A Week Off

Yeah right.  I'm not fooling anybody.

I did take a week off work, to work.  During my "Vacation", I did little running.  I had a few too many projects planned and running will suffer somewhat if the alternative is to miss completing a project.  Work and run?  No problem.  Half clad the garage with board and batten and run?  Afraid not.

Which is a shame because I love running, but don't get enough vacation days to complete 1,499,612 projects each year.  I know there is a solution here somewhere - give me time and I'll figure out what I'm doing wrong...  How can anyone get anything done with only 35 vacation days per year?  Yes, facetious is my middle name.

Projects for this week:  Clad the garage, pottery studio and shed with 1 X 12 pine board and 1 X 3 batten, paint the 3 buildings, Put up 100 new taps, extend 3 mainlines and install a new pumping line.  I also had a todo list, but let's not get distracted. 

The projects went surprisingly well.  All 3 buildings now sport board and batten.  I put up 85 new spiles.  You "tap" a spile into a hole in a tree during the Spring, to gather maple sap.  The spile is connected to blue sap tubing, which, after visiting a few more trees, is connected to a black mainline.  For the new taps I used 1500 feet of tubing, 200 feet of 3/4" mainline and 250 feet of 1/2" mainline.

With the new taps, I will now run out of wood.  This is very similar to cutting legs on a chair.  After you cut one leg, the other 3 need cutting.  You get the picture.  So part of project SAP350 (I had planned on putting up 100 new spiles, which would have brought me to about 350 taps) was to build another firewood storage area and fill it with wood.  I cut a few dead trees down and piled them on the new storage area.  I needed more and was tired of hauling wood 500 meters, so I cut trees to form a new road in which I can turn the tractor and wagon around, instead of having to back up the wagon. 

Out of control.

I have found a guaranteed method of controlling the weather.  Buy paint.  Unfortunately, the "control" is limited to making it rain.  I bought 3 gallons of paint.  The estimate for this part of project CLAD3 (buildings) was 2 full days of painting.  I painted 37.5% of the garage before it started raining.  It is still raining, as I type.  I could have painted this morning, but it was only 5 degrees, with rain imminent.  I've gambled before in this situation and lost, so I graded the laneway.  Also a bad idea as it is again raining and the beautiful smooth laneway is now the consistency of wet concrete.

My daughter Celeste arrives today from Whistler, where she is currently working.  I won't dwell on her lifestyle out west as it makes me very jealous.  Children can be so cruel, such as the time last winter when she emailed me to explain that along with other "mountain" employees, she got up early, had a fabulous breakfast at the treeline restaurant (near the top of BlackCombe) and then skied first tracks in a foot of powder...  Let's move on, please.

 It will be great to see her again.  We will view the David Bowie exhibit at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario) and have some fun in Toronto.

Tomorrow is a half marathon race at Base Borden.  Very tempted to pop over and run it.  See how badly I do, after not running for almost a week!

That's it.  Got to sign up for Across the Years race in Arizona.  A neat race in which you start in 2013 and finish in 2014.  I'm running 24 hours, but will actually crew / pace Lee Anne, who is running the 48 hour.  Her intention is to push both her 24 hour distance and her 100 mile time.

What could be more fun?