fidgetfidget

Had a good session at woodshop last night; it's between quarters, and M said he'd wanted to run the clock plans for the upcoming quarter past me, and perhaps make a prototype, so over the past couple of weeks we've been hashing through the original plans (which are too complicated for a beginner class and would take too long to build) and we dug up a nice slab of walnut that M had in storage that was big enough for 2 clocks.

M goes into the shop during lunches at work sometimes, so when I went in yesterday, he'd milled and put together the top, sides, bottom and cut but not attached the middle shelf of his prototype. Imagine a mantelpiece clock with a short swinging pendulum, about 3 times as tall as it is wide, and a few inches deep, with the pendulum in a little windowed cabinet. He explained the bits he'd done, and we decided to spend the session working on my duplicate, with me acting the part of a student. It worked well; I made him supervise me through the processing (table saw, crosscut saw, router, band saw, planer) both so I could work on my muscle memory with his supervision (there's nothing like missing a crucial procedural detail when working with Very Fast machinery), and to make it more realistic. Through the course of the evening, we got my prototype almost up to the same stage as his, with the minor exception of some decorative routing that he'd done on the top piece.

Was my injury a problem? Only once in a while; I took the splint off when working on the table saw because we were cutting the stock to a fairly narrow width, making for close quarters when pushing the piece past the blade. I also found that picking up handfuls of things (like several pieces of wood) in my right hand didn't work very smoothly, though that was easily solved by switching hands. And when it came to the jointer, because we were working with short pieces (there's a sign on the jointer that pieces have to be a minimum of 12", for good reason), that iffy situation plus the clumsiness of the splint led me to ask M to run the lumber through for me, which he was happy to do.

The fine janitorial folks at the PA high school are going to spend a week or so doing their quarterly(?) tidy-up of the shop (polish the floors, etc.), so there won't be any shop time next week, and possibly none the week after that.

So no woodshop for a week or two, no NCWHL hockey, no Thursday hockey this week, and I don't know yet about the week after. My 3-on-3 team did find a goalie and is coming together, so I suppose I should say, "Yay, the finger is healing well," (which it seems to be), "and I should take advantage of this rest period to make sure I'm all set for the tournaments."

Which is nice, in theory, except that I'm already going stir-crazy. I need something to *do*. I need something on my schedule besides work! Which, of course, is getting really busy right now. And even my family has left town for two weeks.

I'm noticing that I haven't been able to decide what to eat lately, which is usually a stress indicator. Why am I stressed, there's nothing to do! Except heal. Which isn't exactly a very active occupation.

Hrmmm...

*fidgetfidget*