“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher “standard of living” is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.
For us of in the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.”

–Aldo Leopold

I’m feeling particularly anti-establishment today as I look over blueprints and work on bids for customers that keep flip-flopping on whether to “color, or not to color”… “We’re thinking about doing this… oh wait, no we better do that… well, we can order it right? won’t that just look lovely in our kitchen… blah, blah, f****** blah…” The cabin dwellers are so much easier to work for and they don’t own dogs that ‘yap’, but sadly they can’t pay as well, and these days one has to sell his soul for a tank of gasoline.
Over the past two days, I’ve been asked to do another roof job & another siding job this summer, and I, in a Fit of Greed with eyes set firmly on the trail, agreed to do the jobs. Does anyone know when Excedrin will be back on store shelves?

It was -32 here Wednesday & Thursday morning, then warmed up to a balmy -28 this morning. Unfortunately, I left one of the two dampers open on the new woodstove last night, so it was 48 degrees in the cabin this morning, which was disappointing.

I regret not meeting up with friends in St Paul this weekend for the regionals going on at the X. I could have & probably should have gone down for them prior to the Frozen Four, but I honestly figured it would have warmed up to at least normal temps by now in Alaska, and didn’t see the hurry until it was too late to change my flight.

I did finally watch the Leopold documentary “Green Fire” last night. My bear biologist friend loaned it to me, and I figured I better watch it before I leave town, because he’s the type of guy who’d send a grizzly after me if I didn’t. It was well done, but I’m feeling too cynical about mankind today to give it a proper review. I wrote out a nice, long paragraph just now on the film, but then realized that sometimes the delete key is there for a reason.

I am definitely looking forward to this vacation.