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Uh-oh! It looks like we need more bookcases
Uh-oh! Looks like we need more bookcases. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. This is what three big plastic bins and ten cardboard boxes of books look like.
My books arrived along with my other possessions on January 12, 2009. At that time we had nowhere to put them and they’ve stayed in boxes in the garage ever since.
When we put up the dividing wall, Ginger’s books got packed away too.
Earlier this year Jim did some sterling work under the house installing an additional floor pillar to support the weight of this lot plus the piano on the wall opposite.
Next jobs – display shelves for Ginger’s blue glass that also got put away when the dividers were built and a display cabinet for all my old cameras.
Uh-oh! Looks like we need more bookcases. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Back to the Bookcases
They look even more like the plan from this angle. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. (See what I did there?)
Today I got a chance to put the final coat of varnish on the backs of the bookcases. Then this evening I indulged myself with an orgy of nailing with the nail gun. Always fun 🙂
It’s starting to look a lot like my plan.
This is what it is supposed to look like when I finish… Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Fishing Lures
Fishing Lures – I tried all these tasty looking lures and more besides – including the (almost) always successful Crawdad lure. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. No fish at all today.
I tried all these tasty looking lures and more besides – including the (almost) always successful Crawdad lure. I didn’t even get a nibble. The fish were obviously elsewhere doing fishy things that precluded them from being caught by me (or Tom come to that).
The backlight provided by the sun reflecting off of the hull of the boat really helped to make this picture. It is one of my favorites from today’s fishing trip.
You can see all of today’s pictures here
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Fall at Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri
Fall at Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. The Fall color has really come along the past couple of weeks.
Fall at Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
Fall at Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.You can see the rest of today’s pictures here.
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Fishing on Pomme de Terre Lake
Clouds Reflected in Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Working for yourself has its disadvantages and advantages.
Seven day weeks and long hours are a couple of the disadvantages. One of the advantages is that when a friend asks if I want to go fishing, with a bit of re-arranging, I can ‘Hang spring-cleaning’ and be free to go.
Yesterday I put in an eleven hour day to clear my essential work, leaving me free to go fishing today with Tom on Pomme de Terre Lake. I’ve not fished on Pomme de Terre before. I’d love to be able to report on the huge numbers of fish we caught. Unfortunately, we spent four hours out on the lake and caught nothing. Nada, nil, nowt. Not even a nibble. I did catch a good-sized (10-15lb) rock. Tom caught a submerged tree and lost a lure to it – so we agreed he had the best catch of the day.
Fishing Lures – I tried all these tasty looking lures and more besides – including the (almost) always successful Crawdad lure. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I tried all sorts of lures to try and interest the fish. Not even a crawdad lure (my fishing secret weapon) drew any interest. Not to worry, it was a nice quiet day on the lake with lots and lots of casting practice, and I did manage to catch a few pictures.
Fall at Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
Fall at Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
Fall at Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
Coots on Pomme de Terre Lake. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
Looking Across Pomme de Terre Lake, Missouri. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
Outboard Motor – The powerhouse of Tom’s bass boat. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Bookcases – First Fit
Making sure they fit. Now these are out of the workshop I have space to stain and varnish the backs.
Once they are fitted I’ve just got the edge trim to make and fit. Of course, now I know why I’ve been putting this job off. It wasn’t the nigh on $400 of materials, nor the two days spent cutting all the wood to size. It wasn’t the two and a half hours it took to put each one together (each bookcase has more than eighty screws in it).
No, the worst part of this build was the two coats of stain, and the two coats of varnish, plus polishing and rubbing down. I had plenty of time to think about it, it took two hours per coat of varnish per bookcase.
Starting to look just like the drawing. This is what it is supposed to look like when I finish… -
YMC and Diocesan Council
Poor Lanie, she cannot escape from me taking her picture even when she’s gone away for a diocesan youth meeting Today I was off to Carthage first thing to grab a couple of interviews on video.
While I was there I took a couple of pictures of the YMC and Diocesan Council. It made a nice change to be there just to take pictures (okay video) and not be attending to talk or take part.
I was hoping to do the interviews in the nave, but the organist was busy practicing for tomorrow (and a bit for Advent too by the sound of it). So i had to improvise. I did one interview in the youth room, and I’ve no idea what the other room I used was for…
While I was there, it was a privilege to be able to listen in on Fr. Steve talk to the youth about the Episcopal Church, dogma, belief, and faith. I cannot speak for the kids, but I needed to hear that.
As I’ve already put in my 20 hours (and a lot more) for the diocese this week, I’m not sure whether to call this work or Volunteering!
Diocesan Council Meeting
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Miss Scarlet. Clue: The Musical
Now the musical has begun I can show this re-processed picture.
This is my attempt at a fairly quick edit of a green screen picture Lanie sent to me. So, to be clear, this is not my picture of Lanie, I just post-processed it. I can see sooo many errors in my processing, but I don’t have time to fix them right now. Maybe I’ll revisit it later.
Lesson from the green screen: Get the subject a good distance from the green screen to avoid reflected color – a lesson I learned taking (failed) green screen product shots.
The Original
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Lanie & Getzger
Lanie and Getzger Testing some new lights with Lanie and Getzger’s help.
