Oct 20 - complaints, complaints

Arlene's in Tampa for a business meeting. She has a view of the water instead of the parking lot. She gets up too early so that she cannot have her coffee reading my blog (she's normally on Pacific time). Life is tough.

Of course it's my fault. I should be blogging at 3am. If I blogged at 3am, however, she wouldn't be able to read my blog when she's having her morning coffee while at home ... because she'd still be up from the day before. Sheesh. There's no pleasing everyone.

Ha Ha ... life's little troubles ... at least we don't live in mud huts ... yet ... at least we live ... better than the alternative !

The beauty of blogging, whenever I get around to it, is that I can express my sense of humor (humour in Canada) and anyone who chooses to read it can do so. The readership is kind of like channel surfing ... don't like it, skim through ... don't like it, don't read it ... don't like it, click the "X" at the top right of the screen. Readers can express their dis-interest silently. Get behind in my blogs though, and the readership is anything but silent. I feel guilty.

Well all that's not really true and I get a chuckle out of emails and/or comments about "the blog". It's been great fun doing this ... and no, I'm not stopping. I enjoy doing it and it's proven useful more than once as I search for "when did we do that again ?".

A year from now I won't remember when I finished doing the trim on the basement doors. I'll search my blog looking for that and find that I did it on October 20th. I removed the trim from the basement pantry closet doors, stripped the paint off the door jamb using stripper on one side and then simply sanded the top and other side. The paint stripper was more trouble than it was worth -- the white paint had been absorbed by the soft pine so sanding was required anyway.

I then removed the already-painted baseboard to be replaced with unpainted stuff. Using the existing pieces as templates, it was pretty simple to cut new ones. I also cut the last two pieces of baseboard that were required in the basement bedroom -- when I had originally done the baseboard work I was still waiting for the doors to be delivered so could not do the piece of baseboard on either side of the door.

All the baseboard is now in place and my workroom is back to normal because I moved the miter saw and table saw back to the basement. Notice that I said that the baseboard "is now in place" -- it has not been nailed ... Sandy will stain it first; paint the baseboard in the bedroom first; and I have yet to paint the baseboard in the darkroom ... all in due time.

I cleaned up after my work and found that my plastic paint scraper had melted from contact with the paint stripper. It was vile stuff ! I tried vinyl gloves and it burned holes. I tried latex ... same thing. The only solution was abstinence !

I went fishing first thing in the morning, sitting at the point by the first cottage. To my surprise I caught a bass. I thought that they'd all gone into hiding / deeper water for the winter. It was dead calm, quite pleasant sitting there. If it's not raining I'll go out again.

We had the bass for dinner along with pike from the other day. It / they were excellent. With your eyes closed, however, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two fish in terms of taste.

Donnie is up with two of his friends fishing & no doubt having a few beer. I sat on the water by the point and a half mile away Donnie and his friends were fishing across the lake from our cottage. I could hear Donnie talking. No doubt they were having "special" coffee. They came in the previous night and were still here last night. I don't know for sure but they'll probably leave today. He asked when Jason would be up -- I had motored over there and talked to them as I was heading out to go fishing -- and he wanted me to relay that Jason could put his dock in his cove. I think Jason was assuming that already.

As we were getting organized for dinner Art called me to say that the neighbour's grandson (Parks) had gone out for a boat ride -- a little toot -- two hours earlier. He was having motor problems ... it was getting dark, the dog was barking and they were concerned. He had seen him go up the lake past us. Well, not wanting anyone to be stranded on the lake at night with a non-working motor (he'd been having trouble with his motor) I headed up the lake to see if I could find him. Jim and Bonnie were down at their dock because Art had called them first. The light was fading quickly.

I was originally going to simply go up to the Lodge but decided to head down to the dam, because it's pretty deserted once you get by the Wolf River ... cruised down there, checked out both dams and nothing ... cruised back and decided to head down Smith's Bay ... went down to the landing ... nothing. As I was coming back rounding the point I could see a light being swung on Jim's dock (by this time it was quite dark) ... headed in there and Jim said that he'd returned. It seems that he had gone up past us, yes, and then returned, not told anyone what he was doing and went down to Lost Channel and decided to have dinner there. Great. There were more phone calls in that one hour period among ours, Jim's and Art's phones than you could shake a stick at (what does that mean anyway ?).

Actually that was great. I was not being sarcastic. I'd rather make a fruitless trip like that and find out that he's already back than the alternative. All of us would be very worried had he not been back.

Abby was cold. That's a lot of full speed cruising and even though it's relatively warm, around 45F, it is an open boat. I lifted her up on my lap as we were heading back from Smiths's Bay landing and wrapped my arms around her. She was shivering, her whole body vibrating. When we got home though she raced around picking up sticks and running -- I guess that a dog instinctively knows that running will increase core temperature. For my part, I went and sat by the fire and had a glass of wine :).

Today ... I'll finish up that trim ... no wait, I already did that. I'll figure out something. I should probably get at moving some gravel, building up the berm at the edge of the driveway. I don't want to leave that for the last week.

We have our theater tickets set -- next Tuesday night for Jersey Boys; Wednesday two plays at Stratford; likely Thursday and Friday I'll do that tiling at Stef's so we'll be gone most of the week. Then Alex comes up on the weekend for deer hunting, staying for the week and then we head to Florida. Yikes ... time will fly.

The sky is getting lighter. It looks dismal but it's not raining. I'll check the Doppler before decided whether to go out fishing.

Onward.