Bryce Moore's Blog, page 187

How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation

Well, that vacation ended up being more literal than I’d planned. Sorry for bailing out on all of you for all of last week, but it was ever so nice to not have to worry about anything while I was on vacation.

Anything other than my back, that is.

Monday, after a day long binge of Magic the Gathering matches, I went off to meet Denisa to go see The Martian (loved it!). While I was getting out of the car, I reached into the back seat for something. All was well until I stood up, and then my back decided it had had enough and went on strike. I could barely straighten up. Pure agony. Somehow I managed to get into the theater, and it’s a testament to how good the movie was that I still enjoyed myself, but getting home driving was painful, and I didn’t sleep hardly at all the whole night. It hurt every time I moved.

And the next day I was scheduled to go into New York City for a full day of fun.

I still wasn’t better in the morning, but I headed into the city anyway. Fun waits for no back! Denisa and I went to the LDS temple first, then had lunch with my agent and his fiancee, and then caught Something Rotten on Broadway. Other than a three hour walk between lunch and the show, things went well for the most part. As long as I could sit down, I was okay. Standing was difficult. Walking was painful. Sounds like fun, right?

But really, it was a great day, other than the pain. I had this chocolate dessert at the restaurant we went to (Boulud Sud): a chocolate cube. One of the best chocolate desserts I’ve had. Highly recommended. And Something Rotten was anything but. Funny throughout, with music I really enjoyed and still am listening to. (Bought the soundtrack before I went, on the theory that if I’m going to shell out that much money for a production, I’d at least better know the music going into it. Glad I did.)

What else was I up to? Wednesday was a day of rest, as I tried to get my back into better shape. Thursday it was on the mend, and I stuffed myself with food for Thanksgiving. My kids played with their cousins, we all went to Washington’s Crossing for a bit of history lessons, grabbed some deals on Black Friday (from the comfort of my couch), and caught 2 BYU football games and 2 BYU basketball games. And we won every single one. It was a great week.

But all good things must come to an end, and I’m happy to be back and getting into the swing of things. I hope you all had a lovely week as well. Back to work!

Time for a Breather

After running around doing conferences and meetings, I’m heading off today for a vacation. Not sure how much I’ll be posting in my absence, but I imagine I’ll have a thing or two to say. I’m very much looking forward to the break, however. It seems like the world is melting down around us at the moment, between Paris and Syria and Mali and on and on.

Seriously. It’s like every day there’s some new, horrible thing going on in the world. I have no idea if some of these are connected or if it’s just a sign of where the world is these days. Either way, I could really use some good news. Or some absence of bad news. It’s just depressing.

What will I be doing on my vacation?

Heading into New York to catch a Broadway show, go to the LDS temple there, and catch up with my agent.
Playing plenty of games.
Watching plenty of movies.
Reading plenty of books.
Eating plenty of food.
Watching plenty of football.
Polishing off the latest draft of THE MEMORY THIEF.

That’s such a better “to do” list than what I’ve had going for the last while. I’m going to do my darnedest to actually get it all done.

How are you going to be spending your Thanksgiving break?

A Report Back on MLA

Another annual MLA conference is in the record books, and I wanted to take a moment to step back and take a look at how it went. This year was different than last year, primarily because MLA was flying solo this time around. (Last year’s conference was held jointly with the Maine Association of School Libraries.) While that meant a smaller turnout, it also streamlined the process of conference planning, letting us really get a handle on how it could be done most effectively. It was a ton of work, but I was very pleased with the outcome. Why? Let me elaborate:

