Benchin’, cattin’, linkin’

Thank you to all who wrote in with kind words wishing T and I well last week. Happy to report that we’re both back to our normal selves. (Which, for me, means various age-inappropriate aches and pains that remind me I ought to stretch more, but at least they’re proper.)

I’ve spent a good chunk of time this week working on that workbench I mentioned. It’s more or less the one from The Naked Woodworker (it’s a very forgiving design, particularly for someone working with just hand tools, one that works impressively well without a vice). It’s been nice to have a project to go putter away at for a while each night—nice, too, to slowly learn my limits, to remember to put the tools down and tidy up at a reasonable hour, so I don’t stay up all night thinking about woodworking. It’ll still be there tomorrow, I try to remind myself :)

The other thing that happened this week is that a cat showed up on our back deck. She’d been around for a few weeks, but this week seemed to be begging us for food and shelter. We put a paper collar on her, to learn if she had a home, but nobody contacted us—since then, we’ve brought her inside (it got pretty cold in Ottawa this week), scanned her for a microchip, found none, and now have a cat living in the spare room. She’s incredibly sweet, and we’re figuring out what to do with her—I think we’ll know over the next little while whether A is getting a little sister. Regardless, it’s been a fun dynamic in the house this week!

Anywho—some links!

• Mandy Brown is reading Conflict Is Not Abuse, which alone is a good nudge to go pick it up off my office shelves. But I particularly enjoyed her note connecting Schulman’s work to that of Stanley Dekker’s on accountability.
• What does the study of “Canadian history” look like these days, and is it in crisis?
• Paul Wells may seem at his best when writing about Canadian politics, but some of my favourite work of his is his thoughtful, plugged-in thinking about jazz.
• John Batt, curator of the @gov.canada.ca Instagram, was recently profiled for his hilarious work. You should check out @gov.canada.ca if you haven’t—prepare for some rabbitholes.

All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas