Saturday got off to a relaxed start, as always when Tom is away. We watched The Woodwright’s Shop in the morning. It was a rerun, and in fact I have taped that episode. But it was worth seeing again. The subject was springpole lathes, and I hope to build another one real soon now. I had one up for a while, but it took up too much space in the work room. I have since found a design for a much more compact model.

By noon we were at Corcoran Center for the annual business meeting of colgaffneyis. This went well. We have no financial problems except, according to our Treasurer, that we have too much money. He is serious; a large bank balance is a temptation to financial abuse. The membership had a variety of suggestions, serious and otherwise, for dealing with this. Whatever we do must conform to our legal status as a nonprofit, which somewhat limits the fun.

We also elected/reelected some officers for the Board. None of the positions was seriously contested. I was not up for reelection–my turn will come next year. I may not run again. While I intend to be active in colgaffneyis one way or another, I am getting a feeling that I should try something different, leaving the dubious glory of the Board to someone else.

In the later afternoon we went to downtown St. Paul. colgaffneyis was a participant in the St. Paul Winter Carnival torchlight parade. As with the week before, we spent a lot of time just standing around before it was our turn to start. As a change from last week the soldiers carried swords rather than pikes. I enjoyed this–it seems more distinctively Highland than our usual role as “pike and shotte”–the standard 17th century infantry throughout western Europe. Others may disagree.

Speaking of portraying Highlanders, of the five men, Bruce and I (the two oldest guys!) were the only ones to do it properly, wearing greatkilts. The others wore breeches. I noticed the cold weather around my knees and for a couple inches above. That’s it: Cold air does not rise.

After the parade several of us went out to dinner. mia_mcdavid had gone through considerable trouble early to find a place that

1. Served good food
2. Served Guinness
3. Would take a reservation for that evening

It was a bit of a drive, but we all had a good time there.

Sunday we did not get out of bed until 11AM! That is only possible when Tom is away. After breakfast I went out to the shop to fix my sword–the loose hilt had been quite noticable in the parade. Disassembling it was interesting–first time I had ever taken apart a sword. I was please to see a full tang. I solved the problem with the hilt by adding a very ordinary 1/4″ washer between it and the pommel. This allowed me to tighten the bolt that held the pommel in place, I then ran a stone over the blade to deal with the accumulated nicks from colgaffneyis sword practise sessions.

The other repair project was quite mundane: One of the burners on our electric stove had gone dead. We had planned on just buying a replacement, but I took a long look at the burner and could not see where the circuit could be broken. So I started to take apart the housing. Everything was encrusted in charred black greasy goo, but I quickly found that one of the wires had broken off. That will do it. I found the wire, stripped off some insulation, and soldered it back into place. Putting the parts back together was a little tricky because everything was so greasy, but it did not take too long and we now have a fully functional stove again.

I had been reading earlier that day about how we are a throwaway society, because it costs too much to fix things. Hence I found it very satisfying to accomplish these repairs. It also felt good to get out a soldering iron again.

While checking the stove I found that my multimeter as broken, and I could not fix that. It will be have to be replaced. A multimeter, along with a soldering iron, are amoung what I consider to be essential household tools.

Midafternoon we went out to a small party at the minnehaha‘s. This had nothing to do with football. It was to celebrate the bigstonehead project, in which Mia had been a participant. We could not stay long, since we had to pick up Tom at the Respite camp. As Mia has written, he had had a great weekend, and was quite happy to see us.

The next couple hours were spent coping with the boys. Tom was actually much more manageable than his older brother James. By 8 PM we were finally able to relax with television. We settled on Iron Chef America. The theme ingredient was sweet onion.

Did not see a minute of the football game, and did not talk about it with anybody.