Is this living? maybe it is playing

As is noticeable, I have not posted in a while. There are reasons for this. I have been playing, or is it working?

I have a neighbor, a good man, and a nice guy who likes to make comments on my back yard. Much of it is in fun, at least I think it is. He has been asking about what i can do about the female siver maple tree in the back yard. It is large, or rather was. As a female tree it would dispense a lot of seeds around in the time of seed dispersal, and he always wanted me to control that. I told him I would have a talk with the tree about being so promiscuous, but I did not hold out much hope that I would have much influence. finally the time came. the tree was jsut too big to fit in amongst all the wires which travel overhead, and after curtailing the branches over several years, it got to looking something like a cauliflower on one leg. Not good. After discussion with the boss, we decided to take it down. I ringed the tree with a chainsaw to stop growth, and asked several companies for bids. When they came back as more than the cost of the last three cars I purchased, I decided to take it down myself.

I teid myself into some webbing, and had a rope to tie to the tree (always remember to not tie yourself to the part of the tree you are cutting off), and climbed up with a small electric chain saw. I was thirty feet in the air, trying to malke sure I did not drop large branches on the electrical lines, and cutting the branches in small enough sections that they did not take me with them as they went whooshing by under the influence of gravity. The neighbors came out to make sure I wasn't going to drop the the tree on them, and after some reassurance, returned to the safety of their home. Now I have a pile of wood blocks, some smaller brush and limbs, and a stump some four feet in diameter and ten feet high (I need some leverage to pull it over, hence the ten foot measurement).

The next day I was talking to my neighbor, and he let out that he was in charge of the stake's entry in the Freedom Festival this year. We had a lighthearted discussion about trees and which were trash trees and should be removed before they reached the 4,000 volt line, and he asked me what i was going to do with the "Titanic" (my 16 foot nacra catamaran) in the back yard. I told him I was going to sail it, of course! He then asked what I was going to do with the stump of the tree. After exploring the option to turn it into the main support structure for a log cabin, gazebo, or carve it into the shape of a bear lying on its' back with four paws in the air, we discussed ideas for the float. I told him it should be a nautical theme. After all, everyone who came to America (all of us non native types who did not come over the land bridge in the Bering sea during the last ice age when ocean levels were low enough to walk across the spit of land) came in a boat. Well, enough ideas came out that he elected me to be on the float committee. We now have a float base, a budget, a proposed design (nautical), and until July 3 to put it all together. There are some requirements for us to meet. One, it has to be patriotic (duh!). Two, it has to be religious. Three, it has to celebrate 80 year birthday of the Sharon Stake. Four, we have to involve as many members of the stake in construction as possible, and five, it needs to be good enough to win the competition and be invited to the 24th of July celebration in Salt Lake. Oh yes, it also has to be suitably solomn and be approved by the stake presidency before we do anything. This is just one of the three or four projects ( I will elucidate later) I have taken on. More updates tomorrow, if I remember.