The post title pretty much says it all. It has been raining here every day for what seems like 6 months. Okay, maybe two weeks. Point is, it’s hot, humid, wet, and I’m just waiting for a tree to fall on either the shop or the house. Sitting on the porch is uncomfortable because it’s so humid. Sitting inside is uncomfortable because Sandie keeps the thermostat at 12 below 0. So I just keep calm on carry on.

The shop reorganization continues. After pulling a 12-foot-long cabinet off of one side wall, I moved a cabinet from the floor of the back wall to the side, mounted my radial saw inside of it, put a layer of plywood on top, and I’ve now got a bench stretching basically the entire side wall (with a radial saw in one end). I’m planning on taking the existing (kitchen-type) countertop off of the remaining cabinets at the back wall and replacing it with plywood to give myself more useable bench space there. First, though, I’m moving my glue cabinet from one side of the shop to the other – to hang it over the space at the end of the “new” bench on the side wall. It’s a corner cabinet, and I’ve cut it down to just the part containing the lazy Susan. Just trying to figure out the best way to hang it on cleeats now. Trickier to keep it level than I’d anticipated, but I’ll figure it out.

On the “other” home front – my house in Duluth – the water bill has been steadily creeping up over the last few months, and I’m now convinced that I’ve got a leak somewhere, but haven’t been able to find it. I asked Terry, my renter, to put some food coloring in the toilet tanks the other day to see if we can spot a leaky toilet, but I haven’t heard back from him yet. Planning on going over there this weekend to see what I can find (and also to collect rent). I’m really hoping it’s just a leaky toilet. Not looking forward to having to hire a plumber to find and fix a hidden leak.

I was working in my shop last weekend (on the aforementioned closet shelves) and started looking around and seeing wasted space and other inefficiencies. When Sandie bought the house, the shop was outfitted with what were obviously cabinets that had at some point been in a kitchen. There was a long rank of cabinets along the back wall with a kitchen sink in the middle of it. Two ranks of overhead cabinets were mounted on the side walls. Another floor rank ran along one of the walls. And there were a few of basically stand-alone cabinets scattered here and there. They weren’t in the best places, but I guess they were fairly functional, the sink notwithstanding.

Sandie had a long workbench that her father had made, so we put that in the shop as well.

Then Sandie decided to remodel her kitchen….and I added most of THOSE kitchen cabinets to the shop. Took the kitchen island, added some casters, made it a mobile workbench. Moved the other stuff around against the walls. Made a little “L” on one wall. There was, to put it mildly, a lot of counter/bench space – and not a lot of room for anything else.

Over the past couple of years, as I’ve tinkered around with the shop layout, I’ve come to the conclusion that probably 50% of the cabinets are completely unused. And this weekend, I noticed that the long rank of overheads that had been there from the start (in which I’ve been storing lots and lots of paint) are most decidedly bowing in the middle. Add to that the fact that the paint is not very organized, making it difficult to find what’s needed, and I decided that it was time to make some changes.

I haven’t really figured out what those changes will be, but I’m sure that at least THAT set of overheads is coming down and probably being relegated to a pile of scrap wood or a dumpster. First, though, I need a place for the paint. So I build a couple of simple shelf sets out of plywood, which will hang on cleats on the wall. That was my Sunday project. Came out pretty good, and each unit holds 16 gallons of paint. Now all I have to do is figure out where I’m going to hang them. Once I’ve done that, I can commence with taking down that set of cabinets. I have NO idea how I’m going to do that without hurting myself, but it needs to be done, and it will start the process of making a great workshop.

In other news, we interviewed 5 folks for the director of the GBB job last week. One more to go (next week, when I’m in Canada). No clear leader at this point, and it’s going to be tough to whittle the 6 down to three finalists, who will each take a concert series this year to help us (and the band) decide who gets the gig. Some have very strong administrative skills, others have strong brass band experience. I’m kind of hoping we can get one of the latter as the primary director, and one of the former as an associate.

It’s Friday morning and I’m in the 14-Foot Shoals cabin at Cheboygan State Park.  Have been here with my friend Sandie Jones since Sunday afternoon, and we’ll be heading back to Atlanta tomorrow morning.  It has been a pretty good week at the cabin.  Temps were unseasonably warm when we arrived – like in the high 60s/low 70s – which had me concerned.  I don’t come this far north to be warm.  Fortunately, it started to cool down by about Tuesday night, and I’ve had a fire going in the cabins stove since then.  I stormed last night and early this morning, and the wind and waves are high right now. Wonderful conditions for my wind game.

