11/16-18/04 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at about noon. There was no new snow on the ground and the old snow was nearly all gone. It was about 40 degrees and very pleasant. As soon as I parked the pickup up at the trailer, the older flock of gray jays was right there for a peanut treat. After feeding them, moving in, and having lunch, I went up to work.

I sanded all the surfaces that were due for another coat of varnish and then scraped, gouged, and sanded all the remaining logs in the living room over to the front door.

On Wednesday morning, Earl called on the phone before I got out to work. We had a nice long chat in which we solved some more of the world's problems. He also offered a good explanation for what I had found on my door stoop last week. When I told him about the chewed up leaves inside of the thing, he immediately figured it was part of the entrails of a grouse, probably the crop, that was left by a bobcat. Since there were no signs of blood or feathers, he figured that the kill had been made somewhere else and that just part of the carcass had been taken to that nice dry spot to finish eating. He said that cats will typically leave only the entrails of the animal they have eaten. That explanation sounded good to me since I have grouse (greece? grice? grouses?) and bobcats on the property.

I went to work and decided to do the kitchen wall next. I planed about 4 feet of one side of the Grid 2 loft beam (that was what I could easily reach from the platform I was on), and the top 5 logs and the window on the kitchen wall. Then I scraped, gouged, and sanded the part of the loft beam and the top 4 logs in the wall so they were ready for varnish. Then I swept up all the chips and vacuumed the walls and floor.

On Thursday morning, there was a skiff of new snow on the ground and it was raining lightly. There was a forecast for snow in the pass and Ellen called me during breakfast to warn me about it. Since it would be wet working in the woods today, I decided not to work on the water pipe after I finished varnishing but instead to leave early so as to miss more of the snowstorm. I went up and varnished all the prepared surfaces, had lunch, and left for home at 12:20.