So why am I going to one today ? Coworkers wife passed away on Monday night. Funeral's in about 1 hour from now. Seems a good contingent from work will be attending. Gotta make sure I lug the kleenex along.

It's a grey, rainy/drizzly day. The kind of days I imagine Seattle must be like regularly. Not too chilly, in the 60s, but the kind of day you feel fall coming. Leaves should be changing and dropping soon. Ernesto took off a lot of the early leaves, judging from the 6 bags of yard debris I collected after Ernesto passed.

Been a short/long week, the ms is traveling to the home office back in VT. Spending time in the garage rough cutting wood for the next project (end table/sofa table). The more recent projects:

• Blanket chest (to be used as a file cabinet chest) needs a 400 grit sanding and wax, plus screw in the friction hinges.
• Bulletin board for a friend's wedding on the 16th, all done. She requested it, send their 'special' corks, but was about 40-50 corks short, so we left spacers to fill in.
• Trivets. I think we made 15+ trivets from scrap left over from the blanket chest. Amazing reuse, I guess. The FiL wants to buy 10 of them as going away gifts for folks on some committee/board he sits on. The rest will be Christmas gifts for friends.

This is all to start putting a dent in the 1500 board feet of white oak (mostly quarter sawn) sitting on our back patio drying. Been drying almost a year, so it's time to start taking it in and making stuff out of it. And re-claim our patio. heh.

Hockey season is starting up. I'm a fully registered referee now. Got to complete the ACHA/NCAA college (club) exam by Oct 1. Preseason kids games are starting up already. Speaking of, I should check the fantasy team, and see how the draft went.

Reading: I finished Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali, a Brit writter. Interesting book. Strong hints of Faulkner and Hemmingway -- location and plot felt like The Sun Also Rises, telling and characters were part TSAR and part the Compson family in The Sound and The Fury. Was interesting, but not fully satisfying, felt too short. Had hints of Camus in there, only for the same feeling expressed in the Stranger with lots of "the sun was bright, I was spacy" type of points. Anyway, good read, but unsatisfying in the end. To make up for reading literature, I've got a Chris Moore book up next.