archives

2019 - 2011

• Feb 2019: Over 350 of my public domain graphic designs will be on display at 42 Maple Contemporary Art Center. The opening (come for wine and cheese) is 6-8 Friday, February 1. That night there will be an additional 100 designs projected above the stage. The art will be viewable in the gallery all month.

  ^ 2019 ^     v 2018 v

• Aug 10: Perfect day: Got up early, had breakfast at a sidewalk table on the square. Dogs, attentive in the car at the curb got compliments. Flyfishing in the Ammonoosuc. Lulu tried herding fish, swimming under our rods. Home, moved a pile of firewood (6 sledfuls) into the woodshed. Next, music practice, playing duets together--Christmas carols so we've months to learn. Picked blackberries wearing a heavy flannel shirt despite the heat. Wife mowed the lawn, I fired up the hot tub. Our nephew texted he'll be joining us at Spamalot next week. Homemade pizza for supper. Dogs rounded up the free-range chickens without command. Cookies and milk for dessert while watching Great British Bake-Off. Stayed up late to watch Persieds from the hot tub in the garden. Dogs chased an owl. Comfy bed and a few pages of Everything and More on my Kindle. Cool, dry sleeping weather.
• Aug 4: New weather station:

  
  

• Feb 26: Put out 4 buckets to start 2018 sugar season.
• Feb 5-8: Grooming in the morning, skiing in the afternoon. I leave the skis at the bottom, then sled down from the house in comfy boots. Drag the skis to the top, then sled back to the house to put on ski boots. Each run, the skis are at the top and I never have to carry skis while wearing ski boots.
• Jan 19: Free skiing at Bretton Woods (I know a guy who knows a guy).
• Jan 14: First ski day: Upper Maple & Maple Street.

  ^ 2018 ^     v 2017 v

• Dec 15: -18°F.
• Dec 14: Dogs love sledding day! The sled used to carry firewood into the house has another use when the driveway's been plowed.
• Dec 9: Went to Montreal to visit a haunted house @ the MAC. Spooky.
• Nov 29: For the first time in the 30 years I've lived here, there are no chickadees on the property. More than two months since the last sighting.
• Nov 10: Pete broke his arm. But he fixed it.
• Aug 28: Lulu discovered and retrieved the carcass of chicken #8 (owl). She looked shaken; I think she knows she has only 87.5% of a job now.
• Aug 5-12: Took a cruise from Montreal to Boston. Farthest north I've ever been.
• Jul 29: I leaned my fly rod and case in the corner of the shop. A few days later, the case was on the floor, the rod nowhere to be found. It was in the next room, the tip jammed under a drill press. Pulling it out revealed it was about 3 eyes short, I found the snapped-off tip in a corner. The fly was still in the keeper, but the leader was gone. What happened? Oh, look, the leader is wrapped up in Roomba's wheels.
  Roomba ate my fly rod!
• Jul 28: Dog River finally dried up, first time since February.
• Jul 27: My wife made boards and a bag for my Mijntrree set.
• Jul 10: Made a Mijntrree set.
• Jul 5: Honey died.
• Jun 5: Worst bug season ever. Even the glassed porch and the screened porch, which are not perfectly sealed, are uninhabitable. A few dry days will take care of it, but we haven't had a sunny day in months.
• May 31: Made a Micropul set.
• Mar 10: We have a new border collie, Lulu. She's 9 weeks old, and, unlike her uncle Zak, classic black & white.
• Feb 27: Buddy the (visitor) dog helped put the chickens away. Herded them with Zak for nearly quarter mile, calm and obedient. Good dog!
• Feb 22: Start of the 2017 sugaring season.
• Feb 14: Skied Wildcat for the first time. Turns out our Frost depicts a stretch of Middle Polecat.
• Feb 8: Large bald eagle (6'-8' wingspan) skimmed the trees over the hen house. Worrying.

