A few notes

The roof is done. As in finished, with all of the shingles in place, nailed down and ready for the first real spring storm of the year in my part of the world. Of course my porch is not finished but that’s another project.

In the past week I’ve been doing just a bit of cruising around the neighborhood (okay, the section roads in the area) and I’ve been looking at the sloughs. They are full of water and the ducks are nesting, which is a good thing. Also, this has been a very mild spring and so far we are in good shape for a good bird year. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we don’t have a spate of hard weather after the grouse and partridge settle down to nesting. I don’t worry too much about the waterfowl because they seem to weather the storms better than the upland birds.

This year I am promising myself that I will spend more time practicing with my trusty muzzle stuffer shotgun. I am confident that I can put up a better average than I have in past seasons but I need to focus myself and dedicate at least two afternoons a week to shooting at clay birds.

THE PINES REVIEW

My project for the coming week or so will be the next issue of The Pines Review. I am truly pleased with some of the progress that I am making with this issue. One big advance is that it will be available in either the PDF file attachment or the more sophisticated page turning format. The latter will make the Review much easier to read and I’ve also eliminated most of those pesky “jumps” that made previous issues hard to read. I am not saying that I’ve eliminated all jumps because I haven’t. If I did that then the text between the opening pages of each story would be painfully long. What I have done is limit the jumps to one per story. I think those of you who read the Review will like the changes.

I hope everyone has a good week—I know I will—NO SHINGLES TO POUND ON!!!

glg