Coffee break...

Time for a cup of coffee.

Work on the deck and orchards continues.

The chainsaw's clutch side-plate broke. I have two new ones coming from DeNile tomorrow morning. This is a big time of year for using the chainsaw.

Clothing

I am a big fan of 1/4 zip fleeces for winter wear, especially for very active activities like cutting wood or brush. "Layers" are the hot-ticket in the winter-time, especially when your calorie-burn can vary a lot.

They are extremely rugged. Even if the zipper gets trashed the garment still functions to keep body heat in. You cannot say that about full-zip garments or even shirts with buttons.

Being made from polyester, the fleece's insulation value is not impacted very much by moisture, whether from sweat or rain or melting snow.

Since they are soft, they make a better inner-layer than an outer-layer. Outer-layers are more likely to pick up burs of various sorts. A heavy 1/4 zip-fleece and a wind-resistant shell can be accessorized with various head and hand coverings.

Dunham's

Dunham's Sporting Goods is a local chain store and they advertised a sale on 1/4 fleeces. They were marked down from $30 to $20 which is cheaper than I can buy them from DeNile, plus I can try them on for size.

Pulling an XL off the rack, I tried to pull it on over my tee-shirt. No-go! What the heck?

It was too tight, by far, across the shoulders.

One possibility is that the manufacturers used less cloth so the dimensions "shrunk" across the shoulders. It just seems odd that I, at 5'-9" and 200 pounds, cannot fit into a stretchy, XL fleece.

The other possibility is that Belladonna's coaching on deadlifting bulked up my shoulders.

Resigned to reality, I ended up purchasing two XXL fleeces. It could have been far worse. It could have been too tight across the belly. Maybe they were. I wouldn't know. I was not able to pull the XL fleeces over my shoulders without popping threads.

Darn you, Belladonna. Darn you!

Explaining to young people what it feels like to be "old"

Do you know what it feels like when you put in 12 hours of labor that your body is not used to...like canoeing or scraping paint or hiking in mountains?

You know how every muscle and joint aches when you crawl into bed but you pop out of bed the next morning ready to do it again?

Yeah, being old feels exactly like that, except we feel that way after doing nothing and day long and we feel just as bad in the morning.

But thanks for asking...