Yesterday was Saturday, the real Saturday, as in every day is a Saturday when you are retired. We had our regular Saturday meeting of the Traditional Seafarers. It is only the second time I have been to a meeting since the fire. We have moved the canoe into an enclosed coutyard where it can remain protected from the sun but open for the public to see.

Our first order of business is to build a dolly so we can easily get the canoe in and out of the wwater. It's all very well to gather a crew to chant and heave the canoe into the water but if we want to sail it regularly we will have to make it easy for a minimum number of people to move it.

We are also trying to get under way on building the utt, the traditional canoe house. We had to remove the four upright posts that remained from the old utt. The guys had already removed three of them and we set about removing the last one. It would have been easy if we'd had a crane or boom truck. Instead we had a come-along and a chain.

We ran the come-along to a tree and used it to loosen the post. We dug around the post and attached the chain down low and then built a lever. Unfortunately the lever we had to use was a small telephone pole so it was heavy as the devil. We lifted it, placed the fulcrum, and pressed it down. the post rose a few inches and we started again. the pole had to come up about five feet. We worked up quite a sweat getting it up.

Tuesday we go to the telephone company to get more poles to build the base of the utt. There is a pile of them there, piled like jackstraws. We have to select 8 or 10 good ones and drag them out to where we can load them on a truck on Saturday.

Today, I worked on replacing electrical receptacles and switches. Wakana wanted them all to be white. Now that I have done the living room I can see that it might have been a mistake to go with white. The switches are almost impossible to see against the white wall. I hope Wakana likes it. I'd rather not replace them again.

I also rearranged the living room. It should be an interesting day when Wakana sees it.