Day 55 too late in the day

Preface
Day 55 & 56 were a mess and I think I missed my day 55 post.  Day 56 is almost over and I'm dragging so I'm going to post this and embellish and polish them both up in the AM, Thanksgiving morning.

I did upgrade my internet service and spent the last 90 minutes dealing with that.  Strangely enough I had some excellent support from CenturyLink.  The fact that I'm even saying that is a good indication that I need sleep.

Update Following Sleep and Caffeine

Day #55
Not going to a standard job does cause one to lose the rhythm of the week.  The original plan was to head 'up north' on Monday, Day #54, but in cleaning up my 27 year backlog the entire day was spent dealing with issues and mail from 2012 and early 2013.  At a minimum the census bureau will quit calling me daily regarding my agricultural filing.  Voice mail is full of messages from them.  It's possible I've actually memorized the 888 number and my case number without ever writing them down.

Not only did Day #54 evaporate but so did the first half (daylight) of Day #55.  Leaving after lunch put me in sunshine but a rock solid 18 degree (Fahrenheit) road trip.  Following a stop at 'the barn' for insulating covers I headed out to wrap up a couple of bee yards for the winter.  In the fall you steal all the honey that you can and then you feed your colonies sugar water to ensure their survival in the MN winter.  Smart beekeepers take all the honey, put the hives on a road trip to OK or TX and let the bees be street people for the winter.  I wrap mine up and hope for the best.

At 30 degrees they will fly about.  Normally at 18 they are going to be quite slow to move and unlikely to go airborne.  Working in the fall one does not need to 'suit up' in protective gear which is required certainly at 95 plus degrees.  During the cold months the bees go into a winter cluster, an eliptical mass of bees where they snuggle to keep warm.  When I popped the cover on the last hive they apparently had not received the memo regarding "winter cluster time" nor had they paid attention to the temperature.  What they paid attention to was the guy wearing a black coat (bad), sunglasses (bad), a black hat (bad) and no protective gear (bad).

That was the highpoint of Day #55.  In 1964 we did 'vocational notebooks' in middle school.  This must have been for the purpose of helping us plan our lives.  My three occupations of choice were fire protection engineer, nuclear engineer and beekeeper.  At the time the teacher ridiculed my inclusion of a beekeeper career.  It's fifty years later and I'm still muscling heavy colonies about and having bees in my face most of the year.  Despite my ongoing internal debate regarding my future in beekeeping it must have been a better choice than the other two.

Day #56
 Day #56 was Wednesday.  During this 'up north' trip I was supposed to pick up supplies that were needed 100 miles south Wednesday AM.  In the schedule in my head I was going to head south in the PM.  This resulted in two trips and an extra 150 miles.  The planned Day #56 actually started about noon after I took care of the ... actually this is all confusing.  I lost track of the days.

Early winter is upon us and I've been burning a lot of wood.  There's not much snow so I did haul another load of logs and spent some time cutting a previous load up.  For those not familiar with the process you are always working a year or two in the future and typically you have to move whatever renewable resource (logs) at least two or three times before getting any heat out of them with the exception of getting hot moving things about.  I guess I could just move wood all winter in lieu of burning wood.

You also need to have sort of an animal sense about when it's going to snow and prevent all this moving about.  When that happens you need to have t where it needs to be.  This supplements propane and oil which also are problematic.  Despite the simple meters which tell how much is remaining it's easy to forget or write a note an lose it.  This becomes part of a social movement with hundreds if not thousands of other winter dwellers also failing to read their meters or forgetting to order until it's an issue.  There are a lot of hours spent waiting for the "the propane man" and the "fuel oil man" to arrive.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  Last year I was thankful for having a job.  This year I am thankful for not having a job and hopeful for another in the future.  It's all good.