It’s a shame the depth of field is just too shallow, one of Lanie’s eyes is slightly out of focus. I couldn’t get the pair of them to stay still long enough for a decent picture.
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Building Bookcases
Cutting the boards into Shelves. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. This weekend I started work on a long-outstanding project to build a bookcase.
Not just any bookcase but an eight-foot long seven-foot-high recessed bookcase. The project would have gone a lot more smoothly if Lowes hadn’t refused to cut the 8′ x 4′ plywood sheets into 11½” boards. So I ended up making around 75′ of cuts with a circular saw. The saw-sled I made a year-or-so ago made it a little bit easier. But, it still took me several hours to do something Lowes could have done in around 15-20 minutes.
Having cut the sheets into boards, I spent Sunday morning cutting all the broads to length. I finished that just in time for us to take Getzger to the Blessing of the Animals.
There are 21 of these shelves in the finished bookcase. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. 
Making Bookcases. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. This is what it is supposed to look like when I finish…
Now all I have to do is just (just … Ha!) assemble it all, stain and seal it. -
Hopefully I don’t need to write any notes this morning
Blue Kitty on my desk (again). Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Lanie’s Induction into the National Honor Society
Lanie receiving her certificate This evening Lanie was inducted into the National Honor Society. Well done Lanie!!
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Hurricane Lamp
Hurricane Lamp. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I love oil lamps.
I hate to admit it but they remind me of my youth. There has always been electricity where I’ve lived, but when I was young our neighbor across the road and two of the four village shops didn’t have power and used oil lamps.
My parents used an oil lamp for an anchor light on their sailboat, my sailboat had oil lamps in the cabin. Back in the UK, my Garden Room had several oil lamps too. Because of this, the smell of oil lamps is highly evocative to me. Unfortunately, the lamp oil we have now smells more like paint thinners than the paraffin (kerosene) smell that I remember.
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The start of the evening
The start of the evening The evenings are starting to get cool and temporarily at least, the mosquitoes have gone away.
Time to light up the chiminea and enjoy some time in the backyard.
I thought the beer was appropriate to the advancing season. Saved from last year, ‘Winter Grind’, a very nice coffee stout from Mother’s Brewing Company here in Springfield, Missouri.
Enjoying our first backyard fire of the year -
A corner of my desk is forever Blue Kitty’s
Blue Kitty Snoozes while I work. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Watching my work companion I’m thinking it might be worth my while switching allegiances to Buddhism.
After all, from what I’ve seen, the possibility of being reincarnated as an in-door domestic cat seems to be a pretty good option.
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An Evening Fishing on Stockton Lake
Twilight at Stockton lake I was hoping for another really stunning sunset, it wasn’t to be. It was pretty but not a really knock-you-off-your-feet affair. I was also hoping to catch some fish, and that wasn’t to be either…I had a couple of bites, but I was late striking and missed them. The good news is that Tom got a couple of nice-sized bass – 12″-13″.
For a change, we had two boats, and taking a picture from a fast-moving boat of another fast-moving boat at sunset wasn’t easy, even at 1/600 of a second the picture I got wasn’t as sharp as I’d like. Both boats had trolling motor problems. Tom’s battery was flat. Scott and Dash had what they presumed to be a wiring problem. Tom used what little juice there was and we drifted around a bit. Fortunately, the other batteries were fine, so we had lights and power to start the engine.
I discovered a new use for the GPS – finding your way back to the put-in when it is dark. I’m sure Tom didn’t need it, but it made it a lot easier to locate the correct ‘crinkle’ on the side of the lake. Again, I noticed how accurate the GPS has become. Back at the put-in, the track is about ±2′. Either there are more satellites or they’ve removed the inbuilt inaccuracy in the satellite signals.
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School Open House
‘Clue’ Rehearsal
After meeting with some of Lanie’s teachers we went along to sit in on part of an early rehearsal for this fall’s school musical ‘Clue’ Lanie will be appearing as Miss Scarlet.
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That confusing moment
That confusing moment … when driving home from Sedalia today I wondered when I was going to catch sight of the sea.
Note to self. Hwy65 is not the A3.
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Rentals
Kia Soul We get a lot of rentals.
I use them in my work for the diocese. It makes sense as the cost of the rental & gas is less than paying me the federal tax mileage rate – and there’s no wear and tear on our van. Ginger uses rentals when she has business trips – again it saves wear and tear.
I don’t mind trying different vehicles, I’m more concerned with comfort, ergonomics, and gas mileage than prestige. This time though, I think I might have been short-changed. This is supposed to be an intermediate vehicle, seems to be more on the compact side to my eye. And speaking of my eye, I think this is an ugly beast, and to add insult to injury it had a very poor gas mileage too.
The reason for this weekend’s rental was a trip to the Small Church Summit in at Calvary Episcopal Church in Sedalia today, and a visit to one of our churches – St. Stephen’s in Monett tomorrow.
I was back renting on Tuesday as I had a trip to Kansas City for a staff meeting this week. After Saturday’s green ugly bug, even Ginger liked the deep metallic burgundy color of this one.
Chrysler 200 -
Tubby has an Internet addiction Problem
Ever since Tubby was introduced to cat videos on YouTube he has become obsessed with screens and anything vaguely screen shaped.
This is not always conducive to my work. He sits on my desk for ages staring at the screen following the mouse pointer.
