The month started with dining out, dining in with friends, a concert and a play, cross country skiing twice, and a short trip to Vancouver where we stayed at the Hotel Vancouver with Taisho, dined downtown and met our cute-as-a-button grand nephew Finley for the first time.

Then over a couple of days, it all changed: self-isolation and social distancing; restaurants, shops, ski areas and golf courses closed; concerts and plays cancelled; and my last 3 classes moved from the classroom to skype. Interesting and scary times. But apart from all of that, life on the mountain continues.

In the event the social distancing continues for the summer, I thought it prudent to buy a used kayak for exploring the local lakes and rivers. Thinking of calling her Socially Distant.

Also got the car out last week for the first time since I drove it home December 23rd. I like is as much as then and maybe even more. Hope to get the bike out in the next 2 weeks – the roads still have lots of sand and gravel from the winter. Cousin Pat found this old photo of me and an earlier bike from 40 years ago – I was moving from Winnipeg to Vancouver at the time.

Found time to clean up the shop and garage and build a 3″ live-edge bench top out of a slab of cedar. The bench is for the front entry and tapers from 18″ to 12″ over its 7′ length. The U square steel legs should arrive tomorrow.

We bought and installed a pair of gates for the driveway (some trim and adjustment still needed). When we built the fence 2 years ago, I had two fence posts left over so decided to auger a hole and place them, in anticipation of a gate one day. As the posts were a bit wonky, I needed to clad them in some 2x material to give me a plumb post. And as they were an odd distance apart, I needed to place the hinges on the front of the post rather than on the inside face. This makes it almost impossible to adjust them to level but I remain hopeful we will get there (the post are plumb but don’t look so because of the camera’s parallax distortion). Because we walk past the gates twice a day to walk Taisho, we don’t think it will be a chore to open/close the gates for the car – they will be open and closed randomly I expect as we have no concerns about security.

I hope everyone continues to stay physically isolated and practices social distancing and stays healthy. That is not a problem for us up on the hill. And our long list of projects has proven to be a valuable benefit as we have lots to keep us occupied.