The very last thing you want to discover the week you are set to depart on a 100-mile trekking adventure is a hole in your boot. It can take weeks to break in a new boot and blisters will end a trek faster than almost anything else. The only option is to find a cobbler who can replace the sole and/or heel in time for my departure this Saturday. The good news is that I noticed the problem before departing. Kyle and I will be hiking through water, mud and snow as we amble through Patagonia and a leaky boot will be a really serious problem. Borrowing a line from Apollo 13, one of my favorite movies, “Looks like we’ve had our glitch for the mission” and hoping our story does not follow the rest of the script.

A project for her French class was the perfect vehicle to expand Maya’s woodworking skills beyond those used for kayak building (which is largely an exercise in fiberglassing). Students are each assigned a different type of building which can be found in a typical French village. They are expected to research the style of architecture and create a design on paper and then a scale model. All of the buildings are organized into a model village and facilitate conversations about life in France (“How do I get from the train station to that little hotel next to the bakery?”). Maya’s two-story bookshop features bookshelves, window displays, actual windows, a cloth awning, stucco paint, a slate roof, and wrought iron balcony rails. During the course of the project, under careful supervision, she learned to use the table saw, chop saw, jigsaw (both stationary and cordless), and pneumatic pin nailer. The result is likely to be the talk of the town. In order to light the interior, I placed a radio-controlled flash inside the structure.

It never ceases to amaze me how much anxiety a creature not one and a half inches in length can generate in my wife. She announced the discovery of this adolescent field mouse in our garage with a shriek. After failing to kick it out of the open door, she instructed me to capture and evict the cute little fellow. We have differing opinions about the relative level of menace represented by this tiny mammal but on this subject, I have learned it is simply best to follow the instructions of my dear spouse. After returning him to the outdoors, he was kind enough to hang around for some portraiture.