  ^ 2017 ^     v 2016 v

• Dec 20: -20°F (-29°C). Chickens survive in unheated coop, cozy with hay bales, but their eggs froze.
• Dec 14: Some house circuits go down. Turns out a mouse tried to live behind some of the breakers. That didn't work out.
• Dec 2: Yellow birch massacre. Had about 100 taken down, a small fraction of the total. If the forest is my garden, the yellows are the weeds.
• Nov 24 (not Thanksgiving in Quebec): Musee des Beaux-Arts, Montreal. Favorites: several massive abstract 20th c. field of color pieces (appealing on a bleak, snowy day) and the modern porcelain vases and teasets (wow). My wife loved the glass: objets, bowls, furniture, abstract sculptures. She is a Chihuly fan and loved the red 'chandelier' and a stunning nested bowl arrangement.
• Nov 20: Created a card game. The card faces, card backs, rule cards & board, and card box are all free to Print'n'Play [PnP].
• Oct 25: A board game designer likes my graphic designs. I designed the board for his new game. The crazy rainbows are to match the cards used: the Badger Rainbow Deck.
• Oct 13: Invented 2 games that each fit into a mint tin. Mint Tin Curling, Pocket-Sized Curling Action and Avalanche! / Quicksand! The Winter / Summer Rescue Game.
  These games are free to print & play (PnP).
• Oct 12: Yesterday, 2 of our 7 hens each laid a first egg. One was very large. This morning we had the two eggs for breakfast. The large one had a double-yolk. Not bad for a first try!
• Oct 5: I thought the chickens and my dog were following me along a path in the woods. But when I turned and the dog didn't, I discovered the chickens were actually following the dog. Zak is apparently an honorary rooster.
• Sep 8: Made a Gipf Project box.
• Sep 6: A hawk landed in the dooryard. The free-range chickens hid under the ferns less than 100' away. I sent Zak out from his office under the wisteria, but the hawk flew off before Zak noticed it.
• Aug 15: Had to install the electricity in my house. Finished today at 3:25. Elapsed project time: 30 years.
• Aug 8: Played Zertz for the first time. An instant classic. My wife pronounced it "very nice." High praise which puts it in rarified company.
• Aug 3: My wife needs a one-piece handicap in our games of Gipf, but she always wins Dvonn, often by embarassing margins. To eliminate placement advantage, we tried starting with a perfectly symmetric board; she still crushed me.
• Jul 30: Usually, adding to our list of birds seen on the property is a joyous occasion. But 2 bald eagles wheeling slowly over the house may have been stalking our now free-ranging New Hampshire Reds. Zak stays on guard while the chickens are out.
• Jul 15: Been playing Dvonn with Awik. Early impressions: abstract, deep, and fun. Promising. We got Yinsh & Punct also, but haven't played them yet.
• Jun 20: Repainted the sun.
• May 15-28: Trip to Florida to build a 200 foot sandcastle. Then off to Tennessee to float the South Holston & Watauga Rivers.
• May 11: A day at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Saw Ai Weiwei's "Forever" and Subodh Gupta's amazing "Take Off Your Shoes And Wash Your Hands." Han Seok Hyun's "Supernatural" is more powerful than a description would suggest.
• May 5: Sometimes the doctor delivers bad news.
• May 1: Dog River now has some spots of algae. It has been running continuously since winter, a record.
• Apr 29: My wife and I spent the evening putting playing cards into envelopes. Got some interesting looks from the other diners.
• Mar 8: Town meeting day, 11 warrent articles. Contentious article #8 took most of the hour-long meeting. I was in favor, but it went down 18-25. Four of the articles passed 42-1 with my wife and I splitting our public votes. Awkward!
• Mar 1: Pruned an old gnarled branch from our pear tree. Thinking the grain might be quite pretty, I did this.
• Feb 27: Got some buckets out to start the 2016 Maple Syrup season.
• Late Feb: Working on my pocketwatch.
• Feb 16: 45F (7C); rain.
• Feb 15: -24F (-31C); clear.
• Feb 9: Our homemade syrup on my wife's delicious waffles, then off to the voting booth. Changed from undeclared to a party, voted in their primary, then changed back to undeclared. A classic New Hampshire morning!
• Jan 24: A second ski day. Coverage still minimal, another storm is needed.
• Jan 15: Surprised my wife with lunch in Montreal. Hit the Musee d'Art Contemporain.
• Jan 14: First stop on my book tour: Fortier Library in Berlin.
• Jan 9: Owed a guy a favor so I made him a pen. I made the threading tools by eye.
• Jan 4: Tried skiing. Minimal coverage means narrow passages between obstacles, combined with rock hard conditions from the first zero temps this season. So dangerous, run is closed after one run.
• Jan 2: A few days of snow left enough to groom with snowshoes. Getting out the boots and skis.

