I feel a need to honor my sister Alice because she was kind enough to favor me with a comment (even if it was connected to my scary self-portrait). She said that she'd be an everyday reader if I included an upholstery element to my man-shed. Well, no upholstered furniture in there as of yet, but this is the upholstered chair from which I write my blog. I've only told a few people about this blog; nevertheless, the lack of comments can make you feel kind of lonely.

So anyway, Alice is now obsessed with upholstery. I was obsessed with the stock market and now I'm obsessed with frugality. My brother Max is obsessed with some kind of thermal thinga majig. My mother, of course, lives for ballroom dancing. Clearly, mine is a family of strange obsessions. For illustration purposes only I share the following: my mother lived with us for a short time in our big old Victorian house in Machias. She camped out on the third floor and managed to fit all of her stuff up there. When she decided to move to PA, I naturally had to load all of her stuff into a U-Haul. Well, I almost broke my back because she had about a thousand books on the subject of... coping with a bad back. Go figure.

I'm going to go for my "sweat" in the basement because I'm too "spleeny" to go out to the man-shed. In other words, it's cold out there. I know it's cold because my "antediluvian" (Jake's description of his grandfather years ago) father-in-law is again talking about moving to Costa Rica. I have to say publicly that that would be a shame because I'd actually miss the old coot. Pop Pop, you mean a lot to us, so don't go. I mean, maybe we've had our ups and downs, but for the last bunch of years it's been mostly ups and there are things you've done for me for which I will be forever in your debt (and I'm not talking about stolen jeans and flannel shirts).