11/28-30/16 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

My schedule was moved up a day so I could attend Alaina's concert Wednesday evening.

I had a doctor appointment in the morning to figure out why my hernia repair was still hurting. The conclusion was that of all the bad things that could happen, I didn't have any of them. So, the doctor expects that I should fully recover in a few weeks, or maybe months, but he can't predict when. I guess I'll take what I get.

There was snow on the road over the pass and there was a small pile of snow under the eaves of the cabin when I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 12:52. It was 38° and cloudy. After hoisting the flag, starting a fire in the stove, and having my lunch, I took my usual nap.

When I got up, I set to work scraping the vine maple handrail again. That same greenish growth had come back. Compared to another peeled vine maple I had up on the porch, it seemed as if the Board Defense treatment I had applied to the rail at least slowed the growth of the mold or whatever. I figured that I had probably not applied enough.

The rail was damp to the touch because of the cold weather and humidity and because the wood was green. I figured that the thing to do would be to scrape off the mold again, then treat it with Board Defense, and then bring it inside the cabin to dry. So, I spent the afternoon scraping the rail down to nice clean, white wood again.

When I went to mix up a batch of Board Defense, I discovered that I had already used the last of it. I put it on my grocery list and then carried the rail inside the cabin and stored it in front of the big windows in front of the stove. That would dry it out.

On Tuesday, my groin hurt again. It slowed me down but I went out on the porch and started chiseling the "knuckle notch" in the Grid F.5 porch beam. Dave had pointed out that my staircase is rather narrow, especially if you are carrying a couple of suitcases, and that it would be a good idea to keep it as wide as possible. The narrowest part is from the top at the newel post down to where the Grid F.5 beam crosses the handrail height. So rather than have the handrail encroach into the stair width, I decided to recess the rail into the beam and cut a notch in the beam that would be big and deep enough to allow your hand and knuckles to pass while you are hanging onto the rail.

I had marked the location of the knuckle notch previously, so I got out the Bosch Bulldog with the wood-chisel bit and started cutting the notch. After having my lunch and a nap, I deepened the notch and made a short mock-up section of a handrail to test the concept.

Before I quit for the day, I decided to get my exerciser on the porch back to where I could use it again. I had quit using it for several months (or years) for some reason and now I wanted to get back to using it. The problem was that it was just too heavy. I needed to offload a bunch of rocks.

I found an old 5-gallon bucket and used it to offload five gallons of rocks from the exerciser. The rocks remaining made the exerciser just about right for lifting in my current physical state. I intend to add one rock each day I am at Camp Serendipity and lift the thing up six times. Maybe I can eventually get the entire five gallons of rocks back into the thing. We'll see.

On Wednesday morning, Dave called. We had another delightful conversation. Snow began falling while we were talking and it snowed the rest of the morning. It stuck to the ground a little for a while, but it never did amount to much.

After breakfast, I deepened the knuckle notch a little, installed the rail mock-up, and took a picture of it. Then I winterized the porch water hose and finally went inside and fixed my bedroom clock. I left for home at 12:45 looking forward to having a groin without pain and a little bit stronger upper body.