I love going to get my hair cut. With my short ‘do, I need to do it quite a bit.

Why is it so enjoyable? Well, I get to wake up early and head to the barber by myself (most times) on a Saturday morning. I get to crack some funny jokes with the barbers while they snip customers’ hair. I get to stop at the local bagel place and pick up breakfast for everyone  – before they wake up!

And, I get to swing by the local pharmacy to buy a pack of my favorite mints while getting some cash out for the cut. Yes, I loves me some peppermint Mentos!

I don’t know why I am so addicted to these soft and chewy peppermints. Maybe its the nostalgia angle… I used to buy these when I grew up in Jersey. Maybe it’s the fact that you can make them do incredible things when you drop them into Diet Coke.

Quite possibly, it’s  the infectious jingle that went with every ad. Mentos – fresh and full of life. Even if I jabbed a carving fork through my eye, I could never get that out of my head.

Why bring that up now? Well, since my post about online woodworking being dead, it would seem that quite the opposite is happening.In fact, you could say that online woodworking is fresh and full of new life!

Mark your calendars for tonight (Wednesday, Nov. 2) at 9 p.m. Eastern (that’s 8 p.m. in the Central time zone and 6 p.m. in the Pacific). That’s when you will see the triumphant return of #Woodchat!  What the heck is #woodchat?  It’s a Twitter-based discussion on all things woodworking. Yes, you may have seen this in the past, and it was good, but it’s back – and we’re back with a team approach. Folks like Dyami Plotke, Matt Gradwhol, Vic Hubbard, Chris Adkins and Dale Osowski are all on board, helping to spread the moderating duties in order to keep Woodchat a vibrant event.

While you can play along on your twitter page, it might be easier if you use a Twitter chat website such as Tweetchat. Just click on that link, and you will be able to see the conversation as it develops (while avoiding all the nonsense tweets about the Kim Kardashian wedding fallout).

And, I know this is kind of early, but now is also the time to mark your calendars for the week of February 5, 2012. For years, people have bemoaned the loss of shop classes and have questioned the future of woodworking.  Well, this once-considered-dead online woodworking community is doing something about that as well. That week, I am lining up support among the online blogging and woodworking forum communities to bring you a week based around getting to the shop.  We’re tentatively calling it Let’s Woodwork Week.

The purpose of this event is simple – encourage potential woodworkers to dip their collective toes into the water to see what it’s really like to build. Some writers will focus on the basic tools needed to get started in woodworking. Others may focus on basic projects that someone with beginners skills can tackle. Others may showcase some one-on-one training they are doing with some budding woodworkers.  It doesn’t matter… The whole idea is to focus our energies to get people out and  get them working!

I dunno, but if I was a betting man, I’d say the reports of online woodworking’s demise were greatly exaggerated. There’s a lot of spunk out there.. and I think we can tap into it!