live from the shack

I’m working in the home office tonight.  It was 22 degrees at the start, 50s within an hour with a wood stove stocked full of rock-hard elm, and now it’s t-shirt warm in here.  Two Colemans give light (and a little carbon monoxide so I cracked the door and a window).  My laptop’s speakers are playing tinny Christmas music that somehow fits my shack.  For the record, Robert Shaw has great Christmas tunes.  My alarm clock is ticking softly.  I like the ticking part; it’s nostalgic.  But the alarm…it has all the charm and subtlety of Glenn Beck on meth.

Dog 2.0 is snoozing at the foot of the bed, luxuriating in the heat and periodically emitting soft dreamy woofs.  And snoring between her little vocalizations.  They’re peaceful sounds, really.  Proof that at least one creature in this world is completely content with life.

Thankfully, she is only emitting woofs.  Dog 2.0’s farts could be captured and used as a biological weapon, but that would definitely violate the Geneva Convention.  She can clear a room faster than a SWAT team.

In the past two hours I have managed to do what would have taken me a full day at the office, with the interruptions, phone calls and “there’s someone upstairs to talk to you named Dave.”  I know a few hundred Daves, like most of them, but there are also millions of Daves I don’t know, and when I think about it, I think my Dave quota has been reached.  No offense, Daves-I-don’t-know.

I think I’ll bank some coals.  This is a good thing.  Wood stove, gas lamps, and a laptop with a big battery.  If I had a beard and someone else were typing this for me, I might mistaken for Amish.  Worse things could be said about me.

Respectfully submitted,

Canoelover