  ^ 2016 ^     v 2015 v

• Dec 24: Finished my wife's Christmas present.
• Dec 22: Started work in the shop on my wife's gift. I hope to finish Christmas eve.
• Dec 21: First full day with snow cover (finally!) followed by yet another day of rain.
• Dec 9: New art for this year's Christmas card.
• Nov 22: Becoming a splitting maul artist, I filled the last rows of the woodshed using trick shots: The bowtie (splitting off the diagnol corners of a round); the no-lift (getting up to 8 pieces off without having to reset the log on the block); the all-fall (getting the pieces almost off, then having them all separate with a final blow); the catch (splitting a piece off and directly into the waiting sled).
• Nov 2: Sickness descends upon our household. With no one to keep a fire or cook a meal, it looked bleak. But we could hear our border collie ransacking the kitchen since no one was feeding him. Calling him, he brought food up to the bed to share with us, so we didn't die. Good dog!
• Oct 29: I was quoted by Ars Technica. Now get off my lawn, you whippersnappers!
• Oct 17: Snow!
• Sep 29: Got the answers in the NYT crossword, but couldn't figure out the trick. Tried quotation marks in the across blanks, filled in the down letters and looked for an anagram or pattern. Had to admit defeat and look up what was going on (breaking a 6-year streak): the across quotation marks are down dittos. On the other hand, my wife and I finished the NYT cryptic in under an hour—and finished off a particularly devilish cryptic that had been on my clipboard for almost 2 years. Every week, the clipboard gets 2 new puzzles that stay until completed; it's clean for the first time in years.
• Sep 26: Got a hand-thrown cookie jar and a stack of crows at the Littleton Art Show.
• Sep 14-18: Trip to Nashville on business for Littleton Precision.
• Sep 16: My sons compete to grow the hottest peppers. The hot sauce my wife made from their crop cannot be opened indoors because fumes from the jar can blister skin!
• Sep 3: Looking to have more fun, I enrolled in a physics course at MIT. 15 weeks of field equations... Whee!
• Aug 28: Had to fix a small mouse hole. When I took off the siding and removed the rotten wood, the hole was 5 feet wide. Rebuilt the wall, then installed new cedar shingles.
• Aug 23: Annie's funeral. Pete played taps on Annie's bugle.
• Aug 20: 27th wedding anniversary is sculpture, so I made this for my wife today.
• Aug 7: Deadly winds in the area killed a few people, and shook our neighbor's apple trees. I got a half-bushel of early drops before running from the yellow jackets. My wife, running across the field stripping off her pants, was stung twice. We pressed 3 quarts after breakfast and had cold cider by lunch.
• Aug 6: My art tumblr is up to 75 followers. For some reason, this image is getting likes and reblogs at a rate more than 100 times average.
• Jul 24-26: Drove to Pennsylvania to pick up our second painting by Meredith Mustard.
• Jul 23: Bret Dalton coded my 'il professore' watch design so now it is available—free—for certain smart watches at FaceRepo.
• Jul 6: My art tumblr is up to 67 followers.
• Jun 26: Shingled the toolshed with help from my dad.
• Jun 13: Completed the restoration of an old drill press.
• May 20-21: Float trip with my dad on the Watauga River in Tennessee. I'm not great at estimation, but I'd say we caught (and released) 50,000 trout.
• May 17: Completed my 1,400th New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle.
• May 6: Harley died.
• May 3: Seven months after the first fall and six since it completely covered the ground, the snow in our yard is gone.
• Apr 28: Took down the sap buckets; the 2015 maple syrup season is over.
• Apr 13: 70° and sunny, a great day to ski in just shorts. The conditions went from beautiful to unskiable as rocks, stumps, and streams began to emerge. Ski season is over.
• Apr 8: New snow means excellent spring conditions on our slopes.
• Apr 3: 60°F temp means skiing in shirtleeves and the start of the 2015 maple syrup season.
• Mar 29: Took our son to the new Harvard Art Museums to see Rothko, Frank Stella, deKooning, Jasper Johns, Max Bill, Jackson Pollock, Joan Miro. Loved Gino Severini's masterpiece The Yellow Dancers. (note: Harvard's image doesn't reveal the insanely incongruous brush work.)
• Mar 20: -12°F. Once a week, I work with my brother. Today marks the 15th week in a row it's been below zero on the day we meet.
• Mar 19: Posted my 500th graphic on my art tumblr.
• Mar 9: Because of the above freezing days, hung a test sap bucket.
• Mar 6: Another -22°F morning (the 25th below -20°F this season).
  My art tumblr now has over 50 followers.
• Mar 2: 4 new slopes: Trail #1, Maple Street, Upper Hen House, and Cherry Squeezer. These extend the current slopes up to the upper path.
• Feb 26: Enough snow to groom a second slope in the woods, right over stumps, rocks, and downed trees. The new slope is much steeper and faster. Did something I've never done on our regular slope: beat Zak to the bottom, which required very high speed.
• Feb 24: -32°F.
• Feb 22: Above freezing for the first time in 10 weeks, a stretch that included 19 snowstorms (100+"), 40 days below 0°F, 20 days below -20°F.
• Feb 4: Usually these chases end with Songbird 0, Hawk 1. Today, the score was Woodpecker 0, Hawk 0, Windows 2.
• Feb 3, Day: The plow went off the road. Our mailbox didn't put up much of a fight.
  Night: Tried out my Christmas present, an LED headlamp, for some night skiing. The 6 inches of new powder made conditions slow. Zak was waiting for me when I got to the bottom, his eyes glowing in the darkness.
• Feb 1: Ski day! Good to excellent conditions (groomed with snowshoes), sunny and cold. Honey and Zak ski with us, but Harley isn't allowed to. He thinks we must be rescued from sliding down the hill. I can outski him, but he catches my wife, grabbing her with his massive jaws. Bad dog!
• Jan 29: Four attempts to cut a steel screw about 3 millimeters long with a .333... pitch. Four failures. I broke the carbide threading tool that came with my lathe's threading attachment. I ground a replacement tool from a 1/4" square steel blank. The cutting edge looked great under magnification, but I destroyed it within 4 threading passes. Next time, I'll try hardening the tool and annealling the unthreaded screw.
• Jan 24: A tenth bitter cold morning this season.

