Celebrations

This weekend was the Homer Public Library's Celebration of Lifelong Learning - which I have equated in the past to hosting a wedding. While most of the time, my job is fairly relaxed, this is not one of those weeks. Among the things I have done in the past week - hot-glue tiny stars on safety pins, climb willow trees in search of the elusive grey buds that are one of our few indicators of spring, coordinate and recoordinate with dozens of people, food vendors, print countless paper products, and of course, load and unload close to 100 chairs. Oh the joy.

Not that I didn't have some fun this weekend, too. I went to a play on Friday night, which was very entertaining, went for a run on Saturday morning (short, my ankle is still killing me) and after the celebration, we all went to hear some music at Alice's. Our keynote speaker, Seth Kantner, extraordinary writer of all things wild and Alaskan, joined us, and I believe, had an excellent time.

But I'm glad to step down from that wild ride and now I can turn my focus to other things.

Among them - the great greenhouse of 2010. My goal was to have the greenhouse up and running by May 1. That's a little ambitious as it is 2 weeks away and there is still five feet of snow out there. But I'm fixing to change all that starting tomorrow after the chairs get returned to their rightful owners around town, some serious snow excavation is going to happen. After that is done, I can start working on securing the remaining materials - plastic, rebar, rough-cut and dirt. I also need some poles for the expanded new garden. That means I've got to learn to use a chain saw. I can do it. I think I can, I think I can.

Had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine this week about what people really mean when they ask you to explain how to do something - do they mean that you really want them to do it for you? Perhaps most people do, but that's not the case in my case. His allegation, however, was that the only way to really learn how to do something was to actually do it. Just do it. Don't ask for help. Just jump in. And that's probably more true than not. I'm a reporter, a researcher, and I tend to ask and ask and ask. But maybe I need to just do. Just trust that I can figure it out, chainsaw or how to sharpen my knives, or whatever, and do it. I'm going to try that for a while and see how it goes.