Keynotes: I thought all three of our keynotes did a tremendous job. Jamie Ritter, State Librarian, started things off with some big concepts, challenging how libraries define themselves and what role we should play in our communities. Big picture stuff. Aspirational. Always good to have that in a conference: a chance to take a look at the whole forest instead of staying focused on those individual trees. From there, Andrew Medlar (President of the Association for Library Services for Children) discussed how important children are to the future, and what an important role libraries can play in their lives. Finally, Sari Feldman (President of the American Library Association) introduced the Libraries Transform campaign, a new initiative to help spread the word about what libraries really look like today. All three of them fit very nicely together.
Presentations: I went to a slew of very well run presentations. I’m not sure if people who don’t go to conferences outside of Maine realize just how strong these were. I’ve gone to plenty of national-level conferences, and I learned just as much at this local conference as I did at those. Sometimes more. There was a variety of topics, including using data to tell a story, starting an RPG group in your library, reorganizing district consultants, and getting free galleys. All of it packed with useful information that can impact your library tomorrow. Great stuff!
Attendees: So much of the success of MLA Annual rests on the people who show up. It’s a chance for librarians of all types to mix together, and I was really encouraged to see that happen this time. Quite a few academics came out this year, and that’s a trend I really hope continues. Academic and Public librarians have different skill sets to offer, and different perspectives to provide. Together, I think that can accomplish so much more than they can independently.
Food: Once again, I ate far too much food. This might have something to do with my stress levels during the conference. It might also have something to do with the fact that they had killer strudel AND make-your-own-trailmix. (In other news, I personally think I have a bright future in the world of trailmix design. Is that an up and coming job market?) I also had the chance to try out new restaurants. Timber (in the lobby of the Marriott) had a great burger, and The Fiddlehead made me wish I hadn’t eaten so much the whole weekend, so that I could have properly appreciated a divine pork tenderloing. Mmm . . . Pork . ..
Hotel: Can I just say that the Residence Inn in Bangor was pretty much awesome? I was super impressed. The rooms were spacious, the bed guaranteed a good night sleep (or maybe that’s just how exhausted I was), and the free breakfast was spot on. A big upgrade from the Hollywood Slots where I stayed  last time.
Media coverage: We got on TV! Better yet, it wasn’t just about the conference, it was about how important libraries are, and how they need support. MLA exists to do just that: bring attention to libraries and help them succeed. Getting that message out to as many eyeballs as possible is important. Television helps do that.

Then again, I’m no doubt biased. But I have to end this post by taking a minute to publicly thank my three partners-in-crime for the conference: Nissa Flanagan, Alisia Revitt, and Jenna Davis. Doing something like this takes a lot of work, and I can’t imagine a better team to work with through it all. It’s not often you have a group where everyone’s willing and ready to pitch in, but somehow we have one right now. Each of us has different strengths and weaknesses. (My personal one is the dreaded “Calling People on the Phone,” something no one else in the group seems to suffer from, thankfully.)

Working with them made the conference seem more like an extended party than real “work.” (Though don’t get me wrong: there was plenty of work involved in this too.)

In any case, time to give a big exhale of relief. Thanks again to everyone who came and everyone who pitched in to make it awesome.

The Wire 2:3 and 2:4

The Wire rewatch rolls ever forward. It can’t be stopped!

Episode 2:3

Season two is still in full on set up mode, with the different elements of the story still maneuvering their way into place for the real story to actually begin. Then again, we saw the same thing happen back in the first season, so it’s not surprising by this point. After I’d finally accepted that I was saddled with the stevedores, the show thankfully started to make them more interesting so that I wasn’t so resentful.

And when you think about it, there’s a clear parallel between this season and the last one. Nick is D’Angelo. Both of them are young up and comers. Both have uncles who are well connected. Both have demanding girlfriends with kids. Both have to try and figure out how they’re going to navigate the modern world. I didn’t notice that on the first time through, but I’m definitely seeing it now. A whole paper could be written about that . . .

Just like a whole paper could be written about how much I dislike Ziggy. Even more next episode, but he’s one character who just irritates me the longer he’s on the screen. He and Nick are both in a tight jam, but at least Nick makes sensible decisions. (And doesn’t feel compelled to yank down his pants every five minutes.)

I appreciated that this episode redeems McNulty a bit. He cares about these cases, often in spite of himself. He wants to help people, but sometimes he McNulties it up. I liked seeing him waltz in to save the day for Bunk and Lester, only to have them prove that he’s not, in fact, the only person with a brain.

Then you’ve got Stringer decide to not let a lonely girlfriend go to waste. It’s the first we’ve seen him make a decision that isn’t cooly calculated, although maybe even this is still consistent. All about supply and demand, right?

Meanwhile, Avon proves just what a coldhearted person he is, when he casually sits back as multiple people die so that he can take care of a bit of business. Him reading his book at the end of the episode? Quite the image to end with.

The season still isn’t fully up to speed, but we begin to get hints of where it might be going, and that’s enough to keep me happy. I think it was harder for the show this season, since it first had to lay the foundation of what exactly stevedores do and who they are, where in season one, most people are familiar with drug dealing (having been informed from other shows.) In the end, I became a big fan of the dock workers plot line, mainly because it was a bold one to explore, and because it tied the show even tighter to its setting of Baltimore.

8/10 for the episode.