  ^ 2015 ^     v 2014 v

• Dec 24: Created a snowflake necklace as a present for my wife.
• Dec 2: Santa delivers my new watch early!
• Nov 16: Fifth and final coat of poly on the new workbench and new door drapes for winter. The workshop building is officially finished!
• Nov 9: New workbench installed.
• Oct 23: Went to the woodshed in the pitch dark. Realized I could still distinguish all the species of trees we burn: I can tell the difference between maple, ash, cherry, yellow birch, and white birch just by feel; and I can tell maple from oak (which feel similar) by smell!
• Oct 22: 400 original works of art in 290 days.
• Oct 16: My dad, aunt, brother and I kicked in and bought a boat from some guy's yard. When my brother put it in the water, it sank!
• Oct 7: Attended the Budget Advisory Committee meeting. My favorite line item: Postcards for dogs.
• Sep 30: Mice stole 8 of the spheres from my Pylos game; they must have thought they were acorns. The game, bought with 3 months of effort, is now destroyed. Update: Bought some wooden balls, then oiled some and painted some red. The set looks better than ever!
• Aug 22: Attended Next to Normal at Weathervane. We "first-acted" it—at intermission we ran.
• Aug 13: For the first time in 49 years, a Weathervane production, Next to Normal, was canceled—there was no electricity for the musical instruments. Got a raincheck.
• Aug 2: Moved my office into the new workshop.
• Jul 10: My wife and I tried curling. I didn't get a single stone into the house all night.
• Jul 4: My tumblr is up to 45 followers. My most popular post so far: a 4th of July collection of Red White & Blue Graphics.
• Jun 16: My art tumblr now has 35 followers. Fans of my art!
• Jun 5: Publisher has no legal framework for an unauthorized illustrated version of a novel for which they have fan-fic rights. Sent me $25 for their "inaccurate encouragement."
• May 26: Submitted manuscript to my publisher for my book deal.
• May 19-21: Drove with my dad from Florida. 1700 miles and no radio!
• May 12-18: Florida vacation. Beach, golf, pool.
• May 1: Helping a hospital set up a reference lab. Today I came across mention of the "Fecal Occult Blood Immunoassay" test. Disgusting, but the container used to courier the sample is the greatest band name ever: Occult Blood Bottle.
• Apr 22: Finished The Illustrated Cat's Cradle. Available soon on Amazon. The final manuscript has 132 illustrations. Due to publishing constraints, couldn't use my cover; so I designed a special Kindle Worlds Cover.
• Apr 21: The 2014 maple syrup season comes to an end.
• Apr 10: A last ski run today—our trail has only thin cover and warmer weather is expected. So much water recently, we got a mud slide that bubbled out over the snow.
• Apr 6: Our ski slope survived the rain: got a few more runs in today.
• Apr 4: After a week of skiing here at home, final runs on our private slope. I may try downhill targetshooting next winter, so I tried skiing with my long recurve bow (though I carried no arrows). Easy! Rain in the afternoon ended the ski season.
• Apr 1: Beginning of the 2014 maple syrup season.
• Mar 31: My wife and I had a free ski day at Bretton Woods. My brother, also skiing free with his wife, fell and got hurt. Now he has to spend 3 days at the hospital.
• Mar 30: 107 down, 20 to go.
• Mar 17-19: Hours of snowshoe grooming resulted in 3 days of perfect front yard skiing with Zak the Ski Dog.
• Mar 8: 80 down, 47 to go.
• Mar 3: Another -16°F (-27°C) morning, the most very cold weather ever in a winter. Only about a week's worth of wood left in the woodshed. Predicted for tomorrow: a bitter -25°F (-32°C).
• Feb 26: Half way: 64 down, 63 to go.
• Feb 16: Saw a hawk ice fishing in the Connecticut River. It was standing on several square miles of snow-covered ice, next to a tiny square foot hole. The snow around the rim was newly wet. Can a hawk make a hole? If not, what did?
• Feb 11: Spending 3 nights and 3 days at the hospital. Looks like I need a queriectomy. Prognosis is good, but they're SQL queries so it could go either way.
• Feb 7: 37 down, 90 to go.
• Feb 5: Emergency field surgery: I could remove the porcupine quills from Zak's nose, but not the ones in the roof of his mouth. My wife yanked those with pliers, while I held his mouth open. Rough night.
• Feb 4: I've been making graphics for Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut. So far I've illustrated 24 of 127 chapters.
• Feb 1: Clear, dark sky; no moon, no neighborhood lights; white snow. With the meager 2" cumulative snowpack in the woods, the paths are very easy walking. So out with my dog, I needed no flashlight and after a while my eyes became dark-adapted. Saw something I've never seen before: Last night I could see that Juptier was casting shadows on the snow!
• Jan 30: With the cold weather, not much outside time. But here's lots of graphics to enjoy.
• Jan 23: Yesterday morning was 15 below. The high for the day was 0°F (-18C). But the sky was clear to the horizon at sunset... a sign of bitter cold ahead. Sure enough, this morning we were at -23°F (-30C). At 30 minutes after noon: -7°F (-22C).
• Jan 1: A new year and a new family crest for my new art tumblr.

