Mom and Sargie at the Iron Mountain airport Friday afternoon.

December 31, 2016 - Saturday

17 degrees/snow showers/calm winds

Pentoga Road

Seems kind of odd around here this morning. I've gotten into the habit of rising early and warming the house before Mom or Sargie get out of bed. Mom's safely back in Indiana and Sargie doesn't work until 10 this morning so she is able to sleep an extra hour. 

The past several days flew by. It was over a week ago, on Christmas Eve, that we attended the Mighty Milligan Christmas Eve celebration at Tricia and Donnie's.

Eighty-nine years separate Piper and Mom

The little cousins

The big cousins, parents of the little ones

Sargie's descendants 

Niece Sasha and me. We're excited that Sasha and Alex will be getting married next September. 

Christmas morning was a mellow affair. Mom, Sargie, and I, took our time opening presents.

Unfortunately, we didn't make it to Milligan Mountain for the annual family Christmas gathering. We were about twenty miles away when freezing rain began to fall. It quickly stuck to the windshield so we made the decision to turn around and come back home. By night's end, there was over an inch of snow/ice frozen on the roads.

The temperatures were quite warm the day after Christmas. I used the opportunity to scrape the ice and freezing rain from the drive by hand.



With the sun shining, the black pavement soon radiated enough heat to melt the remaining ice.

Now that Christmas is over, I can show a couple of things I'd been working on in the shop prior to the holiday. 

I made this frame and butterfly insert on the scroll saw for Mom as a Christmas present.

I also cut a mother/child piece for Sargie.

Though I didn't spend a lot of time in the shop this past week, I turned this small bowl from a piece of birch firewood and gave it to Mom.

I'm currently turning another project from a chunk of maple fire wood.

Sargie gave me a drone that takes video and pictures, along with other goodies, for Christmas. For two days after, the wind howled. Finally, it subsided enough that I felt comfortable taking the drone for a test flight in the front meadow, well away from any trees.

All went well until I allowed the drone to gain altitude above the trees. The wind caught it and away it went... up... up... up.

I can't see more than a few feet and quickly lost sight of it. Not knowing what to do, I cut power and soon saw it falling from the skies in a controlled stall towards the trees.

I took off running through the snow and lost sight of it again. Where did it go?

Thankfully, the lights were flashing on the drone and I finally found it hung up in the top of a skinny, but very tall, popple tree.

I tried shaking the tree to no avail. It was too small to climb, yet too big to do anything with other than watch the drone dangle from a branch up high.



Sargie and I own forty-two acres, almost all of it heavily wooded. I did what any good outdoorsman would do to get his drone back. I got my chain saw involved in the action.



The tree was cut so it would fall under the drone, not on top of it. In the end, I retrieved my flying machine fully intact.

Mom and her best friend, Brutus, had a love fest each and every moment during the week.

After an evening filled with our hundred-pound puppy crying and carrying on, we called Mom last evening and put our conversation on speaker so Brutus could hear her voice. He's obviously missing his buddy. As soon as he heard Mom's voice, he quickly calmed down and assumed his usual place in front of the wood stove.

Mom and I did a bit of post Christmas shopping. I purchased a lighted reindeer and sleigh on clearance for Sargie. It will be used next Christmas.

We took Mom to the airport to catch the noon flight Friday morning. We've had a wonderful past two weeks and both Sargie and I hated to see her leave.

Mama promised she'd be back in June so we can properly celebrate her 90th birthday... and celebrate we will!

Sargie works today from 10 to 6. I think I'll clean the drive and deck of snow then head to the lake for a few hours of ice fishing. After a couple days of warm weather and rain, the lake was a mess. 

Someone took his snowmobile out on the lake with several inches of slush on top of the ice.

Thankfully the glop has frozen solid. It's time to get serious about putting meat on the table.

It feels good to be back writing again. After thirty-plus years of composing and publishing in some manner or the other, old habits die hard.

It's time to throw another log on the fire and sip some serious coffee.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...