I feel for you, Dennis...

This past week, aside from a good shop cleaning, I got the Lane cedar chest I brought from my mother's old apartment cleaned up and finished. The original exterior finish was deteriorated enough that rather than try and preserve it, I chose to take it black which will be a good look for our master bedroom. GF Lamp Black "milk paint" plus a matte clear did the job. I cleaned up the hardware without totally removing the, um...patina...from all the years since 1954 when my mother got it as a wedding gift. It was her very first piece of furniture and I'm glad it's staying in the family.

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I also got my shipment of "unicorn pine"... 5/4 clear...for a client project that involves 12 locker doors for an equestrian facility's new lounge. I unfortunately had to buy a lot that's twice what I needed simply to get the required material, but it really is nice stuff. My shop current smells like pine cleaner after initial milling of stock needed for the project. I'll be back to working on that today. I have a few other smaller things to work on this week, too.

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This weekend, we also bought a new ride for Professor Dr. SWMBO. That wasn't originally in our "immediate" plans, but it was still part of "the" plan. We had taking the 2011 Outback Limited that our daughter drives in for service on Friday because she has a planned trip to western PA to visit her boyfriend this coming weekend. There were a number of things identified that really needed remediation, as can sometimes be expected on a 9 year old car with 114K miles on it. (the last half of them "hard" miles because of how darling daughter drives) They were "little things" parts wise, but labor intensive and expensive as a result. So rather than putting out a bunch of money now on the older vehicle, we accelerated our intended plan to give DD our 2016 Outback Limited with Eyesight (only 36K miles) to our daughter as an early graduation from PSU present (title will pass after the deed is actually done a little more than a year from now) and bought a 2020 Forester Limited for Professor Dr. SWMBO to use for commuting to the train station and general driving. I have to chuckle because it's literally a "mini-me" of my Ascent in almost every way. The only downside was just how long the process takes to buy a vehicle...still. Despite all the computer driven things, etc., and even walking in there knowing exactly what we wanted, how much we were going to pay for it, etc., it still takes 5 hours to get out the door. The sales manager, whom we've known for years (our original sales person for the 2011), and I had a fun conversation about that as we are of similar age and dealt with similar auto organizations over the years. We both just can't get over how "nothing has changed" with respect to the time to complete the deal and how it's worse than closing on a house. At any rate, we're happy and the dealer is happy. They will turn around and sell the 2011 for well more than twice what they gave us after they replace a few parts and put on some new tires.

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