  ^ 2014 ^     v 2013 v

• Dec 24: Enjoy my animated pin-up girl. Merry Christmas!
• Dec 22: Because there are only a few hours of light each day, I've been using very bright colors in my new sign art series.
• Dec 17: Power outages are no big deal here. Neither are bitter cold temperatures. The combination, however, makes for a tough morning. Woodshed temp: -24°F (-31°C).
• Dec 9: New Christmas cards are out.
• Oct 29: We have a distant view from our deck. Very, very distant. Our dark skies mean M81 & M82 (8th & 9th magnitude) are naked eye objects here, so we can see more than ten million light years. Last night, our new 105mm telescope brought out the shape and stunning color of these neighboring galaxies.
• Oct: How small is our town? We now have 1 0 convenience stores, and 1 0 gas stations to go with our 0 hotels/motels, 0 inns, 0 restaurants, 0 bars, 0 schools, 0 post offices, 0 office buildings, 0 hospitals/clinics, 0 theaters, 0 ski areas, 0 golf courses, 0 supermarkets, and 0 shops. So if you visit, better pack some groceries and a good book.
• Sep 27: Completed a large-scale, curvilinear wooden sculpture. This temporary art installation was hand crafted from nearly 3,000 individually shaped pieces of hardwood.
• Sep 25: This week my son brought home some toys to play with.
• Sep 2: My dad busted my watch!
• Aug 20: My wife and I celebrated our silver wedding anniversary. I took her out for a fancy dinner (she had the Filet-O-Fish and I got a McChicken Sandwich).
• Aug 15: Went back to see Shrek the Musical again. It is so dense with wonderful moments, it easily stands up to a second viewing. Of special note: Claire Neumann's Gingy. She makes that swatch of fabric really live (and, oh, can she sing)!
• Jul: I saw my first show at our local theater in 1973 (The Odd Couple). My wife and I have been regularly attending since 1993 (season pass holders since 1996). We see all 7 shows every year.
• Jun 27: Went to the hospital for my appointment and I had to stay overnight for additional tests. However, test results were good.
• Jun 9: Playing with the Wayback Machine; added a bunch of links in the history page.
• Jun 7: Here in the middle of nowhere, there wasn't a cell tower until 2009. That's when we left dialup for 2 Mb/s wireless. Now they've hung new radios and we get 20+ Mb/s.
• Jun 3: As of this morning, my prototype is officially "patent pending."
• Jun 1: My wife and I arrived at the gallery opening in the back seat of my mom's crazy yellow convertible. My wheeler-dealer dad snagged a canvas for the camp and got them to throw in a print.
• May 24: 3:00 am. Grudge match of the century.... Tree vs. Woodshed.
• May: Zak, my border collie, is faster than my neighbor's little 8-pound terrier. Every month I have to return the toys Zak has stolen. With this month's haul (3 stuffed toys, and a mini tennis ball), I included some of our homemade syrup. I'm hoping a little bribe will make Zak's larcenous behavior cute rather than annoying.
• May 10: My Littleton Precision work has produced a beautiful little prototype. Next up: arranging for some beta testing.
• May: My old chainsaw helps me turn a tree into 4 foot logs that fit in our tub sled. I put the rope around my waist and pull the loads out like an ox. I try to get 1 cord out every year even though we need 4 cords for a winter—I buy the other 3 cords cut, split & delivered. Why not take more free wood? You cut, pull, buck, split, and stack a cord of heavy, green hardwood...then ask me that again.
• Apr 23 - 26: Trip to Pennsylvania on business for Littleton Precision.
• Mar 16: Trip to Massachusetts on business for Littleton Precision.
• 2013 maple syrup season
• Feb 28: To get the 32 images used in my 10-year review of my Villeret, I took more than 300 photographs.
• Feb 23 & 24: Two more days of front-yard skiing.
• Feb 12 - 20: Trip to Florida on business for Littleton Precision.
• Feb 10: Ski day! Our work this fall clearing a ski slope has paid off. A perfect day of front-yard skiing.
• Jan 3: My wife snapped a picture of me cleaning the cars in my light cotton shorts and socks even though it was -16F (-27C).
• Jan 1: My shocked neighbors caught me during some cold-tolerance training.