At home, work continues on the floors.  I’ve pulled out all of the exisiting flooring on the ground floor (except for the tile in my kitchen pantry) and have begun putting down waterproof laminate oak.  The living room is pretty much done – still need to paint the floor boards and add some quarter-round, and I’m a bit over halfway across the hall and into the kitchen.   One of the first things I’ll need to do when I get home is rent a dumpster to get rid of all the crap that I pulled up from the floors. It’s currently piled in heaps in my music room and garage.

I’ve stained the decking on the deck – still haven’t done the railing.  I guess I should put that on my list of things to do, also.  Really need to buy a decent paint sprayer for that and for the railing over the retaining wall, which will need to be stained, too.  I also plan to rebuild a section of fence near the house.  It’s currently a big gate that’s falling over, and I’m just going to fence it in.

Sandie, meanwhile, has been remodeling my upstairs guest bathroom. She really wanted to do something and she’s done such a good job on her own house that I relented and gave her the bath, although I had no plans to do anything with it.  She’s done a good job so far, and it’s nearing completion. Still not sure what type of floor will go in there – but I replaced the sink, so the old one is currently leaning against a wall upstairs – yet another reason I need that dumpster.

And that’s about all I’ve got at the moment. Typing this on my annoying little Bluetooth keyboard, which has keys that are really close together and sometimes in just the wrong place, so I have to go back and correct every other word,  but at least it’s better than trying to use the keyboard on my phone.

So everybody stay calm. It’s probably nothing. On my way home from the store yesterday, I noticed a tightness in my chest, which has waxed and waned a few times since then. I have no trouble breathing, no fever (as far as I know – the only thermometer in the house had enough juice in it for one measurement, which came out low), my heart rate is normal, and my blood pressure is (for me) fairly low. Not dead yet.

That being said, I’ve never had the flu in my life (as far as I know – I believe I did have pneumonia once when I was quite young), and the chest thing isn’t a cold. So either I’m get to experience my first flu or I’ve got the mystery virus that’s been going around. Nothing to do about it except sleep and drink water, which I’m doing (also making a salmon filet). Sure, I could probably find a place to get tested, but to what end? I have very mild symptoms and I’m not going to a hospital. I told Jenny that if it gets worse, I’ll let her know and maybe I’ll try a teledoctor or whatever.

I know what you really want to know: What store did I go to? That’d be the Home Depot. Picked up some lumber, glue, bolts, screws, and light bulbs. The bulbs are for a lamp. Everything else is what I need to extend the table on Dad’s old table saw (which, I learned today, is 11 years older than I am), which I began to do yesterday afternoon before getting to a good stopping point and deciding to pay attention to my chest and lie down. I need to do some surgery on the stand that Dad built for the saw in order to drop the motor about two inches – in order to be able to increase the length of the table and let longer pieces of wood slide onto my workbench.

Once I’ve got the table extended, I’ll start work on a cross-cut sled. That will be fun.

Salmon is nearly done, so I’ll wrap this up. Just thought I’d get it down for posterity that maybe I’ve caught the dreaded Coronavirus and – at least for now – I don’t feel too awfully terrible.

I set up the Bluetooth keyboard on my phone again this morning. Haven’t used it since I was in Michigan 18 months ago, but since I’m doing most of my work in the office on my work laptop, which I really try to keep separate from my personal stuff, it’s easier to keep this site updated from my phone. Therefore, please be more understanding of typos and don’t expect a huge number of photos until I can remember how to get them into posts with this little WordPress app.  Just for grins, I’ll try to insert one here… Assuming that that picture made it, it’s of a new feral cat who’s been showing up on my deck for the last few days.  Very pretty black kitty and it seems wee-fed and happy.  Maybe it’s not feral, but I’ll treat it as such. You can also see how much pollen has been falling in the last few days.  It’s making walking a lot less enjoyable, but I guess it’s to be expected given the mild winter we had. It’s kind of scary that the WORST pollen  generally doesn’t happen until late April. Continuing to work from home and I’m now into the third week of it.  I’ve noticed that it’s becoming more difficult to stay focused on work. Need to figure out a way to stay more engaged with my team, since I’m not actively working tickets like they are. I’m trying to provide assistance for them, but it’s very easy to take a break from that and read some news pages (or Facebook), or run to the kitchen for a snack, or just stare out the window.  I might try to set up a written schedule and daily milestones for myself until I get fully comfortable with the idea of being part of a team while in isolation.  It’s tougher than I thought it would be. I think it would be much easier if I were still an L1 and just needed to answer the phone and work tickets.