Wow has it been a week already since my last confessional. Things seem to be cruising right along. I am what you would call “very tired” right now. I think the main reasons I am this way are as follows. The main suspect is my lack of sleep the night before. My housemates had just gotten back from their spring break and we had a lot of catching up to do, and stories to tell. A good time was had by all. Follow this with the fact that I spent all of today splitting wood. Not with some sort of machine (unless you count a wedge on a stick as a machine), mind you but with an axe. Old school.

We started the day with high hopes of debris removal from a bog. Environmental restoration is the kind of thing we get a little worked excited about. You will understand our horror when we showed up to find that there in front of us is a giant yellow diesel fume spurting monster of a front-end loader. “What the F!” I screamed silently inside my head. Why should that big metal monster get all the fun of picking up this trash. An hour later it was clear that we were loosing. We had picked up every bit of trash we could find and that damn front end loader had already nearly removed the pile. Curses!

So it was back to the homestead for a little of what I like to call “pulling a backup project out of your buttock.” We had done some chainsaw training a couple of months ago in the back-40 and the limbed and bucked wood was nicely seasoned. But it was not split. So with an axe, and a splitting maul we headed back to realign the molecular structure of a couple pieces of cellulose.

And a one, and a two and WHACK! ZING! Crunch! Splitting wood makes the best sounds. Few things feel as good as getting through a big old hunk of wood with one swing. We all took turns, but our equipment was not the best, and that wood was viciously knotted, so after a while it was down to just the few of us screwy enough to want to keep splitting. The rest made good use of themselves picking up bits of scattered wood, stacking wood, cleaning up around the house, and generally getting a lot of stuff done.

I ended the night with a birthday celebration for one of my housemates. Pizza and cupcakes, again very old school, and again a good time was had by all. So now I sit slightly hunched over with splitters back. Not to worry I feel that this is a level 3 splitters back at worst and by the morning I should be fine.

In other news The Sietch is approaching a very nice milestone that I will share with you most likely tomorrow. (keep an eye on this space :) Tess is doing very well in law school, she is very smart, and it shows. The negative side effect of this success is that I have not seen her in a while. She lives in the world of books. As bad as being away from her is, I take solace in the fact that I will get to see her all summer as she got herself a sweet job around here (yet another of her talents, getting sweet jobs that is). I can’t wait!