Just 'stuff'....

(click on pics to enlarge)

Gotten into a pattern of a handful of days in the mountains and then pulling fill in weather shifts at my former station. Just enough to keep me out of a rhythm, which is making me a bit on the cranky side. ;-) While it has recently warmed nicely, it had heretorfore been a snowy winter fraught with travel woes for me, and now this week dealing with a cold of sorts. I jokingly say I wish I could get the flu to help me jumpstart a weight loss program, but gotta be careful what you wish for, eh?

1-15-11

So while I'm back in Charlotte as I write this, I did manage to get some flutes going earlier this week, and below are pics of two from unique woods. I've had this slab of Cinammon Burl for several years, and this is the first flute cut from it. I also have a G4 that is close behind it. Super lightweight and cuts/sands like butter.

Cinnamon Burl (Redwood) B4

(only oiled, no finish yet)

The Box Elder was a scrap of crotch lumber I got locally. Where a tree forks into secondary trunks, that juncture (the crotch) usually yields highly figured woods. Box Elder comes in a 'flame' variety that is chock full of the red flames you see at the foot of this flute, which I'd like to order some day. This scrap piece I picked up yielded only this flute, however.

Box Elder crotch B4

(only oiled, no finish yet)

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'Twas interesting watching Jeopardy this week, as IBM's "Watson" took on a pair of 2-legged champions. And so the news bits flew about, and after the two-night special, out came allegations that Watson had a technological advantage over the remotes humans used to ring in answers, yaddah, yaddah. I could care less. As I watched station after station report on the shows, from local to national, NOT ONE mentioned what to me was the most glaring of news stories: Watson screwed up royally on "Final Jeopardy". Royally.

The question asked which U.S. city had it's main airport named for a WWII hero, and its secondary airport after a famous WWII battle. Both humans correctly guessed "Chicago" but Watson was quite unsure of it's answer, and went with "Toronto".

Toronto.

You've GOT to be kidding me. Here is this phenomenal sophisticated ma

chine with 10 massive computer structures feeding it a gazillion bits of data in the blink of an eye....and it doesn't even come up with a U.S. city. Ooops!

Helluva glitch, if you ask me. But no one mentioned it on the news. Go figure.

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Back in early December I had just finished dinner with my parents in rural Polk County. Ive driven that country road more times than I can remember, but that night is a bit hard to forget. There on a 2-lane highway in the middle of nowhere, no houses, no lights, no road shoulders, a large Whitetail deer literally torpedoed my car. It had to have been at a full run, hitting me broadside at the passenger side front quarter panel.

No doubt the deer lost out on that one. How my side view mirror didn't get broken I'll never know, but he sure did a lot of damage down the car. Luckily no glass was broken, and everything is fine in the cabin....more importantly, it passes inspection.

You can correctly guess the car was 'totaled' by the insurance company given the Subie's 20-year old depreciation, so I now have the pleasure of driving around a 'salvage' vehicle that I can carry only liability on. Classy, eh?

Only one more thing I need to do....go get some outdoor decal materials and cut out "OH, DEER!..." and strategically place it toward the front of the front door.