Relative Something

So this is what it has come to. I sit on the porch at the lake with my computer in my lap and I type in one window while an adjacent window displays a live feed of video from le Tour de France with French-speaking narration. The young children up here have command of the television in the main room right now. The wind is blowing at a constant rate, due north, straight off the lake. A minimally definable clouded sky doesn’t seem to deliver the rain that appears on the radar image of our region, but the day doesn’t invite one to make a substantial plan for outdoor activity.

It suits my mood just fine. I would like to lounge with family and pass Cyndie’s iPad back and forth in a leisurely-fought Scrabble competition. My computer keeps giving me messages about Google+ which I accepted an invitation for, (thanks, Jake!), but the only thing I have read about it suggests that it is comparable to Facebook. That never held appeal for me, so I don’t know whether this will become something of value for me, or not. Most of my discretionary online time is spent in my virtual community, Brainstorms. So far, the main thing I did with Google+ is add names of my Brainstorms members to the one circle I created beyond family.

The closest thing to a chore that I have demanding my attention today is to cut branches that Cyndie and I have been storing for a year in the rafters above the garage of the little cabin. We collected them from the woods because they have special knots and knobs from a virus that creates spectacular patterns in the grain of the wood. A couple of the branches have been infested by an insect that is slowly tunneling through, creating mounds of wood dust that piled up on one of the cars that we pulled in for cover last week during the dramatic storm.

The branches are too long to store with ease, so I will cut them into shorter sections. They could become small bowls, bracelets, buttons, or just sculptures of my imagination. It would be prudent of me to actually finish the bracelet that I started last year out of a piece from this same batch. It has suffered a long period of neglect.