I lured my neighbor (and his splitter) over on Sunday with a warm fire and the promise of cold beer. I started alone by going through the remainder of the smaller logs by hand until about 1 and then he wandered over with his truck; we backed it up to the woodpile and filled the bed. After we dumped that in his driveway we hooked up the splitter and got to work on some of the larger rounds.
Even though the splitter is a pro-grade unit it strained to get through the first 36″ diameter round we put in it–because some of the wood is so gnarled inside. Once we split them in half we got a rhythm going, and it took about 1/2 hour to get through each one. Meanwhile Jen stacked the fourth cradle full and covered it.
Finley, who had been working on a project of her own this whole time, asked us to take a break and relax in the room she’d set up for us under the holly tree. We walked over and found two of the Adirondack chairs set up facing the road, with some shelves, a coathook, a bed (her wagon), a bathroom (a flowerpot) and two fresh beers. We rested in the shade for about ten minutes and she talked us through all of her home improvements, obviously hoping we’d appreciate them–which we did. She can be such a thoughtful child sometimes–I hope she doesn’t lose that.
By 4:30 we’d made our way through five of the rounds and had a sizable pile stacked, but the sun was setting and we needed to clean up. We filled his truck again, then hitched the splitter up and drove it back to his house. Our yard is somewhat empty again with the split wood gone, but there are still 10-12 large rounds and miscellaneous medium logs left. Fortunately, this wood (and its bark) burns readily, there’s plenty of beer (I kegged the IPA we brewed way back in April, tired of waiting) and the weekend appears to be mostly free.
Today is Tuesday and my back and legs are still stiff, but four weekends of honest work feel righteous.
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The entire Second Grade has been working on an epic project involving presidents for the past couple of weeks, and overall I’d say I’m impressed with how much detail they’re asking for and by how much time and effort Finley put into her report. Jen sat with her and provided guidance on research, drafts, writing, quality and production, and suggested I take over the visual half. Finn and I talked it over and we came up with a timeline poster, and began work on Thursday organizing and cataloging the information.
Saturday we cleared off the dining room table and got to work with a rough draft, then a visualization, and finally the poster itself. By Saturday evening we were both tired but we had the poster mapped out and the pieces in place; Jen did a QC check and we used that feedback to tighten things up on Sunday morning. When I told Finn she’d built her first infographic (she’s been hearing us talk about infographics for twosemesters now) her face broke out in a wide smile and she hugged me while sighing with relief.
Wow, look at that. Fifteen years ago this week I started demoing the old exam room in preparation for a renovation; I think it was this same day Jen came in and told me she’d just gotten a positive result on a pregnancy test.
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I’ve been using a cast-off MacBook Pro from work for email since before the pandemic; I have one good machine cobbled together from multiple out-of-service 2013 Retina models—this one has a drive from one machine, a replacement battery from another, and a screen from a third. It’s serviceable for what I’m doing on it, mainly email, photo selection/cataloguing, and other basics. But I’m stuck at OS 10.14 on this machine and I’d really like to upgrade to the latest version for security and modern features. It can’t talk to my iPad, which kind of sucks. It suffers from random 1-5 second freezes. There are some applications I can’t run anymore.
I think it’s time to upgrade my personal system here, given that the last truly new MacBook I bought was back in 2011, funded partially by the sale of my previous laptop. I’m looking at something ligher and slimmer (and cheaper) than a true MacBook Pro, which points at a MacBook Air: They’ve just updated the model to the new M2 chip and it goes head-to-head with the 13″ MBP with only a few minor omissions that I don’t care about at all. I’m waiting for a large expense report check to come in from work, and when that does, I’m going to pull the trigger.
Happy Birthday, monkey.
This is the first weekend in a long time where we’ve been home. Like, in our own house for two days. Jen has been socked in with work for several weeks, and a lot of it has come to a head, so we thought we’d take a break from driving south to Lexington Park and stay around the homestead. I’ve had a lot of things around the house piling up in our absence, so I took the opportunity to knock a couple of them out.
