Shop heater, Skinny syrup rack, party

 For over thirty years I have carried about in all our relocations the parts needed to convert an empty 55-gallon drum into a shop heater. A sort of cheap potbelly stove. Last weekend Mama and I bought two barrels to attempt the conversion. Two in case I messed up on the first attempt to do the cutting needed to fit the cast iron parts onto the drum to complete the conversion. All in all, the retrofit was easy to make. I had the jigsaw blades needed and was able to fit the door, the legs, and the flue adapter onto the drum in a couple hours.

Yesterday I bought the first pieces of stovepipe to exhaust the stove outside the shop. I will, hopefully, complete that work this weekend and finally have a woodburning stove in my shop. That will help me keep up with the scraps generated in woodworking and keep the shop building warm as a bonus. I am looking forward to trying it out. I have avoided spending too much time in the shop when it is cold outside because I do not tolerate the cold as well as I used to. Maybe this will be my solution to allowing me more time in the shop during the winter.

A few months ago, I got Mama to try a Skinny syrup. The syrups are sugar free, so it was a good addition to our coffee routine without adding the calories of any sweetener. Mama has been a regular user of the syrups and as we have begun to accumulate a variety of flavors and the bottles which contain them, I thought it wise to build a shelf to house those bottles versus squeezing them into the limited space on our coffee bar. I had Mama adorn the cedar shelf prior to my putting a coat of urethane on it. She is doing some pretty amazing things with her “wood-burning” pastes and I thought it a shame not to capitalize on that craftiness for our new addition to the coffee bar. It will be several days before I hang the shelf. It takes several coats of urethane to get the proper finish, but I think the project is coming out really well.

This weekend will not be as busy as the past few weekends. I do plan on looking into my two beehives today since the temperature is supposed to get into the eighties. These two warm days are being followed by two cold days as is typical for our area. I will need to protect waterlines and faucets overnight tomorrow night because we are expecting a hard freeze. One night only, but one night of being unprepared is all it takes to cause me a lot of extra work. All the normal tasks will be done in the usual manner, but Mama will spend a few hours at Trade Days in Bowie Saturday morning just to see if there is anything new to gawk at. I will not go. It is largely a waste of time for me since there is very rarely anything I need offered at a price I am happy with, so I find the time more productively spent in bus calling with the church and working the additional hours away at the farm.

We do have a Christmas party at my manager’s house tomorrow evening. It is for our team only which has now grown to about twelve employee’s total. I am now the senior of our group by more than twenty years, but they include me, nonetheless. It will be cold overnight Saturday when the party is scheduled but the house where we meet is large enough to accommodate us through the evening’s activities. It should be fun. They are a fun group of young people. Only a few are church goers but all of them have a good moral compass and behave themselves wisely, so it is mostly comfortable to be around them. Mama and are bothered by the alcohol offered at all these get-togethers but it is a commonality of our culture. What is most concerning to Mama and I are the “Christians” who offer the alcohol and freely participate in its consumption. We are not made uncomfortable by being offered the drinks – they know better - and we always leave when the effects of that consumption begin to show. But there is always a sense of disappointment at an opportunity lost to show Christ to a lost person.

When we are just like them, we have nothing they need.