Ms J??? I'm home!!

Good evening, Ms Journal. I thought I'd touch base with you before I fly off again, this time to the church for a rehearsal of Girl Alex's play.

I had a good time with my brother at his sylvan retreat. He calls it simply "The Land", as in "I'm goin' up to The Land this weekend, Dale. Wanna come?"

The objective was to build a gazebo, but when we Pringle boys gather and talk about doing something, we do a lot more talking than doing. We did however, manage a few noteworthy erections followed by some good solid screwing.

Yeah, I knew you'd keep reading.

We erected the wall posts and screwed them onto the base platform. Then we erected the roof rafters and screwed them onto the top of the wall. It doesn't sound like much, does it? That's because it isn't. Like I said, Ms J, we do a lot more talking than doing.

We spent most of Saturday watching the chickadees at the feeder. The fearless little birds would light on our hands and accept a treat of sunflower seeds while a busy little chipmunk scavenged the seeds that fell to the ground. Pat and I played there for a long, long time.

"Well, we'd better get busy," my brother would say periodically, "or that gazebo won't get done this weekend."

Then the gold finches would arrive and Pat would go and fetch the fine, black niger seed they fancy. He'd holler from inside the cabin as he rummaged for more seed.

"I'm makin' fresh coffee. Do you want some?"

"Yeah. OK, Pat," I'd answer as I watched another blur of black and white briefly touch my hand, steal a seed and disappear.

"We'd better get busy pretty soon," Pat would say. "Or that gazebo won't get done this weekend."

It rained on Sunday. Nearly all day. T'was a hard, cold rain. Gusty winds, too. The man on the radio said they were blowing from the west at 100 kph. It sure made it tricky to stand on a step ladder and hold an eight foot post in place on the roof. The trees still wore a bit of colour on Saturday afternoon, but they were nearly naked by the time Monday dawned. Except for a few larch trees with their falling, yellow needles, the woods are a drab and dreary grey. Winter's approaching.

I took a few photos, but the batteries in my digital camera died fairly quickly after we'd arrived. I took a few pics with my 35 mm camera, but I'll have to get the film developed before I can share them with you. Maybe I'll get round to that tomorrow.

My nerd was here all afternoon today, wiping and reloading and removing and recovering. He charged me $300. The job's not done yet, though. He says he'll be back on Saturday. This computer is running a bootleg copy of Windows XP and it will no longer accept Windows updates. That means it has numerous "CRITICAL security vulnerabilities." I wonder how much a "new" version of Windows XP costs?

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