Episode 2:4

Ziggy and that leather coat. What an idiot. Why in the world Nick puts up with him is beyond me. Then again, we often make excuses for people who grow up with or for family members. Though anyone who’d take Ziggy with him on anything important shows that person isn’t quite as competent and with it as he’d like to think.

I like in this episode how other characters tell Nick that he should go somewhere else. Make money another way. And yet he can’t see that he has any other (legal) options. You could debate how true that is. He has no schooling. No experience doing anything else. Where would he go? What would he do? And yet I can’t help but think that if he’d just give something else a try, then things could work out better for him. Then again, it’s easy to forget how hard it can be to picture living a different life if you’ve only ever been exposed to one thing.

D’Angelo, meanwhile, can see Avon for the murdering slimeball he is, and enough is enough. Dee seems ready to wash his hands of Avon and just live out the rest of his life in prison. (But does he really think he can do that, knowing what he knows, and almost turning on his family once already? Dee might be family to Avon, but he definitely isn’t family to Stringer, as Stringer reminded us last episode when he slept with D’Angelo’s girlfriend.)

McNulty, on the other hand, seems to think he can get back in with his wife. And true to McNulty form, he decides to prove that faith with a grandiose gesture: signing the forms without really looking at them too closely. He thinks he’s the smartest man in the room. How many times does he have to be proven wrong?

But look! The band’s back together, and it only took 4 episodes. Sure, they’re not investigating what I assumed they’d be investigating, but there’s a chance for something permanent if they do well this time though, and that’s enough to give us hope. Prove themselves on this case, and then maybe they can get another shot at Barksdale. A shot that won’t be messed up by other police.

Anyway. Out of time for this week, so I’ll have to leave it at that. Another 8/10 for me on this episode. Solid stuff, but not quite to the next level yet.

What have you been thinking about the season?

Maine Library Association Annual Conference

Hello, Bangor! I’ve been here for the past two days as the Maine Library Association holds its annual conference. Astute fans will note that I did the same thing last year at the same time. Last year a lot of stuff was happening throughout that year with my full time job, which made it hard to really devote as much attention to organizing the conference as I needed.

Not this year!

So this year has been much more hectic and crazy, and I will be one happy Bryce by the time I’m looking at Bangor in my rearview mirror. Helping to organize and run a conference like this helps me appreciate all the work and effort that goes into making a larger scale event successful. There’s just a ton of behind-the-scenes work that has to happen, and almost all of it is done by volunteers. I can’t imagine the work that has to go into a Comic Con or a World Con. My hats go off to all those fine people.

Still, I’ve been sort of running around all over the place for the past few days. The ALA President came to town, there’s been dinners to attend, presentations to work on. Crazy crazy.

Wish me luck. If anyone wants to see me or say hi, you’ll know where to find me. I’m the one with the beard long enough that people are starting to comment on its length. (“When are you going to trim that?” they ask. “When I have time,” I answer. It might not be until December folks. But at least birds will have a place to keep warm in the meantime.) And sorry I don’t have more time to blog at the moment . . .

On National Tragedies and Mourning

Like many of you, I was shocked by the attacks on Paris Friday night. It hit even closer to home, since I’d vacationed in Paris this past summer. I was impressed by the outpouring of support for the country from across the globe. And of course, me being me, I’ve had a number of thoughts on the subject. But today I really just have time to focus on one.

I’ve seen a fair bit of discussion online as some question why when Paris, France get attacked, everyone suddenly cares, but when Beirut, Libya, has a similar attack, or a Russian plane explodes with hundreds killed, we don’t see Libyan or Russian flags of support flying everywhere, or the world monuments lighting up in those colors to show everyone cares. It’s an interesting point, and one that deserves some thought, but in the end, I don’t think it really stands up to snuff for a number of reasons.

In the case of the Russian plane, it began as something terrible, yes. But not terrorism. We thought it was “simply” another tragedy in a string of plane troubles the last few years. Familiarity breeds contempt, and unfortunately we’ve had a number of planes disappear or crash, killing everyone on board. If this case had been definitive terrorism right from the get go, I believe the response would have been different, but even today there’s a fair bit of debate about what exactly brought that plane down. (Would it have inspired Russian flag Facebook profile pictures? More on that in a moment.)

