Happy New Years

Friday, January 1, 2010 - Happy New Years to Everyone

            Well, here we are starting a new year and I truly hope it is the best year ever for everyone. My weather on this first day of 2010 is bright and not as cold as past mornings. The low was 15 degrees and the snow stopped sometime early this morning, leaving me with about a foot of new snow on top of the other, giving me about three feet of snow around the cabin. This is more than I’ve had in the past, with more promised before winter warms to spring. Damn that global warming!

            Does anyone out there still really believe in the lies of global warming and that man is causing the problem? If you do, please educate yourself and see that the earth has always had cycles and this is just one of them.

            I worked on several projects, inbetween playing with Zack, cleaning up Rusty’s sawdust mess and letting Zoey stake out a mouse on the deck. Due to the limited room in my cabin, I chose to put the 40 lb. bag of sunflower seeds along with the 50 lb. bag of birdseed out on the deck. I knew that if the mice found it, they will chew a hole in the bags and help themselves, but once completely covered with snow and frozen, I thought they would be deterred. Well, the other morning, after the fresh snow covered the deck, I saw mice tracks leading to the bags and when I let Zoey out, she smelled the mouse and just froze in position, hoping to pounce on it.

            After a considerable amount of time, she got too cold to keep the vigilance and wanted back in. This morning, when the sun came out, it was actually            above freezing and warm, so she took up her watch for over an hour before wandering off in search of more interesting things to do.

            Zack managed to pack down the new snow and make a nice path out to the tree line, where I consistently throw the disc. He loves to get it in the powdery snow and pounces on it like it was prey. Once and a while, he will bury it deeper and then have to dig and search for it, but in general he just enjoys it.

            I got out the sewing machine in hopes of repairing or rebuilding one of Zack’s older discs that has several large holes in it. I purchased some rip-stop nylon material while I was in town the other day, and hope to keep the disc serviceable, as they are now $22.00 and rising. I ended up having to rip out all of the nylon stitching and try to cut a new piece of rip-stop material and insert it into the ring that supports the center. It is much more work than I thought it would be, so even if this turns out well, I think I’ll just sew patches over the holes and let it go at that.

            I also worked on an ongoing project, which is a walking staff. I have collected several good sized limbs along with some old dead trees that never got larger than about 2 1/2” in diameter, so I am using a draw knife to strip off the outer layer and then trimming and decorating them as nice sturdy hiking poles. It is a messy project, so it takes almost as much time to clean up as it did to do the trimming and carving.

            Along with all of the above, I also did two loads of wash, made the bed with clean linens and put all the clothes away. I will now shower and fix myself some dinner, having already fed the others. I am now starting off the New Year clean.

PS - I am having some camera problems and right now none of them are working, so I won’t be able to send photos until I resolve the issue.