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Thanksgiving 2021 scene of the crime. 🚨

Busy kitchen island covered with Thanksgiving dishes including dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, a slow cooker, and a large coffee urn.
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Thanksgiving Turkey out of the oven. Now for the rest.

Roasted Thanksgiving turkey on a rack over a baking pan, golden brown and glistening, resting on a kitchen counter.
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Making Wassail Tea means that it is officially the beginning of the holiday season for us!

Hand pouring orange juice from a plastic jug into a large pot of golden liquid with whole peppercorns on a stovetop
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Four Thousand Weeks as Rings

I’ve been reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The title comes from the fact that if you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks. Technically it is 4,174 but that wouldn’t make a very good title for the book.

I’m still just in the beginning of the book but as I pondered his focus on the finitude of our time, I couldn’t help but think of how to visualize this! I knew Shortcuts could do the math for me, and then I realized Charty could do the visualization.

Concentric rings chart showing three nested circles in green, yellow, and red with a black center dot, each ring partially filled to represent weeks of life
  • The innermost ring (red) is the current week. It will fill up each day and reset at the end of each week. This ring will fill 52 times for each time the middle ring fills.
  • The middle ring (yellow) is the weeks until your next birthday. This ring will fill 80 times until the outermost ring is filled.
  • The outermost ring (green) is the weeks you have lived thus far. Hopefully we even overfill this ring.

It strikes me as an interesting visualization. Something to ponder. 🤔

However, I showed it to my family and they didn’t care for it much at all. The common theme seemed to be that “filling ones rings” is seen as a goal, something to look forward to, and filling these rings didn’t seem like a thing to look forward to. 😇

This post is part of the Shortcuts Collection.

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Faribault Woolen Mill Tour

We took the tour of the Faribault Woolen Mill today. We learned a ton of interesting things about milling wool as well as the fact that Faribault Mills is the only fully vertical woolen mill in the United States. They have been operating at this location for over 150 years, founded in 1865! The mill is entirely mechanical, almost nothing digital. There are 22 steps that the wool goes from the 800 lb bales to a final product. All happening right there in this one mill.

The mill wasn’t running when we toured so we were able to wander a tiny bit more, and touch the wool at various stages. I would love to go back and do the tour when the mill is in full swing to see everything operating.

Interior of Faribault Woolen Mill showing a long carding machine on the left, rolling carts with blue yarn spools, and a banner reading Faribault Woolen Mill Co. 1865. _Faribault Woolen Mill banner celebrating 150 years._ Large industrial carding machine surrounded by mounds of black-and-white blended wool fiber on a factory floor. _One of the Carding machines taking the wool directly from the bales and aligning all of the strands into something that can be yarned._ Weathered gray shelving unit with dozens of cubby compartments crammed with old gears, rollers, bearings, and assorted metal machine parts. _Many of the machines were manufactured 100 years ago and are no longer made so there are parts stored in various places for repairs._ Davis and Furber carding machine showing a large green iron wheel with cast hand wheels and metal rollers arranged in an arc above it _A step in the Carding machine._ Large industrial carding machine with multiple rollers covered in tan wool fibers, chain drives visible on the left, inside a textile mill. _You can see the strands of wool on the Carding machine._ Industrial wool carding machine with multiple spiked rollers covered in gray fiber inside a large textile mill. _The same pins and needles section of the Carding machine free of wool._ Industrial yarn winding machine with large black wool spools on top feeding thread down into circular bobbin holders below, inside a textile mill. _Yarning machine that is taking single yarns and making double or triples._ Industrial warping machine with hundreds of fine white yarn strands stretched across a large textile mill floor, with a Spartan Dyers box visible in the background. _This giant Warper machine takes a hundred or more spools of yarn and turns it into woolen fabric. It takes up to 2 days just to spool the yarns correctly._ Industrial weaving room with rows of green Dornier looms and large sheets of yellow warp threads stretching from machines to overhead beams. _Another Warper machine that can do significantly more complicated patterns._ Industrial loom weaving gray wool fabric with green warp threads visible, inside a large textile mill. _Multiple yarns of wool coming together._ Industrial weaving looms producing striped wool fabric in a large mill floor with green-painted steel machinery and fluorescent lighting. _Woolen blankets being assembled._ Perforated metal cylinders with grid patterns and handwritten labels stacked on a green metal cabinet in a wool mill workshop. _These are "programs" that the Warper machines can use to create different patterns. They are very similar to what a player piano would have used._ Antique industrial carding machine with numbered red and white buttons, chain drive wheel, and grid-lined paper output, in a workshop setting. _This is the "computer" that can create the "program" sheets for the Warper machine. There is nothing computer about it beyond the typewriter keys._ Cluttered industrial workbench with metal parts, a wall of small parts drawers, a yellow flammable storage cabinet, and a blue toolbox. _Workbench for the Warper programming and designing._ Large industrial loom weaving wool blanket fabric with bold blue red and yellow stripes inside a century-old mill workroom _Inspection station that all wool produced in the mill goes through. The light allows inspection to make sure there are no defects._ Four people wearing face masks pose for a selfie inside a wool mill surrounded by large bales of raw fleece. _Family selfie in front of multiple bales of wool._
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Tyler and I played as a team and came in 2nd in Ticket to Ride Japan. It is a fun variant with the community bullet train encouraging some cooperative play.

Ticket to Ride Japan board game in progress on a wooden table, with colorful train pieces placed across a map of Japan.
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The two most important ingredients when making lasagna are:

  1. Italian Opera
  2. Love ❤️
A smiling girl and a man proudly hold a large pan of cheesy unbaked lasagna together in a home kitchen.

Mazie and I made this pan with plenty of love, and the Three Tenors accompanying us!

Album cover for The Three Tenors in Concert featuring four men in tuxedos waving to an audience on a stone stage
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Tammy and I at Keepsake Cidery enjoying a crisp fall day.

Two people smiling outdoors at Keepsake Cidery on a cool fall day, one in a Minnesota sweatshirt and one in a red beanie and black puffer jacket.
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Firewood delivery moved and stacked. 🔥

Two large stacks of split firewood beside bare trees on a gravel shore overlooking a calm river on a clear autumn day.
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POAP 2759387 at ConstitutionDAO Contributor.