How I spent my winter vacation

Remember back in grade school when one of the first assignments of the new school year in September was to write a report on “How I spent my summer vacation”?

I always had trouble with that as my summer vacations at that age were spent playing outside, mostly amusing myself by kicking an empty can up and down a dirt road, or maybe going for a swim down at the lake, or riding my bike when I had one. The stuff of a rural life back then during the Pleistocene was sorely lacking in excitement compared to schoolmates who actually ‘went away’ somewhere.  So let’s just say my report was usually pretty short and quite uninteresting.

Well in the intervening decades not much has changed, except that with retirement the summer vacation has now become the winter vacation – that 6 months when the roads are too snowy and icy to ride and the golf courses are all shut down. For a few years the missus and I tried the ‘went away’ option but the weather never cooperated and, except for the lack of snow, freezing our asses off in Myrtle Beach, or Tampa, didn’t seem that much different from freezing our asses off at home in White Lake.

So this year, except for a brief trip to New York City (where we froze our asses off), we stayed home.

Reading the periodic updates of ScooterBob’s travels and about rides taken by blogging friends in more hospitable climes only did so much to manage the cabin fever. I needed something else to do and it wasn't to take up year-round riding like Richard or Dom.

Fortunately the daughter had just moved into a new apartment and needed ‘a few things’ to finish it off. And since I needed ‘a few things’ to do she was more than willing to provide a list. (There’s ALWAYS a list.) So out came the woodworking tools, having been mostly neglected for the past few years, the dust was brushed off the various piles of lumber I had been saving for that someday special project, and I went to work. Here are some of the results:

Small chest – cherry.

Hall bench – pine and maple.

 
Laundry bin – cherry, maple, oak.

I'm an inveterate serial hobbyist, going full steam at one thing or another for a few years, then branching off to something else for a while, and then to yet something else again. In fact, the only ‘hobby’ that I have consistently enjoyed has been motorcycling, which may make it more lifestyle than hobby I suppose. But regardless, I guess it was just the right time to get back in touch with wood, and it felt great to be ‘hands on’ again.

Now for the next project. Where’s that list?