Lumber and stuff

I have the whole shop to myself for the week. Denis, who Les hired to help with the Vancouver project, injured a finger and will be off work for a couple of weeks. Les himself is in Mexico.

He left plenty for me to do. A couple thousand board feet of poplar arrived on Friday, and I am cutting about 90 boards of various dimensions for the frame of the organ case. I started by cutting them roughly to length. Now I'm cutting them to width and thickness using the jointer, table saw and thickness planer. My inexperience proved a liability in manouevring the few longest boards over the jointer; hopefully Denis can come in for a few hours tomorrow to hold the ends steady while I give it another try.

The vast majority I can manage alone. Individually they are not heavy, but collectively I can't imagine how many tonnes of poplar I have lifted this week. With all tools, but especially the jointer and table saw, I must maintain constant vigilance about my fingers. In the middle of using the table saw just now I had to take a break to ease the burning between my shoulder blades.

Last night on the way home I felt keen to start a new project: compiling a list of tasty recipes toward the goal of planning and preparing healthy meals. I had to catch myself; that's the goal for September. It's interesting how the 6 Changes Method instills discipline. There's no reason why I couldn't make that recipe list now, except that it's obviously a distraction from the less-pleasant financial objective currently at hand.

I like having a road map for the year. I like looking forward to things. I like the way deferring some objectives encourages me to think about them and plan, rather than always acting on impulse, using B to distract myself from A, and C to distract myself from B.

Tonight I will try to apply that same creative, list-making impulse to the current goal. hangnaildhole suggested some cost-free treats to substitute whenever I feel compelled to spend money. That's a good idea, and I can think of some things he didn't. Some are activities I enjoy but never do. The path to better financial responsibility will be fraught with emotional landmines. I'm going to list fun tools to disarm them.