Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I slept clear until noon on Sunday, trying to recover from the long hours I've been putting in on the Day Jobbe. However, there were chores to do and the weather was just about perfect, so after a big brunch that Lisa cooked up, we broke out the electric chainsaw and other implements of destruction and went to work cutting up the tree that we removed from That Darn Roof on my last trip north. We spent several hours sawing the tree into burnable-size pieces, hauling them to the woodshed, and then trying to clear away some of the small bush from the area. We hauled one cart-load of small brush to the "coal seam." It's looking much better over by the side of the old house, and while there is still lots of work to do around here -- it never ends, really -- we did feel like we had accomplished something. Lisa tells me that getting all of the brush cleared out of there means we may be able to get the awning over the side of the house finally repaired completely sometime this spring.

I wasn't displeased at spending a day outside carrying wood and brush, although I have to always be careful of my back since I injured it a few months ago. After all of the time I've spent hunched over computers, working outdoors in decent weather is a good thing, and I needed the exercise.

Tomorrow I'm off to Fort Worth for the week. Fortunately, my flight is not until noon, so I din't have to be up any earlier than a normal work day for us to drive up to PDX and deposit me on a flight to DFW.

I still haven't processed the photographs, so you can't yet see what the tree looked like before the workers arrived, but I have uploaded the video I shot of the coup de grace of the workers falling the maple tree on Lisa's father's property:



After that, with the tree's branches chopped and chipped, the workers dumped the resultant debris into the "coal seam" disposal site on the property.