Handywoman

     My friend N and I have been working on a big woodworking project (which is not yet ready to be revealed). When I suggested it, I didn't realize that I was proposing a large project, but it's going to take months. In fact, I'll be at N & S's house for three weekends in a row as we try to make some progress.

     I haven't done any woodworking since I was a kid, but I inherited a lot of great tools from Andrew, and it makes me happy to learn how to put them to use. This Saturday I learned how to plane wood. It's very satisfying to turn a rough piece of wood into a rather polished-looking post.

There's a second reason that progress has been slow - we needed to spend the first part of the day repairing a leak in the roof. Although N did the hard work up on the second story, I hauled up tools using a pulley and bucket (physics in action!) and kept the ladder steady. We decided to make things safer by tying N to the roof using a safety harness. Unfortunately, there aren't that many place to tie a rope up on a roof, so we chose to tie it around the chimney. To do this, N hurled the rope completely over the house, and then I went to the other side of the house to toss the rope back around the chimney. We had tied the rope to a stick to make it easier to throw, but it turns out that I'm not that good at throwing a thick rope over a two-story house. The broken storm window below is evidence of that.

So, during the next project day, I get to learn how to replace a broken storm window.