Then there’s scale. The Libyan attack killed over 40 people. It’s depressing that an attack of that scale has failed to really move the needle when it comes to shocking the world, but it’s not without cause. We’ve had numerous examples of attacks on smaller scales. Numbers make a difference in response on a global scale, even if they don’t make any difference to the people directly involved. The ones who lost loved ones and friends. But if Beirut had lost 200 people, I still don’t think you’d have seen the same outpouring of support from Facebook and the world. Why?

For the individual people changing their profile pictures, I think it’s because Paris is a city they can directly relate to. Many of us have gone their on vacation. We learn all about France in school. France is an ally in many different international endeavors. France is far away, yes, but it’s close to home in many other ways. And people relate more to an incident when it happens to someone they know. When my grandfather died, I was upset, but I didn’t wonder why most of my friends on Facebook weren’t upset to the same scale as I was.

Should we be mad or frustrated that people in America don’t care about Libya on the same scale as France? I don’t think that’s warranted, personally. Tragedies like this shouldn’t be used as platforms to tell everyone that they ought to care more about the entire world. Then again, I believe tragedies like this help us to develop empathy and understanding when similar attacks happen elsewhere, and I think that’s what this questioning has really been caused by: people realizing that this shocking event in Paris plays out in one scale or another across the globe quite regularly.

The national monuments lighting up in the colors of the French flag are perhaps an event more worthy of scrutiny. Individuals may mourn in their own time and way, but is there some unwritten rule as to how big a tragedy has to be before other nations take note? These are complex issues. But ultimately, countries are made up of individuals, and the individuals running those countries are affected by tragedy the same as anyone else is, and so their reactions are going to be influenced by those same feelings.

Anyway. I’m out of time to post for now. I have to be running off for the day. There are people to meet and conferences to run, but I wanted to get this out there this morning as I continue to try to wrap my head around the world we live in today. So much sad. My thoughts go out to everyone affected by it, wherever they may be.

No TV Tuesday

A bit late here, I know, but DC’s school was asking kids and their families to do a “No TV Tuesday” this week. DC had been looking forward to it for quite some time, mainly because she just likes doing different things. Me? I was not looking forward to it. Mainly because this wasn’t just supposed to be no TV. It was no electronics. I suppose the thought was that they wanted families to spend time together not looking at a screen. We spend quite a bit of time together with all sorts of electronics.

During the evening, I noticed just how much of my life is spent looking at a screen, however. (Mainly because each time I was doing something, my kids tried to say I wasn’t following No TV Tuesday.) I sat down to organize Magic cards (Yes. I do that for fun.), but I was using a computer to look up prices. “No TV Tuesday, Dad.” So using a reference source counted? Sigh.

I wanted to read, so I busted out my Kindle. “No TV Tuesday, Dad.”

It’s a book, kids. It might look like a screen, but it’s a book. I swear.

It’s okay. After a couple of hours, DC wanted to watch Netflix. “No TV Tuesday. DC.” Mwa ha ha!

She proceeded to forget three more times that evening. By the third time I reminded her, she sighed. “I don’t like No TV Tuesday.”

You and me both, kiddo.

Is it a good goal? Sure it is. Especially when you consider that the average teen and tween spends 6.5 hours a day in front of a screen, and that’s not including school time. (I have some issues with how the study was done, but there are more like it, and they’re easy to find.) In our family, we limit solo-screen time for kids to 1 hour a day on weekdays, 1.5 hours on weekends. Family time watching things together doesn’t count. I don’t think we always are able to stick to those limits, but that’s the goal.

It really helps that we don’t have television. If you’re going to watch something, you have to boot a device up and select a show. You can’t just channel surf. I know plenty of households where the default position for the TV is “on.” Ours is “off” by default, and I like that. It’s a much quieter place, for one thing.

So while I’m all for limiting screen time, I’m also against avoiding it entirely. The world consists of screens now. Trying to avoid them entirely seems to miss the point. I’d much prefer limited time every day than a “No TV Tuesday” once in a while.

What are your thoughts?

Book Review: The Cenote

The Cenote by Chelsea Dyreng

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Let me start the review with a disclaimer. (Something I feel like I do a fair bit of, come to think of it.) This isn’t a typical Bryce Book. It’s a drama with some light fantasy elements. It’s a relationships book. In the immortal words of Fred Savage (in The Princess Bride), it’s “a kissing book.”

So it’s outside my normal reading zone by a fair margin. But Chelsea’s a personal friend, and she happens to be a spectacular blogger and writer, so I had some extra incentive to read a book I wouldn’t normally read, if that makes sense.

I’m glad I did.

