Now that December is officially here, my thoughts are turning to snow. I’ve put the garden and boat to bed, finished up hunting season and the fall cleanups and am getting all of the work and fun equipment for winter ready for the long cold months ahead. I understand that the Farmer’s Almanac is calling for record snowfalls this year! I bought a new 9′ plow and a new sander, so I am ready for it! In the meantime I’m tinkering with the snowmobile, and making sure that is ready for action too! I hope to have the time to go ice fishing with Joe sometime this winter. It’s always fun to take the snowmobiles out on the lake to his ice shack and spend the day fishing and relaxing!
I remember when I was a teenager, I wanted to learn how to play the guitar. My parents bought me an inexpensive acoustic guitar for a Christmas present, along with music lessons at a neaby music academy. I was thrilled to no end! My enthusiasm for learning how to play the guitar waned quickly though, when the first six lessons were all about learning how to Read Music. They said that you had to learn how to read music before you could do anything else. I think perhaps the worst part is that I already knew how to read music because I had played the piano for years, yet they held me back and made me take classes to learn things that I already knew.
I was impatient and dropped out of those classes after only about eight weeks. When they finally let me actually put my hands on my guitar they were making me play songs that I had no interest in learning. What fun is that? I wanted to learn how to play fun songs, not be a serious concert artist! I think that is one of the problems with a lot of educational programs. They don’t pique any interest in pursuing the goal. Very dry and boring and tedious.
Almost every morning I head out to the local Mom & Pop deli, where I meet up with my friends. We have been friends since elementary school, and although we have different jobs, we like to take a morning break and sit with each other for about an hour or so and drink coffee, have a pastry and talk. My wife calls it “gossip” but I keep telling her that men don’t gossip! We talk about a wide variety of things, not just who has done what to who!
Joe was telling me that he was looking at some car pictures on the Internet the other day. He just got himself a new laptop computer, and has been spending a lot of time browsing around the Internet. His latest toy! He was checking out the thecarconnection.com website that I had told him about a few days ago when he mentioned that his son was thinking about buying a ferrari down the road. We all laughed at him when he said that because his son doesn’t even have a job right now!
My wife and I have a floor lamp that she bought a long time ago that she dearly loves. Personally, I don’t care for it at all, but my wife loves it. It has a 3-way socket that has finally quit working so I bought a new 3-way socket and some new wiring so that I could rewire the entire lamp. I like working with my hands, and even though electricity intimidates a lot of people that I know, I took a few courses a long time ago and I know how to work with it.
It took a few minutes to take the lamp apart and re-wire it, but it was well worth it. The lamp works again, and my wife is a very happy camper! If you have a lamp that you (or your wife) dearly love(s) and the socket dies, just re-wire it! It is a money saving and environment saving thing to do!
Yesterday I stopped over to see my buddy Tom. When I walked in the house I asked her where Tom was. She says “oh, you mean the big game hunter?” I said “yeah, whatever.” He came out around the corner, wearing a big fancy hunting hat and a carrying a new elephant gun. I about fell over backwards, laughing! As soon as I gained my composure, I asked him “what the heck are you doing?” He said “I bought a new gun!” I said “I guess you did!”