The farm is nearly clear of any snow, apart from the shadows and the like. The valley is still white, especially the mountain fronts. It is cold out there, with the wind still blowing, the temperature is 39, but with the wind-chill, it is 34 by feel. The sun is shining, but in that wintery, it doesn’t matter, kind of way.
I woke up feeling kind of rough this morning. I think it was the result of knocking the thermostat up a tiny bit last night. It felt a little chilly, which was probably perfect for sleeping. But I was just not quite sure the furnace was on at all. Maybe it was that middle of the night disorientation one gets. I wanted to be sure, as I am not the only one who sleeps up stairs! I nudged it, and it kicked on, and I went to bed.
It took a while to get back to sleep. I have a certain anxiety about money I have spent and the gap between seeing it leave my account, and seeing whatever I ordered arrive at my front door! I am still waiting on the lathe, and it still showed as arrived at Chicago, the start of day eight there.
I finally did get back to sleep, and not long after I did, I checked the tracking site again, and the status finally changed! It left Salt Lake City in route to the destination terminal! Or, in the parlance, to the local delivery company that will carry it from Salt Lake to my front door, hopefully by tomorrow! Yes, maybe tomorrow, it will be safely home. Then I can start learning how to make things on it for real rather than by watching YouTube videos, and wondering how the technique actually feels in the wood!
Me and my shop are ready for this little upgrade. I have been wanting to add a lathe for a long time now, but money and other things always got in the way. I finally just did it. I hope that it will be big enough for everything I want to make, while still being small enough that Missus will be able and willing to explore the art. She loves working on her tiny little lathe that turns a million miles an hour and loved to throw little blocks of wood at her. I hope that this will alleviate her of that danger by first being robust enough to hold the block in safely! I have an upgraded chuck on the way right now, too. I am not messing around!
I’d like to get some things cleaned up in the yard today, and drop them off at the salvage yard. With the first snow having already hit the ground, it is no good waiting any longer to clean up the messes in the yard from summer activities. I don’t want them frozen to the ground the way Christmas lights get frozen to the house sometimes, and un-removable till Spring! We put them down the walk one year early after we moved here, and used pigtails for electric fencing to string them along, above the ground. Those pigtails got stuck till April. I don’t love that.
I’ll finish warming up from morning chores, and get on the metal yard trip. It seems so early to be feeling tis cold! I will be working on firewood no doubt as the delivery truck arrives tomorrow or the next day.