A Little Whine/Wine

This from Bookpuddle:

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
-- Michel de Montaigne --

Might be something to that. Of course, getting things turned around now would be nigh on impossible. However, if you look at the number of people incarcerated in this country compared to other countries you could probably make a link from lax education laws to overcrowded prisons. Or maybe it's not so much lax as it is boring. I used to hear that quite a bit - rarely about the shop classes but the academic ones. And I would be inclined to agree in large part.

And in keeping with the theme, I went to the meeting at the college Thursday night. While not necessarily boring, after attending meetings at educational institutions for 37 years, let's just say that I'm a little jaded and it's going to take a lot to hold my interest. Food was decent and we got out a little early, though. I give it high marks for that. Plus, this was only the second meeting I've gone to. Two meetings - two years. High marks there as well.

Saw this at Handverker. If you look close you can see on the label where it says Personal CNC. This thing has a swing a little bigger than my old South Bend lathe so it would be the right size for most anything I currently do or would want to do if I had my own Personal CNC lathe. Don't know what this thing is going to cost as it's in Beta testing now, but if I should hit the lottery, in addition to the new Jaguar, I'll be placing an order. Probably get one of their CNC mills as well. The college has a machining center in the lab where I work but it hasn't run since I've been there. I heard Thursday they're planning on moving it to another campus where they teach machining. I was hoping they were going to do something with it and depending on the schedule, I'd take the class. I've done a little CNC milling. Fun stuff.

Since I haven't hit the lottery yet, I spent considerably less money than that required for a Personal CNC or a Jaguar F Type and bought a wine making kit for making fruit wines. I decided rather than having lots of peaches rotting on the ground, I'd try making a couple of gallons of peach wine. Didn't need another project but this was part of the original master plan for my retirement years. Might make a good antidote to faculty meetings. In addition to my trees, I talked to a guy who has a few peach trees and he's lousy with them as well. Since there's no shortage of fruit, might as well give it a go. If all goes well, follow it up with a batch or two of apple or maybe even some persimmon wine.

Weekend's here with more beautiful weather. Life is good. Better still with peach wine.