Anyone want to take a dip? 

November 13, 2019 - Wednesday morning

10 degrees/snow flurries/calm winds

Pentoga Road

The only thing keeping the pond from freezing over these days is the pump that not only moves the water, it also pulls it through the filters. 

Someone asked why the surface needs to stay open since it's over eleven feet deep in the middle. I'm told gases build up and failure to have some sort of outlet would result in the fish dying, regardless of the depth. 

Though she was a child of the North Woods, I've yet to be successful talking Sargie into taking the polar bear plunge. There's all that water and a beautiful hole just going to waste. 

Why don't I jump in? As I've said a million times before, my mama didn't have no dummy. 

Obviously, Sargie's mama didn't either.

Speaking of Mom, there's exciting news to share.

While talking with her last night, we learned that she'll be able to go back to her apartment next Tuesday. Mama's been housed in the Rehab Center of her complex for the past few weeks and attended physical therapy twice a day since. 

She's a trooper, that mom of mine.

Sargie and I will be heading in her direction late Thursday afternoon, driving as far as central Illinois, before arriving at Mom's sometime Friday before noon. We're looking forward to helping get the apartment ready for her homecoming next week.

In more somber news, Matt and Jessica sent a few pictures from their visit to the famous Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. Normally laughing and joking, there was nothing funny about the story these pictures tell.

The gate the new prisoners saw as they were herded into the camp.
"Work shall set you free."

Even after almost eighty years, the pictures are still difficult to view.

On a much lighter note, Tuesday was spent building a paint cabinet for the shop. I decided to use all scrap material left over from building the garden house, much of it destined for the wood furnace at some point.

With temperatures dipping below freezing in the shop nightly, I've been using an old chest cooler with a light bulb inside. The problem has been that the craft paint bottles are small and I'd often have to dig through any number of them to find the color I wanted. 

I was sawing outside in zero degree weather. Maybe Mama didn't have a very bright boy after all.



Talk about a mess. I had to rip up the shop more than once to get the cabinet to fit along one wall, even to the point of rerouting the duct work from the wood furnace.

Persistence paid off and by late afternoon, the cabinet was finished and the shop mostly put back in order.

I used some old discarded foam insulation from Yooper Brother Mark's plant to line the cabinet. A simple forty watt bulb provides the heat from underneath.

There is a space in the back of each shelf to allow the heat to rise to the top.

 Sargie arrived home happy as could be last night and said she'd had a good day at the eye clinic.

We're both home today. I'm heading outside fairly soon to start the wood furnace for another day in the shop. We'll be packing later in preparation for Thursday afternoon's departure for Terre Haute, Indiana, to visit Mom. Sargie works on Thursday as do I, so we'll leave here after and make our way south. 

Meanwhile, I'd better get that fire going. 

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

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Hambone's newest best friend, a goldendoodle.