A Pile of Sticks

Monday night was woodworking class again. I got there just before class starting time and only a couple of other folks were there - sitting in their vehicles. The door to the woodworking shop was closed and locked, everything dark. Even though it was a holiday, our instructor had told us we would have class but he hadn't yet appeared. It was cold, very cold and I started hoping that the instructor wouldn't show up and I could head home to some nice hot soup and watch the basketball game. More students arrived. Finally, about 15 minutes late our instructor arrived, let us into the building and we all got working on our projects. Many other students must have assumed that it really was a holiday from class because they did not appear - making it much nicer for those of us who were there as it was easier to get help from the instructor and to get time on the machines.

.

My planned task for the night was sawing my wood into equal depths. The width size won't matter and the length will be modified after I've glued the pieces together. I chose 1-inch for the depth of my pieces so when it was my turn, I adjusted the saw and got going. It went smoothly, no problems, but the woman after me had the saw break down on her. Besides the table saw, I also used the miter saw for one of my longer pieces of wood. So - now I've worked on 4 power tools: jointer, planer, table saw, and miter saw. The picture on the upper left shows my result - a pile of sticks!!

.

Yesterday I went down to the homeless shelter as I do on Tuesday mornings. It was pretty quiet for the most part. However, I did have to help one of the guys as his resume was showing up in Japanese, really confusing him. This was resolved when he accessed his email through the icon on the screen rather than going through a Tokyo site. Magically, his resume now appeared in English. (Because the guys are not allowed to save anything to the pcs, many of them save them out on their email site so they can get to them easily.)

.

We have finally gotten some sunny weather though it is very cold. Our bushes, especially the roses, look quite sad but I expect they'll revive as the days warm up. I am enjoying our longer days - in December it got dark outside by 4:00 PM but now it stays light until 5:00.