  ^ 2013 ^     v 2012 v

• Dec 25: Even though I got new shoes for Christmas, I went hiking without shoes.
• Dec 20: Whatever you do, don't hike like this.
• Nov 28: Designed and built a new paper sculpture installation.
• Nov 19: Time for my biannual haircut.
• Nov 17: We were invited to a party so we tried to make more cider, hoping to get bragging rights to the latest pressing ever. We found a few apples left on a tree despite the snow and we hoped the hard frost would concentrate the sugar of the very tart crabs. We even added a few market apples to cheat a bit and we got a single quart. Then a few hours at room temperature to blend the flavors.
  This didn't work: The cider was undrinkably bitter.
• Oct 28: A guest from Maine helped us press cider. Three grocery bags filled with Mac drops gave us almost 2 gallons.
• Sep: Coding up a storm for Littleton Precision. Too much fun!
• Jun 26: Bears are hungrier—and peskier—than usual because of the early spring. They breached our turkey pen, and despite our daily repairs, they managed to do damage each night. We think racoons took advantage of the breaches. We lost our 2 hens, one per night. The tom lasted 2 more days. After many years, the turkey population on our lot is now 0. This means Zak is now unemployed!
• Jun: Usually firewood harvesting is a fall and winter activity (when there are no bugs). But a windstorm broke one of our mighty 2-foot diameter maple trees (that diameter isn't much for a field tree, but in our dense forest it's one of the biggest maples around). Been cutting it up and dragging out the firewood by sled.
• May: Got a gig as a professional photographer seven days a week until July 3.
• Memorial Day: The electrical wiring has been run inside the new workshop. The new panel is fed by underground feeder from the house. The 150' trench required a lot of digging with a pickax and garden trowel (to minimize forest impact).
• 2012 maple syrup season
• Feb: Cutting firewood for next winter: a few standing dead maples and cherries, and a few live maples and yellow birch. I cut them down (using the open-face notch method) and buck the logs on the snow. My wife and I take turns pulling the sledfuls to the woodshed by hand.
• Jan 23: I captured, killed and hung our tom. My wife plucked and dressed it. Check out the before and after pics (don't worry, no "during" pics).
• Jan: Bathroom remodeled: Walls repainted. Toilet, sink & faucet replaced. Shower restored.

  ^ 2012 ^     v 2011 v

• Christmas: I'm selling my IWC Portuguese Chrono.
• SOLD in 3 days!
• Thanksgiving: This is Zak, my new border collie.
• Fall: Work continues on my watch workshop.
• Aug 25: Got a software engineering job offer from Fairbanks Scales.
  
  • Did not take it.
• Aug: Redesigned professorguy website.