Missed Opportunities

I could easily have gotten to town yesterday, out and in, but I just wanted to stay home. The ridge is so beautiful, under a white mantle, and the Pileated Woodpeckers are back. I think it's a breeding pair. They acting like newlyweds. He's showing her all the good trees and she occasionally pecks him, out of mischief. It's cute. Birds of a feather. I have some more wood to carry, and thirty minutes work with the electric chainsaw, then I'm set for the next cold spell, which I hope will be the last serious cold of winter. I'm sick of it. I've learned my lesson, and I'll be better prepared next year. I wasn't ready for a winter this severe, and it's made a believer out of me. I can keep from dying, but barely. In a way, it feels good, that I can survive, in other ways I wonder why I'm playing this game. I love it, for one thing, never knowing what's coming next. Tends to keep you occupied. Not unlike basket-weaving, or braiding a rope, just a thing you do, to pass the time. Now, make that clear to a bunch of Chinese students that don't speak good English. Or try and relate to your illiterate neighbor. Just saying. Nothing seems that far fetched. An algorithm for happiness. (Written last Sunday, I think, after I'd already sent a post.) Monday the power was out. Tuesday the roads were a mess. Just an inch of new snow, but it must have started as some other form of moisture, because the city and county police reported a record number of accidents for one day. It was very slick. Fortunately, it just lasted a couple of hours. Sometime in the next few days I'll be able to drive in, restock the larder, and get through the rest of winter. Sara and Clay were back, for the opening, Sunday, and it was great to sit on the loading dock with Sara and have a smoke. The potter, Carol, was down from Columbus, with the repaired wall-hanging, we talked about the piece failing and what that meant about the materials. Stress Failure. I find failures more interesting than successes. What you learn. Staff meeting, then we moved the piano back on the stage so that it could be tuned for the Sunday musical event. I have no idea what the event is, all I knew is that we had to move the piano. It lives, most of the time, on a rolling platform at one end of the classroom, downstairs; where the loading doors into the backstage of the theater are located. In defense of the people who designed and constructed this, it was a fucking bank, the walls were very thick, in some situations there weren't any options. The problem is, actually, that the idiot who designed the rolling platform for the piano, used swivel casters, and they don't need to swivel, it would be much better if they didn't. All the casters have to do is roll three feet south, then the same three feet north; as it is now, four people struggle to overcome the load that's placed on that moment of inertia when a large swivel caster needs to change direction. In my witting about it tonight, I solved the problem, made it a one person, five-minute job. We just replace the casters, and it suddenly takes one person five minutes. I can't believe it took me so long to see that. Walking in tonight, I wanted to get a fire started, left work early, as is my want, when the temps dip this low. Don't let the olive oil freeze. There were tracks everywhere, as the critters prepared for the next arctic blast, they all seem to know that the forecast was for more bitter weather. I follow their lead.