Catching up.

The past few days have been kinda weird as far as work goes.  But then this week normally is: a few days in between major holidays, End Of Year bookkeeping roaring down on us like a freight train, prepping for taxes just after.

 

Add to that the pleasurable distraction of having my sister and her boys visiting for Christmas, and the unpleasant business of Patrick going into diabetic convulsions yesterday evening.  He’s OK now but he scared us pretty badly, and his insurance will be getting some whopping bills because the hospital decided – after they’d gotten him conscious and stable again -- to run a battery of tests including a CAT scan.  I’ll withhold my skeptical commentary about that, this isn’t the place.

 

Yesterday Paul and Charlie (my nephews) helped me get started on sorting out my lumber yard.  The problem is that as I’ve bought new lumber – and had no empty racks on which to stack it for drying, I place it on top of a short stack of something else.  But that means that the lumber on the bottom will be ready to use before the stuff on the top, and the species are mixed, making it a bit confusing to keep track of what is what.  Since I have to take inventory this week, that is a double problem.  So we set out to re-organize things so each rack is one species and the oldest, driest lumber is on top, and the newest, wettest lumber on the bottom.  It took us a couple of hours but we got the silver maple rack done before Pat had his seizure.

 

This morning I dug into the white oak rack.  I didn’t get very far before I got rained out.  My helpers decided to go home a day early.  They say it’s because they want to stop in Louisville and do some shopping, but I think they were afraid I’d ask them to help again!   It is not easy work.

 

During the rain I went into the office and printed out a mess of reports for Treasures.  It’s year end there too, and for them I have to do all the usual company books, but also print and mail out inventory summaries and pay statements to the 46 artists whose work is represented in the gallery.  And of course the software won’t just spit those out for me, I have to configure each one and print it out individually.

 

I just completed my lunch break and mail run.  The rain has stopped, so I’m heading back out to the lumber yard.

 

On Monday I brought enough maple to build the Island’s top into the workshop.  It’s not as dry as I’d like.  So I cut the boards into rough-sized billets for the butcher block top and will allow them to acclimate (dry) inside the shop where they’ll be ready to use more quickly.

 

Hopefully the hardware I need for Jim’s island will arrive soon so I can get back to work on that.

 

T.T.F.N.