Little Bit Of Splittin'

Seems there is no end to the surprises that keep coming our way these days. Apparently, what I've been reading about the banking industry has come to pass. I'm not an economist, but if you have your money in the bank and you're getting only .02% interest, and you could pull your money out and earn 4.0%, seems like you would be foolish to keep in the bank, especially if you have millions. If everyone does that, the bank runs out of money real quick, especially since the banks no longer are required to keep any money in reserve. Shouldn't have been too tough to see that coming, but Slow Joe says everything is cool. That's reassuring.

The weather is continuing to be colder than average, so I've been using the fireplace insert most every evening. I haven't fired up the new chainsaw yet, but I have some logs that are short enough, but need to be split. I forgot that my splitting maul needed a handle or I would have looked for one last weekend when we were in Amish country. I do have a splitting maul that has a couple of wedges that fly out upon impact with the log. It works good on smaller diameter logs but not on some of the larger logs, especially some of the stringy elm that I have. I have a couple of wedges for splitting. One of them is a real wood wedge, the other is a fab shop wedge cut from heavy plate. That one needs the top trimmed where it has mushroomed over. I'll take care of that next time I drag the torch out.

I split some logs yesterday using the splitting maul with the fly-out wedges and the regular wedges with a sledge. I noticed two things right off the bat. When I was swinging the maul, it came down off to the right of where I was aiming. Not sure why that is. I used to be pretty good at hitting my target with a sledge. Secondly, it didn't take long for me to realize that I'm not in lumberjacking shape. I knew I'd lost some muscle mass over the last couple of years, now I know the extent of it. Now I need to get to work - work being the operative word.

I've about got my tax stuff ready for my meeting with the tax lady. I've been pretty even tempered this year, mostly because it has become painfully obvious that there's not much hope for any of us in the middle class. Definitely need to make sure I'm pretty much self-sufficient going forward. Food, water, shelter, security, along with physical conditioning. Those are the words to live by now.