This is a book with a lot to offer. It’s set in an ancient Mesoamerican culture, and that culture permeates the book throughout. The point of view alternates between a husband and wife, with each of them viewing the main events of the story through different lenses. Chelsea uses this to great effect, weaving in different layers of tension and advancing the plot in great ways.

What’s it about? Two newlyweds in an arranged marriage get to know each other over the course of a year, experiencing more than their share of ups and downs. Oh yeah: and there might be some ghosts. That’s about all you need to get going, and Chelsea takes it from there. If you like romantic books with supernatural undertones and solid writing, then this is a book for you.

That said, I’m notoriously bad at being able to appreciate books in this genre. I have no doubt there are members of my former writing group reading this review, flabbergasted that I actually read this. Honestly, it took me some time to get into the book, but I think a lot of that has more to do with my unfamiliarity with the genre than anything else. Once it got rolling, it really zipped along. I finished the last two thirds in about a day. It’s funny in parts, insightful in others, and extraordinarily sad in yet others. You’re getting the complete package, that’s for sure.

In other words, if this sounds like your cup of tea, then you should really go out and get a copy.

Even if it isn’t, you should check out Chelsea’s blog. I’ve been trying to rope her into doing a guest blog post over on my page, so maybe you’ll be seeing her sooner than later.

View all my reviews

The Wire 2:1 and 2:2

And just like that, we’re into Season Two. This is a season that was pretty important for how I viewed the show, since it took it from the level of a simple cops & robbers drama and into something much deeper. The transition wasn’t an easy one for me, however. I’ll be interested to see how it is the second time through it. Let’s jump right in.

Episode 2:1

My first time through, I really disliked this episode, plain and simple. I’d been watching enough of these shows to know what I was entitled to get out of the second season: the Barksdale crew got away lightly last time, and so the team would be reassembled, and they’d get another go at bringing them down. McNulty would get off the boat, Daniels would get out of the basement, and they’d suit up, and good would conquer evil.

Silly, Bryce.

Instead, I turn on the show and get stuck with . . . boats? Shipping containers? What is this garbage?

I was less than amused, which is interesting, since the beginning of the first season was also fairly bewildering, but I was much more okay with that. I think the big difference is that I had a point of reference in the first season: it was a police procedural.

When’s the last tv show you watched that was all about unions? And why in the world would you want to watch it?

You thankfully find out by the end of this season, but it took a bit of pain to get there. I remember being frustrated that I was forced to spend time with idiots like Valchek and Ziggy. And what in the world was up with the stupid stained glass window?

Now that I’m watching the show through the second time, it’s easier to navigate all these things. Knowing where it all ends up, this episode wasn’t as jarring, and I had an easier time with it. (Though I still dislike Ziggy and Valchek. And I really miss Bubbs.) But even then, it’s a hard episode to get through, mainly because there’s so little in the way of actual good news. We see all the people from the first season, and almost all of them aren’t happy with where they are.

Nobody won at all.

Of course, McNulty can still be relied on to find ways to get back at people he’s mad at. Watching him spend hours so he can stick Rawls with an unsolved murder was amusing. (More on that in my response to the next episode.) In other words, characters are still being who they were. They’re just not happy about it.

And we have all these new people to worry about. Why? The short answer is that this show is all about presenting the entirety of Baltimore and what’s gone wrong with it. (And by showing what’s wrong with Baltimore, that can be extended to what’s wrong with America.) The drug crews, the police, and the lawyers are only part of the problem. They’re connected to it (which is why we still see them in this season), but they’re just a few of the symptoms.

So have patience with the show. Stick with it, and it’ll start making more sense soon.

Still, this first episode was a whole lot of setup and not a lot of oomph. 7/10 from me.

Episode 2:2

Okay. Things get a bit better here, though I still remember being upset when I was watching it. This episode confirmed that the first episode hadn’t been a fluke. We were stuck with these strange union guys for the long haul. And for the bulk of the episode, we’re still very much in setup mode. (Right up until the bloody end, when things get deadly serious very quickly.)

It’s interesting how both sides of this investigation (the murder investigations and the investigations into the union) start out of pettiness. McNulty takes his “stick Rawls where it hurts” mentality to a whole new level, and Valchek shows just how petty he can get. (Seriously. Having his officers waste time writing tickets is one thing. Starting an entire investigation, using up six people to try and get even. What a jerk. It’s fitting (and telling) that Rawls assigned him the drunk cop from season one. Clearly Rawls hasn’t changed his MO at all.)

