We called Emma in sick today and took her, Deidre, Mitchell and Bob Macaraeg and his daughter to Okemo for a quick daytrip skiing. Despite sub-freezing temps, gale force winds and near whiteout conditions, everyone had a fantastic time and we are all looking forward to the next trip.
Tonight, Fiona and I attended the annual company holiday party. The auction was a great success; raising over $40,000 for local charities. Rich Yannacco (pictured) was, as usual, the quintessential auctioneer. We successfully bid on a week's rental of a condo in NH that sleeps 10. Many friendships were renewed and a jolly time was had by all.
Merry Christmas!
A wonderful Turkeyday was had by all. We are especially glad that Dad was up for spending several hours here. All-in-all this was a special Thanksgiving spent with the all of the local family.
No, I'm not trying to channel Alan Moore, but I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about the influence of one's parents. Today was special in that I was out replacing the roof of the horses' lean-to on my "honey-do" vacation, but today was certainly not unique.
Throughout the spring and summer I've consciously noted the pleasure and satisfaction that derives from having a reasonably organized toolshop, and the utility that having that delivers. My wife requests that I tackle a minor home repair job, and I'm able to quickly accomplish it.
Some of my favorite memories stem from working with my father in his shop. One of the centerpieces of that shop was the pegboard "wall" that he had made to hold the majority of his hand tools. Knowing from first hand knowledge that such a wall existed was always a mental barrier to me when Fiona asked me to complete some fairly trivial household tasks, simply because I didn't have access to it.
However, this year saw me taking over about half of the floorspace of the barn for my "Mantown" and one of the first things I built was my own pegboard "wall". Since then my response time on household repairs has diminished dramatically, and I'm quite a bit more content than I've been in years.
Life is good.
One of the "Honey-Do" items is to replace the corrugated roof on the horses' lean-to. Halfway through removing the rotted part of the plywood underlayment, I discovered an abandoned home. Considering that it's 20 feet up and right up against the ceiling, it's going to be very difficult to verify if the previous tenants will re-occupy the dwelling, but I'm going to assume that they will.
It was too cute to not take a picture of it. Deidre fell asleep with the cat asleep in her arms.
Emma made this t-shirt for me after I refused to wear a cantelope-colored shirt that Fiona had bought for me. Pink is fine. Cantelope is not. Am I right, or am I right guys?
