On most days in the shop, getting stuff done isn’t a big deal. Honestly. I normally cruise out into the shop, get to work for several hours, then come back inside, celebrating my productivity.

That day wasn’t yesterday.

Oh, sure, I had big plans. Making progress on Kevin’s project. Planing. Gluing. Possibly cutting some joinery.

Instead, I was introduced to the force called the Big Moe.

No, not that Moe, famed in the Three Stooges shorts. The big mo I am referring to is momentum, which is the force that gets you out into the shop and keeps you there until you experience a totally productive day.

Things that can break your momentum, as you might imagine, can slow your work down to a crawl. That’s not necessarily a bad thing…

So, I woke up, bright and early on a Sunday morning. Once breakfast, catching up on sports scores and the other various and sundry things I had to accomplish, I decided to go out into the shop. Oh, yeah, there was that little laundry thing I had to do. So, I shuffled around the wash, remade the bed and got ready to head out into the shop.

Oh, yeah, I remember that several friends of mine were in town for a conference over on Clearwater Beach. So, I quick got changed into presentable clothes and headed on down for a very enjoyable lunch, catching up with folks I haven’t seen in more than a year. And, that was VERY cool…

So, once I got home, it was time to get back into my shop duds and get some work done. But, there was another problem – the place was a mess. OK, I was willing to overlook that, and got to work on resawing another board for the project. The band saw cut well, and as I started planing the boards down, the wood chips started flying out of the machine instead of going down the hose to the collector….

Drats. Time to empty the collector. So, I popped the lid to the can, then walked next door to my neighbor’s house to ask if he wanted the sawdust for his garden. Sure he did. And, we caught up for while. And, then I went back home, hooked everything up, then noticed that there was still a load of laundry that had to be dried again because it got wrinkled in the dryer…

Well, you get the idea. Every time I started, there was something that distracted me from the task at hand. Add to the fact that the shop is very hot (even with the a/c and fans running), and, well, before I messed something up too much to recover from, or I hurt myself, I decided that the time was at hand for me to clean everything up and call it a night.  After all, my momentum couldn’t even get started…

I got some help from my youngest son Steven, who really knows how to handle a broom. I also took the time to put some of the tools away I wasn’t going to need again for a little while, making the space a little less cluttered and ready for the next shop session. And, I went inside to have a beer, kick my feet up and relax.

At least it beats a double eye poke…