I want to kayak!

Is it spring yet?

Mid Winter Camp Check

Rick and I snow shoed into camp today to give it a mid winter check. Everything looked fine, except an outside light had been left on, presumably from when the boys had been out there in November for a campfire. Rick took the shovel to clear out enough snow

to get the front door open.

It's so serene out there this time of year. The Cobb has a channel running through that remains unfrozen most of the winter.

Droopy Roses

I found a good use for my new red bowl - providing a second life for last week's now droopy Valentine roses.
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White Winged Crossbill

Check out the little white winged crossbill who stopped by the beach last weekend along with a bunch of his friends. I can’t remember ever seeing these little guys before. They have very interesting long, pointy bills, with the top being longer than, and overlapping the bottom, hence their name. They were incredibly friendly, letting us walk within a yard of them while they concentrated on the pine cones. There is an abundance of pine cones this year. We gathered a garbage bag full of them for burning in the fireplace and there are still thousands of them left, especially now that some of the snow has been melting.
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However, as of this morning - Thursday, February 19th - the pine cones are once again covered and I suspect the crossbills have moved on, taking with them possibly the robin Rick and I saw out the back window while sitting at the breakfast table last week. I'd had visions of spring in my mind for the past week after seeing so much bare ground on our walk at the beach. They were shattered this morning though I still couldn't help but admire the beauty of the snow.

Worked from home today and I wasn't nearly as productive as I wished I'd been, but I can do some more reading and editing of web pieces tomorrow morning.

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The Red Bowl

The bowl started to warp when I lifted it off the wheel so I decided to go with it, molding it into a slight triangular shape. I love the “really red” glaze on it. The photo doesn't really capture the color accurately.

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Today, well actually Yesterday

It was 15 degrees below zero at our house this morning, 9 below at the bank half way to Augusta, and 4 below in the city. That seems to be the pattern, about 10 degrees colder here at the lake than in Augusta, ten miles away. I worked straight through till five, went to the studio and cranked the heat up on high and ran back to my car and sat there with the heat on high for about 15 minutes, trying to thaw my fingers and toes and hoping the little electric heater would bring the studio temperature up enough with the temperature outside at just16 degrees.

Malley’s still in Vermont so her friend Robbi led a class on hand building trays and animals. I made some beautiful little sushi trays, and trimmed a mug with a kitty on the handle – maybe a little too cutsey, we’ll see. I also trimmed the bowls I threw last Saturday and brought home the best mug I’ve ever made. It’s still not quite right – too small, but I like the shape, weight, and glazing. Here's a pic. You can see that it's a little too small sitting there next to the perfectly sized UMF cup that Rick gave me for Christmas.




I met Bob, Susan and Deb, for dinner at Hattie’s, a quick stop at The Higher Grounds, where I ran into my old buddy Pat who I worked with for 20 years. We used to have such great conversations, often about the challenges of raising our kids, but whenever I see him now he’s usually just running through the office.

It’s now almost 4:30 a.m. and I’m still wide awake. I had stopped drinking coffee with caffeine on Friday, two weeks ago today. The prior Monday night I’d slept two hours, Tuesday night I slept two hours, and Wednesday night I didn’t sleep a wink. At that point I just gave up even trying to sleep and decided to get up and enjoy myself, messing around with some photography, downloaded some pictures, printed some older pics, and framed and hung them.

I was fine the next day other than feeling a little wired and unfocused. I think sleeping at night is kind of like rebooting your computer and getting rid of the cache. If your psyche doesn’t have that down time, it continues to carry all the stuff from the previous day that you didn’t get a chance to process and dump. Even ten minutes of sleep can suffice for me.

But anyway, this morning I had caffenated coffee so here it is 4:30 a.m. and I’m still up. I just finished watching Terms of Endearment. What a tear jerker. Shirley MacLaine is such a wacko in that movie, until she gets laid anyway.

Fortunately I don’t work on Fridays so I should be able to catch a couple hours of sleep at some point before we go see Del McCoury at the Strand Theater in Rockland tomorrow night – oops, tonight.

Guess I’d better go back to decaf. I slept great all this past week, probably at least seven hours each night. And the caffeine this morning just made me feel all jittery, so f that. It’s probably take a couple days to get out of my system and then it’s purely decaf!

Rick went to a town planning board meeting tonight to try and convince the town not to issue a building permit for the new owner to build a house on a beach lot that we and 70 other families have shared private access to. A good turnout by the neighbors and a killer letter from Rick and they at least postponed the decision for two weeks and will hold another hearing.