We’ve been hyper-vigilant since the beginning of the pandemic. No friends or family in our home since late February. But we have had a couple of service people in to repair broken appliances. No way to avoid that. Fortunately, our house has a big-ass attic fan so we opened a couple of windows and turn the fan on high. It sucks a huge volume of air (and virus) out of the house.

We don’t heat our home with firewood but Barb and I love a good fire. So I’ve been splitting logs for a lot of years. I used an axe until someone told me about splitting mauls. It’s hard work but good exercise (I told myself). But I’m done with the maul. Barb bought me an electric log splitter. She’s awful good about researching stuff like this and chose a very inexpensive splitter by WEN. At less than $300 it might be the cheapest electric log splitter sold. But set-up was simple and I was splitting logs in no time.

Took about an hour to split enough wood to last us the winter. We keep a rack on the deck and the rest in a big stack out back.

Every year about this time our homeowners association has a picnic/business meeting. Rotates from home to home each year. The picnic is okay for meeting any newcomers (rare) but the business meeting is what you’d expect. Mostly a few people (same every year) bitching about the roads or or the dues we pay to maintain them. Eventually we get around to electing new officers (getting more difficult every year.

Thanks to the pandemic, this years meeting will be via Zoom and (mercifully) limited to 40 minutes. Plenty of time to do what needs to be done. People can email their complaints before the meeting so we can have an agenda from the git-go.