Pop-up Monday

I arrive this morning prepared to produce the weekly radio program our church puts out but decided that before getting into that – it generally takes me 3 to 4 hours to produce the program – I’d post a new entry to the Mountain Man series of articles which was inspired by the weekend’s events. I am almost finished with that, when Tim arrives and says, “I have a job I need to do and I could use your help.” I am about to tell him that it would have to wait until after I get the radio program done, but something in the back of my brain tickles and changes my mind; I’d help Tim first, the radio program can wait. We spend the rest of the morning and the first few hours of the afternoon building 8 Country Primitive shutters for a gal that he does a lot of this type of work for. He has a sketch and the lumber, we figure out there rest as we go. Tim is very pleased with the results, and is sure Joyce will be too. All that remains to do is to paint them, so we load them on his trailer and he returns to his own shop to do that. I return to my office to find an e-mail from the General Manager of WGSN radio, informing me that the electricity to their transmission tower had been out all weekend and on Sunday the back-up power source had gone out too so our program for Sunday had not been aired. All programming was and is available on-line, but not via radio. Well, that gives me some extra time today because now there was no need to rush to get the new program done, they can just keep the latest disk and play that next Sunday. I can produce this week’s program when time allows. I’m glad I listened to that brain tickle! This is especially good news because Marie has planned a Christmas Tree Hunt for this evening, and that is likely to take all evening. I would be back here in the workshop office (I’m using a cheap microphone and there is too much background noise at the house to record there) working late into the night to get the radio program done, burned to a disk and ready to go out in Tuesday’s mail so it gets to the station in time. So I spend the last couple of hours attending to some chores around the shop that need doing and piddling with the oak steamer trunk – I’m not very happy with the way it came out and I’m trying to decide what I should do about it. Perhaps I should just set it aside and proceed with the walnut trunk. I do have three orders and two stock projects on the production list but will not start on any new projects until after Christmas. Carl’s doors give me something to work on if I want, but he and Pam will be away until early January, so I have plenty of time on that one.