn’t affected him in the least. He spends maybe a day getting warm, eating a bit, and wandering around the house. Then he finds a cool dark place and hunkers down for a week at a time. No food, no water, no movement. He can easily spend a week in the same awkward position without moving a muscle. Occasionally opening an eye to look at us in disdain when we check on him. This boy gives new meaning to the term “lounge lizard”.

He spent five days like this.

No, I’ve been nothing but busy during the Covid time. I should clarify. I’ve been busy with hands-on things. I rotate through projects where I try to do a house project, then something for the shop, and then a woodworking project. There are plenty of other distractions too, like a trip to Delaware to work on the trailer, some occasional photography, trying to learn bagpipes, and learning new cocktails. The latter two seem to pair well I might add.

Flower boxes I made for Stefan and Kasey. The short ones are five feet long, the longer ones six and a half feet. Made from cedar.

I made a hardwood mallet for cracking ice. Bloodwood and white ash.

A couple cheese boards I made from the same glue up. I did these to get my tools set up, practice with thicker stock, and learn to rout curves. The curves were more difficult than I thought, and the piece is a slight bit smaller than originally planned because of mistakes. Maple, walnut, and cherry.

Yellow-rumped warbler.

Tree swallows.

Swamp sparrow.

Eastern wood peewee,

Palm warbler.

Northern waterthrush.

American rubyspot damselfly

Widow skimmer dragonfly.

What I haven’t been doing is putting any time into more cerebral things. Like reading, or writing, or just taking time to ponder life in general. My communication to the outside world has mainly been the occasional quick Facebook post about new cocktails. And to blast a few high school classmates that are now Facebook “friends” about their racist and conspiracy posts. Surprisingly, none of them have unfriended me yet. I’m guessing they don’t know how to unfriend someone. They probably figure they’re stuck with what they view as a flaming liberal challenging them for the rest of their lives. One of them actually “liked” a couple of my challenges to her posts, which make me think she hasn’t actually read what I posted.

So, I’ve made a commitment to myself to get more disciplined about both reading and writing. I’m finishing up reading E.O. Wilson’s “The Diversity of Life” and getting this long overdue post up are steps in that direction.