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Sunset wine
I am sort of disappointed in my life at the moment. I haven’t fulfilled my potential; I keep delaying my ideas until I can realise them fully. But at 56, time is running short for grand plans and I feel a slight sense of urgency to act on my dreams. Maybe I can do something
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All by myself
I went up to 555 this morning expecting to see the Monaca Doken crew on this sunny day but nobody was there. As it turned out, they got a call for another job with some urgency and went off in the big blue dump truck to take care of it. This did not deter me
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It’s cat blanket weather
We are in that best-of-year period where days are temperate and nights are chilly. The low temperature this morning was a single digit (8) for the first time this season. It won’t last forever, so I will savor all of these lovely days. Last night, I grabbed an extra blanket for the bed. In the
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Milk Cement
Today, a company called Something or maybe it is Some Thing, bored 45 holes in the space that will be our house and filled them with “milk cement,” which I think we’d call cement slurry in America. This was done to solidify and reinforce the soft spots that were uncovered in a Swedish sounding test
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Recycling electronics in Japan 2022
I recently cleared out a too-long neglected drawer of small electronics. Almost all of them were dead or long past their last upgrade cycle. I have been putting off this decluttering because recycling electronics is a troublesome process. There’s no central system, despite various recycling laws coming into effect in the last decade. So for
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Mandala meditation
Once a month, I put on two hats at once and lead a Satoyama Yoga class that incorporates Drawing Meditation. Today we worked with mandalas. Before we started to draw, each of us set an intention or asked a question by writing it on the back of our sheet. The seed of my drawing reflected
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A record year
Tod & I celebrated our 33rd anniversary yesterday with our first overnight trip since January 2020. Where did we go? What did we do? We visited Otaki Herb Garden and stayed overnight at Mochinoki. It’s only an hour north of home, but a refreshing change of scenery and tempo. We relaxed to the max and
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The mystery hole
Today we went back into ujiko mode. The next big step for Monaca Doken is to set the drains around the barn. It’s going to involve a lot of hand-digging and after the mess of groundwater yesterday, I think we all want this to go well. But a piece of information about the height and
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Too much water
Today, after almost a week of break due to rain, Maru-chan levelled the lot by scraping away all of the yamasuna down to the cinders of the old house. It is neatly piled up like a mountain of gelato. With the top layer of soil removed and the ground bare, the drilling can begin next
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Black Panther Bake Sale Pie
A while back the the dreadful heat of summer, Lawrence was reminiscing about a pie he recalled from his student days. “The Black Panthers use to sell it at their bake sales. Made with beans and spices. We ate it up.” I promised him I’d make one when the weather cooled down. And so over
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