TIME FOR A BREAK

​The photo shows a table top that I made for one of my sons. Prefabricated metal legs are coming in the next couple of days. The wood pieces embedded in the resin are from a local Sequoia tree that was struck by lightning several years ago. I salvaged the trunk when it was cut down. A sawmill in Santa Fe cut the trunk into about twenty slabs, and this table uses the very last one.
 
Once the legs are here, I’ll get them attached and then be off to San Diego to deliver the table, eat out, and walk on the beach. Next on my schedule is a trip to Houston to help another son remodel a laundry room. Finishing that, I’ll be back home to help replace 200 cedar pickets on an aging fence. I also have a new granddaughter due in July, so I’m helping my third son work on his house and yard to improve his homestead while he still has the time.
 
Once I get done with other people, I’m enclosing my back deck so I can do larger wood projects; building the table top convinced me that I needed more room. The deck already has a roof, so I have only to build walls and put in a door.
 
The third weekend of May, I’m the featured Children’s Book Author at a local bookstore for a book talk and signing.
 
I did return to reading the history of Eastern Europe, but decided to scale back my focus. It’s too confusing to read the history of two dozen or so countries over a few thousand years, especially when every kingdom and province in the European world invaded the eastern countries at a pace of every hundred years or so.
 
When you throw in the big invaders – the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the Celts, the Vikings, the Turks, and the Mongols – and then add the religious wars, the Crusades, the Ottomans, and all the family dynasties (like the Habsburgs and Romanovs), it’s really hard to follow.
 
I gave up and bought another Bill Bryson book - A Short History of Nearly Everything.
It’s already a lot more fun to read (it’s a science book, by the way). Meanwhile, I’m back to thinking about my eleventh Mogi book. That might be a more enjoyable summer project and I’ll read about Poland and Germany the week before I go on my trip.
 
I think I’m suffering from history overload, so I’ll not be writing blogs for a while. I promised myself when I started blogging that I wouldn’t write blogs when I had nothing to say, so I’m going to use the time off to recharge my interests and rebuild my backlog of people, places and incidents that I think are interesting.

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