August 17th, 2004, 5:52pm

Well, last night we (myself, dad, and Don) prepared and ate our first meal in our kitchen area... BBQ'd chicken & local corn on the cob. Mighty fine! Dad had made a really nice kitchen counter with about 3.5' of counter on either side of the stove, and shelves underneath, and got the stove and a lantern connected to the propane tank. Today we (primarily he) continued work on the kitchen, making additional shelves above that counter area, all very tasteful & practical. We also set up a table on the opposite wall of the structure, and he built some shelves underneath that - that's where the canned (and otherwise mouse-impervious) goods are going for now. We mouse-proofed an old clothes dresser, and those drawers now house many of the things mice would easily & happily get into, and there's more storage areas on the way. Meanwhile Don's spent the last two days single-handedly cutting a new driveway through the forest so that we won't have to drive back and forth through the meadow all the time. What a lot of work! I really wish I had a digital camera to be able to show what I'm talking about. Hopefuly in the not too distant future I will.

I've been reading a fair amount since I got here as well. The first book, I had started while still in Vancouver, Lila by Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintainance, was really fantastic. It covered so much ground - biology, society & culture, intellect, and morality, and the evolution of those things, and offered [me] an expanded and articulated vocabulary with which to be able to see the relationships of those subjects with eachother, and how they relate to all things including people and human civilation. All of that within the context of a story of sailing southward down the Hudson river. It gave me tremendous food for thought, and since I finished it those concepts and articulations have risen again and again in various contexts each day. My own thoughts and observations of the world around me, conversations I have heard & had with others. Need I make it more clear - I highly recommend reading that book. It's rather... dense, but if you begin reading it, I would suggest just ploughing through, even if you feel (as I did at many times) that you're having a hard time keeping up with him. :)

Having finished that though, I've moved on to a very old copy of Zorba The Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis. Now that I've mentioned its age, I don't actually know when this copy was printed: "mcmlxv". But the name written on the inside cover is Siri Ram Singh, which puts it in the context of my family for some ~30 years, and it was evidently purchased as a second-hand book. My first impressions: wow - such clear and powerful images & emotions are conjured in my mind by his style of language. I guess I haven't come across such a style before.

Oh, before I forget, I wanted to say to my friends at Radiant: I've been using the flashlight I was given as a parting gift, and very often when I do I think of you all and am thankful - for more than just the light, but it's that which keeps bringing it to mind.

That's it for now. If I keep up like this I won't have time to get anything done around here, and I'll only be talking about the exploits of others!