The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey October 9, 2020

667

It has been a month or so, but I've been ... busy. Even though we've been healthy, as have our extended families, the coronavirus situation, in juxtaposition with the political environment has made for a stressful time. I wish I were hopeful on all fronts, but I'm going for survivability at the moment. Or an asteroid strike. Decisions, decisions. Why 667? Well, it's the number following the Number of the Beast, and the post that's been sitting on top of the page for the last month was also the post numbered similarly. So it's a bit of a celebration of…

Brian Bilbrey September 7, 2020

7 September 2020

Yeah, it's been a month. I'm dancing as fast as is reasonable in these terrible and weird times. And sometimes I'm building stuff... Sometimes building stuff means building other things first, in order to build the thing desired. Yep, a fixture: Once the fixture was done, I could work on parts: With the fixture to guide the router, I could cut slots into the schedule 40 pipe, in a specific orientation to the 30 degree angles the pipe was cut at. Then I could screw the pipe lengths onto the final product: The slots at the bottom? Just for access…

Brian Bilbrey August 9, 2020

9 August 2020

The fish jigsaw art piece featured recently is now done and on the wall. I put on a couple of coats of clear matte water-based polyurethane on the back to seal it, and four coats front and sides. After the first coats, I used some 220 grit on the wood surfaces to knock down the nibs, and gently with some single ought steel wool for the face of the puzzle, just to give a bit of bite for the ensuing coat. All the other coats were followed by a light pass with the steel wool. Here it is on the…

Brian Bilbrey July 19, 2020

19 July 2020

The last two weekends have been full of chores, catching up on the early summer yard suffering. Temperatures had been reasonable, and there'd been a fair bit of rain during our absence. That meant that lawns, weeds, everything was growing like gangbusters. But I'm almost caught up. Some of the tomato plants are starting to produce, as are most of the pepper plants. Others of the tomatoes don't look entirely ... enthusiastic about the ONE job they have this summer. Work is ongoing for me. I'm still going into the office once a week for a weekly process related to…

Brian Bilbrey June 28, 2020

28 June 2020

We hope that all of you are keeping well and in reasonable health. Yes, yes, it's been a month. Sorry to those of you who worry. We're all okay here. And for a couple of weeks, we were okay up in Maine, too! Three days before we left for Maine, we learned that they had updated the rules for out-of-state visitors. If we could show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within three days of arriving in Maine, we could forego the otherwise mandatory two week strict quarantine. We found a clinic, got a test each, and on Friday…