The first thing was replacing two basement windows that were original to the house. I’d ordered replacements back in March and they finally arrived about a month ago; I’ve been waiting for a solid weekend to tackle the project. Pulling the old windows was pretty quick work—they were only held in by two sets of ancient brass hinges and a hook and eye latch. I cleaned up the wooden surrounds, cut and installed baffles, and slotted them into place. With some careful carpentry the inside baffles got nailed into place, and they got caulked tight. Now we can have open windows and enjoy fresh air in the basement! A miracle.
The second project is one Jen has been asking about since last year: painting the garage to match the house. I started out by scraping the west side and got it ready for paint. After cleaning both my guns and consolidating the remaining paint, I filled the compressor and sprayed out the west side and half of the driveway side before running out. I’m going to have to repair some of the plywood on the front side and do a lot more scraping overall, but it looks pretty good so far.
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Finn has been binging a new videogame for the past month, and has been asking me to play with her. It’s a survival/exploration game called Ark, where you land on an island teeming with dinosaurs and have to learn how to gather food, build tools and shelter, and tame those same dinosaurs to help you advance. She’s been playing on her iPad, but I can’t load it on my phone and squint at tiny menus. I saw that it was available for the Xbox so I ordered a used copy on Amazon and installed it on the console. From there it demanded a 100GB update, so we waited days for the console to choke that down (it puts itself to sleep after an hour, so I had to constantly keep it awake) and then two more updates before we could play.
Once that was done, we picked up our controllers and started a new world together. And found, very quickly, that it was almost impossible to navigate in 2-player mode. They split the screen horizontally, so the top half is one character view and the bottom half is another, but they didn’t change the menu system to fit that resolution. So when you go into the menu system (and half the game is spent here) it’s still the size and shape of an iPad and you have to squint at tiny little icons smushed into the narrow space given. It’s like looking at the menu bar of Word 97 through a peephole: impossible unless you know exactly what you’re looking for. I tried for several nights but found it almost unusable.
She then found a new game called Albion and started playing that. Seeing that it was available for the Mac, I downloaded a copy and tried it on my 8-year-old laptop, which slowed to a gelatinous crawl, cooling fans struggling to keep the processor from melting. I thought about it for a day or so and decided I’d pull the trigger and finally buy the iPad Pro I’ve been looking at since they were released. Playing games with Finn was a big part of the decision, but the other reason was that I want to work in Procreate with the Apple Pencil and learn how to illustrate with the system. I bought a new 11″ unit with the Pencil and picked it up at the local Apple Store this past week. The early review is very favorable: playing Albion on it is easy and fun! We spent a couple of hours on Friday getting me set up in the game and understanding how not to die. Now I have to catch up to her character level.
This is the first device I’ve owned with Face ID, and it’s very slick. The Pencil is fast and responsive. I bought Procreate and started fooling around in the program but it’s going to take a lot of time to sort out how I use it and get the most out of it. Getting used to the way the brushes and pressure work is an uphill battle, especially for someone as picky about the tactile feel and orientation of scratchboard tools as I am. I’m going to start out trying to mimic what I know and love, and then see where the app takes me.
Too much going on for updates today, so here’s a picture of my girl from 10 years ago when the weather was warm.
Finn and I are sitting at the dining room table. She’s reading her D&D Player’s Handbook in preparation for the first meeting of the D&D club at school; she just made a new character specifically for the dungeon. I helped her step through the process using an Instructables post that helps one step through the process. The 1st edition Player’s Handbook was pretty terrible back in 1981 about this, and I’m afraid the 5th edition is no better. There should be, as part of the first chapter, a step-by-step explanation of what all the numbers and modifiers and dice rolls and checkboxes are. But no.
I’m still in my pajamas because it’s March 12 and there’s a snowstorm blowing outside, gusting at 50mph. I don’t particularly feel like going outside in that. Thus, I can’t do anything with the Scout, I don’t feel like going out for parts, or really anything else to do with putting real clothes on.
I’ve pretty much reached the end of The Division, my shooter game on the Xbox, so this morning I switched back over to The Division 2 (the one I played first). I’d come to the end of that game as well, but there’s an expansion pack that I’ll probably buy sometime this week to finish it out. I haven’t bothered to go back to my $1.50 copy of Red Dead Redemption after I kept failing the horse-riding tutorial at the beginning, so I’m hoping the D2 expansion pack has a bunch of new content to play.