There are good people in the city. Beadie (the new harbor cop) clearly cares about her job, but many of the people are good as a byproduct of other things they’re trying to get done. McNulty, for example, is good at detective work almost in spite of himself. He really wants to mess up Rawls, but he just can’t help being effective at the same time. (Then again, he’s also shown that his main motivation to be effective is to be able to prove to other people later on how smart he is. See, for example, the way he holds back on some observations about the first dead body he found, just so he could whip them out and make other people look dumb. Petty.)

Like last season, the episode is helped by having smart villains. The Greek (who turns out to be the old guy, not the younger one) is very business-like in his approach to crime. The casual way he orders the boat guy killed is on the same level as how Avon would have done it, but there’s something much more . . . brutal about having it done with knives instead of guns. And the torture at the beginning of it . . . Avon’s people tortured Omar’s boyfriend last season, but we didn’t see it, and it was done by his underlings. Avon didn’t like getting his hands dirty

The Greek doesn’t care about that. And he’s not using the body to send a message. He wants the body unidentifiable. Nothing that can lead back to him. The Greek makes Avon seem much more civilized.

And isn’t it ironic that the murder investigation this time is solved (for us) before the police can even really start? The Greek finds out who killed the girls, and he kills him. End of story. But the police don’t know that (and killing other people isn’t exactly kosher anyway), so the entire plot continues to unfold.

Meanwhile, the union workers are in just as bad a position as the drug gang was back in season one. It’s just a different flavor. They used to have jobs. They used to have hope. But they’re watching those jobs and that hope drift out to sea, and they’re left with trying to figure out the age old question: “What now?”

Frank has turned to making money by assisting smugglers, and the show quickly points out just how bad this can be. Drugs, prostitutes, weapons. Bombs? Make no mistake, Frank might be doing this with good intentions (saving his union), but it’s a very bad thing he’s enabling. 14 dead bodies is lightweight compared to what might happen. (And interesting to see that while Frank is really upset by the bodies, Nick isn’t. Maybe because Nick has so much less hope for his future?)

Anyway. I’m out of time now. This episode was an 8/10 for me. Still slow moving, but that finale was brutal, and things are getting into gear.

What have you been thinking so far?

The Wood is Stacked

We’ve been burning wood for heat in my house ever since we moved to Maine, and so stacking wood has become a bit of an annual tradition. Like holidays, but with more sweat and labor. Interestingly, it’s a process that feels like it changes some every year, mainly because my family changes, and we get more experience with the process.

The first year, it was just Denisa and I out there stacking, and neither of us had any real clue as to what we were doing. We’d asked friends for some pointers, but we didn’t actually get the wood until September, and we stacked all of it outside the house, then covered it with a tarp. The piles always seemed to want to fall over, and going outside to get snow-covered wood was a real pain. Not that we learned our lesson. We did the same thing the next year, only earlier in the season.

Have you ever been forced to chip the ice off wood that’s frozen into the ground so that you might have a chance burning it? It’s not a pleasurable experience.

So we moved the wood into the garage the next year. This was back when we only had one car, so there was an entire bay open and ready for wood storage. This made getting the wood much easier, but it also presented some problems for the house. Wood is wet. When it dries, all that water needs to go somewhere. You don’t want it going into your house, so a new plan had to be figured out. (Also, we got a second car.)

So we built a wood shed, and we’ve been tossing wood in there ever since.

These days, TRC and DC both play a role in the stacking. We get the wood in May or so, dumped in a big pile in our driveway. We stack it outside in the sun so it can get nice and dry, and then come November, we stack it in the shed so we don’t have to worry about going outside to get it. it works great in theory. In practice, it means moving each piece of wood three times before it’s burned: from the pile to the first stack, first stack to the second stack, second stack to the wood stove.

When you’re dealing with four cord of the stuff, that’s a lot of moving. And when November hits and you have a lot of other things to be doing, it’s One More Thing on top of everything else. So we’re very glad to have it out of sight and out of mind. (It also helps that heating oil prices are so low at the moment. Makes it easier to just turn on the oil heat instead of dealing with this awkward stage of heating a home with wood. When it’s this temperature, you typically have to light a new fire every morning to manage things. That can get old too.)

Anyway. There’s our wood update for the year. Next time you turn on your central heat, maybe you’ll be a tad more grateful for it. But the next time I’m sitting in front of my wonderful wood stove in the middle of winter, I’ll tell you to keep your nasty forced-air heat.

Wood is so much better.