November began well with harvesting the last of the tomatoes and some work with Bob. 20cm of snow fell on the 4th and got deeper through the month. This is 5 weeks earlier than usual and prevented the usual seasonal forest management work. Mizuho arrived back from Japan on the 9th after a most enjoyable 3 weeks.

Drove to Vancouver to see a good friend and former Ambassador to Japan who was passing through. We golfed and dined with another former Ambassador to Japan who brought me over to Foreign Affairs some 24 years ago. Stayed at the delightful 110 year old Sylvia Hotel (special deal at $88 a night!!) and at my sister’s for a few nights. Thousands of pieces of heavy equipment were astride the highway in the mountains laying pipe and fixing the road and bridges that were destroyed a year ago by torrential rain.

Had several dinners with friends and two concerts. Picked up 1/2 a side of beef from a neighbor and enjoyed some of a lamb we bought from another neighbor with a bottle of 2004 Chianti Classico (one of the few remaining old bottles from our cellar).

On the home front, I think I finally figured out how to build our bedroom door, something that Mizuho is keenly interested in. As a warm up, I built a door for the closet, using some straight-grained cedar BroinLaw Steve gave me that he reclaimed from his 50 year old deck. I trimmed the weathered wood on two sides then cut and planed the pieces to final size. The vertical stiles were grooved with a dado blade 1/2″ wide and 1″ deep while the horizontal rails had a 1/2″ wide and 1/2″ deep groove. The panels (cedar and fir) were all 1/2″ thick to fit into the grooves. After making 1/2″ tenons on each end of the rails, it was just a matter of glue, clamps, sanding and oiling. Still need to find the hardware to attach it to the overhead rail that I installed 7 years ago.

December should see some progress on the bedroom door, some skiing and some dining with friends.