Back to carving

I am sorry that I have not been posting much lately. Things have been kind of strange around here and Becky and I had some things to work through to keep the family together and strong. We've made a lot of headway and everyone is back to feeling a bit more positive again now. The biggest news is that we may be giving up entirely on the idea of having a piece of land. There's just too much playing against us at the moment and we think that if we had just a bit larger RV we could full time it for a few years without any problem. The biggest issue is that the girls don't have a room and the kitchen is just not set up for full time cooking. So, we're saving up for a better rig for us instead of saving up for a place to park our current one.

We're undecided on when we're planning to hit the road and head back West. It's a tough decision because everything is so easy here. There's no pressure to do anything and money is coming in pretty steady without a lot of expenses. All of that changes again when we hit the road and start staying in RV parks and the like again...

My birthday came and went. I am a year older and don't feel all that much wiser. I do get sore faster - especially when carving with the chainsaw.

I've done some bigger carvings now. The largest being a set of 5 bar stools (actually I only did 4 - AJ did the first one to show me the way they are made). They're all made from a single piece of log and are so comfortable to sit in it's kind of unbelievable. They have swivel bases, so you can sit and spin around if you want to. Each weighs in at around 200 lbs, so it's not the kind of thing I can put in the RV... A set of 4 cost $1,000.00 and the customer supplied the logs. There's 5 of them because the customer brought in an extra log in case one of them didn't turn out - AS IF [laughing]. Becky says that if we ever settle down and have a house I have to carve her a set of them she likes them so much. They're dished in 3 different directions (down, to the back and around) and they form fit so well that they don't need to be padded to be comfortable.

I carved a few more bears. I don't have pictures of some of them because they sold before I got a chance to take pictures. There was a lot of clean up that needed to happen after the last storm that knocked down a lot of trees all over the place. Some of them I had to clear out to prevent more damage. As you can see, one of the trees was sitting right on top of the wood drying shed and was a bit intimidating to remove...

Whew

Well, the thunderstorm has passed... We were treated to a set of shifting winds that I would guess at over 70 MPH. It knocked down trees and made a mess of things here locally. Yup - that's the mini-mall across the road from us here at the shop... Their missing a few things - like a roof. A little bookstore is somewhere behind all that wood that got tossed about. Signs all over town got knocked over and ripped to shreds. There are a few 24-26 inch diameter trees that were topped and will have to be cleared out. Here at the shop a tree fell on one of the wood drying sheds. It's pretty big - It'll take some serious chainsawing to clear things out.

Being in an RV doesn't inspire confidence when you see a big storm on the horizon. I am pretty sure that we were passed over by the beginnings of a tornado. One minute the winds were horizontal shooting East - the next minute almost as fast shooting West.

I took a little drive downtown and passed the local RV dealership. They had a rough afternoon... One of their smaller RV's was flipped over on it's side and a few yards toward the ditch. It wasn't just a little wind.

We came out without any damage. There are trees down all over the place and we had to do a little clean up. We weathered the storm in the barn next door to where we parked the RV. The wind shifted the whole barn around, but it held together fine and everyone's none the worse for wear...

Mindless Entertainment

We're looking down the throat of a pretty severe thunderstorm (and tornado earlier associated with this same storm)... My work is done and I've nothing better to do than sit in the trailer watching the weather and playing video games. I found one that is pretty addicting and allows you to form groups and keep track of scores. It's called Desktop Tower Defense. If you have the inclination and determination, you can try to top my score and knock me off the leader board. My group name is "virtualplacebo" and once you submit a score you can join the group. You must play at least the normal level (not easy) to submit a score, but playing the easy level a few times helps give you the idea of the game...

Have fun!

Today was a long day

I started carving at 8:00 this morning. I was determined to finish another bear since both of my other bears already sold... I didn't finish the rough carving until a little after lunch. It's my biggest bear yet. I am still feeling very nervous about some of my cuts, so I bugged AJ quite a bit today making sure that my memory of where and how to cut the major blocking was right.

About 5 minutes after I finished my bear and had moved it to the front of the shop to dry in the sun, someone came and said that they wanted to buy it... They didn't buy it, but said that they were coming back with someone else to make sure and then most likely pick it up. I worked to get it a bit more finished just in case they came back today.