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Lying awake seems pretty normal these days. Once I help Missus get up for work, I have trouble getting back to sleep. I am sure this bright screen and keyboard are not helping me. But alas, here we are. So, I figure, get some things on my mind off it, and see if I can type myself into boredom.

I woke up a little after 2AM, and the first thing in my mind was “John Delancey played Q, on Star Trek Next Generation, right?” I went down to where Missus fell asleep in front of a TV, and she has Stargate SG-1 playing, and there was John Delancy. And no, I could not possibly hear it from where I was in bed. That was kind of weird. I ate an orange after that.

This year we have received more snow than last. It snows so often; it feels like that for at least this year we can safely say the drought is over. But for one thing. When it snows, there is barely a skiff left on the ground. In normal snowy years I will walk next to a fence that is head high in the summer and find its top halfway down my upper arm. But at least the weather is trying. Hopefully the mountain tops are covering deep in a blanket of snow.

When I was downstairs eating an orange, I thought that maybe I need to change up my phone greeting whenever I answer it. “Hello, George Santos’ office.” It makes sense. Really, this is the shit-show that is American politics right now. If you don’t know, you don’t know. Don’t worry about it and count yourself lucky.

I have got this beautiful workbench set up in my shop now, and I have gone about cleaning up out there to make the workspace workable again. After all, the new bench should not be the only bench out there with a clean work surface. It absolutely glows under the lights I set it beneath.

It’s damn cold out in the shop. It hurts me rheumatism just to be out there for very long but add to that the moving around and trying to do some work, and I get really sore. I cannot wait till spring, or at least for it to warm up above 30F.

I have put a couple of pieces on the bench to try some planing and see how well it holds. So far, fantastic! I am not excited about the metal bench dogs at the moment though, because they seem like a single nick on them is going to damage the plane iron. I will probably turn some wooden ones on the lathe to solve this problem. I am sure the metal ones will come in handy after that in order to extend them further up to get a tighter grip on larger pieces. So, I don’t regret having them. Good for holding furniture and such. But for the sake of my irons, I think I would rather they strike a wooden dog than a metal one.

Not easily seen in the picture above is that there are two vices on the bench. The second one is at the far end in the photo. It will cause the length of the bench to hold boards and such down the length of it. That makes pretty much the entire 74-inch surface of the bench a holding platform. Apparently, the bench weighs in at 290 pounds.

Now for the real irony. It is Swedish. The flat pack capital of the world is where I got a flat packed workbench so I could try to build some real furniture. Some things I will never understand.

There is all this talk these days about the looming financial crisis. The debt ceiling has just been hit, and some members of Congress plan to hold the world economy hostage to their demands, willing to burn the whole thing down if they don’t get what they want. Strangely, when Trump wanted to withhold defense aid from Ukraine to get what he wanted, it was said that he was breaking the law because that was money that Congress allocated for that purpose. Yet, hitting the debt ceiling means the government can no longer borrow to pay for the budget Congress has already passed. I don’t know if that means some members of Congress should be handcuffed and taken into custody, but I think it does mean that I should be wheeled away in a strait jacket trying to understand all this. The lunatics have taken over the asylum!

With all that, I am glad to be getting set up in the shop to hopefully be able to build and repair things for the house. I sure see buying things as a diminishing option. But if I can keep getting my hands on the firewood we heat with, then I should be able to come up with something to work with. The last big thing for the shop would be a bandsaw to saw boards and resaw them as needed.

Oh, what do I plan to build on the bench? Great question! I need to get this list thought out so I am not caught off guard by it. I want to do some blanket boxes for the girls, and some shelves and cabinets for the house. I want to build a pie safe. Missus could do with a wardrobe. I also want desperately to build some Windsor chairs. I have done a few stools with the help of the lathe. That has helped out with a little imprecise jointing practice. I’ll get better at it. We have got what I swear is the world’s largest bread bin, and it is still not enough! That may be a thing in order. I could use a bedside table. I owe a drawer between the microwave and the built in oven for the kitchen. I got that unit together and never did finish the drawer for it. I have been fretting too much over trying to do it by hand and putting in dovetail joints for strength. It will close a gaping hole in the kitchen and block some cold airflow from behind the cabinet, as well as give a much-needed storage space. It seems a perfect place for hot pads. I also foresee building whatever takes my fancy, then putting it up for sale locally.

Well, like usual, when I get down this far in my typing, the lousy browser is slowing down and irritating me. I miss Windows Live Writer.