Stops and Starts

Well, it has been a while since I had left an entry here. So much has been happening, and I've barely been able to keep up. But seeing as I am stuck in The City on a Friday evening, I thought I'd do some writing. I'm sitting in Maxfield's House of Caffeine in the Mission District of SF, just having concluded a client meeting. Good coffee, free WiFi, I could hole up here for weeks!

It has been a time with some things finishing, and some things beginning. Some thing starting, and some things coming to a halt. Worldwise, we have the freeway in Oaklnd back as good as new. Here the highway department was saying it was going to be out of commission for months! It was out for less than one month. Amazing what $5 million in incentives can do to motivate people.

Finished also is "whale mania". We had a mother and calf humpback whales took a wrong turn at San Francisco and wandered ninety miles inland to Sacramento. It caused quite a sensation, with people flocking to the levees along the Sacramento River to get a glimpse of Delta and Dawn. (Those were the names the local media gave the pair. I hated it. These are noble, ocean creatures who entered the Sacramento delta region by accident. What if we were designated by places we mistakenly ended up in? Just call me "Colusa John"...) I loved the name that someone coined for all the people trying to see the whales..."Blubberneckers". I really wish I had thought of that.

And yes, I ended up being a blubbernecker myself. For the most part, I was in favor of everybody just leaving the poor things alone and disturbing/upsetting them as little as possible. But I just happened to be in the bay area on the day that the whales made their way back to the Golden Gate, so I went over to San Rafael to get a glimpse of them out by the prison at San Quentin. I saw them from afar, as they breached and vented their blowholes. It was pretty cool, especially as it was looking like they were going to make it out to sea again. We got worried about them for a while. (Yes, I realize that there is a LOT of marine life that also needs our protection out there).

On a more personal note, things have been drawing to a close on the Lucasfilm project. We had our wrap party out at Skywalker Ranch in early May, and that was a truly wonderful event. I got a chance to hang out with George Lucas and drink really good champagne. It was a little sad, too. Kind of like the last day of high school, where everybody is signing yearbooks, and wondering if we are really ever going to see these people again. Excitement about what lies ahead, but a bit of sadness about the fact that such a fun thing is drawing to a close.

On the woodworking front, I am designing a number of things at once, and I'm not sure which one I will start working on next. I have the coffee table as my main target, but I also need a table for my drawing tablet (that situation is driving me nuts). And to do any of that, it would really help if I could come up with some sort of base for my router table. When I was working on the desk organizer, I had trouble with it scooting around the floor of the workshop. Nothing worse than trying to put a nice, beveled edge on something while you are chasing the tool around the floor. So now I am designing my "super workcenter" that will have drawers to hold all my router accessories, and interchangeable tops so that I can mount the router table to it, or a grinder base, or clamping vise, or whatever. SO I'm in the sketching/planning phase on that. And I am beginning to modify the cofee table plans a bit too.

I've started working on a new film project called "Blaujeans", which examines the changing relationship between the United States and Germany since the end of the second world war. I'm doing some map work for it, and it should be pretty fun.

So it's been busy busy, with a few breaks here and there to gawk at whales.

Well, the traffic will probably have subsided a bit by now, so I guess I will head back in the general direction of Vacaville...