Learning my ancestors language

  The Cherokee language is nearly dead. There are 20,000 people who speak it and predominately as a second language. I do most my running around in a small town and it has a population of ruffly 100,000. I don't imagine I will find a lot of day to day need to read, write, or speak it but I am beginning to teach myself what I can from a few different books, websites, and hopefully at my upcoming class on the syllabary I will find a suitable person to help me practice. I know a few who can speak a limited amount already but it  is a complex language with little reference material available.  So, wish me luck. If all I manage is to learn a limited amount I will at least be doing something to help keep that portion alive.
  Not to complicate matters but I live smack dab in the middle of Choctaw country. I am equal parts Cherokee and Choctaw (this is beginning to sound like a country song) I guess it wont hurt to add a few Choctaw words to my repertoire. 

 The upcoming class I'll be taking is a weekend coarse focusing on the Syllabary created by Sequoyah. I have done some practicing already and am eager to learn more. For some reason I love that the language is set up as a series of syllables as opposed to English or Spanish. It at times reminds me of Japanese.
  Wish Me Luck

Concrete Countertop Experiment

Stage 500,004 of the remodel job we are doing on my home. It seems no matter how many steps forward there is always another step back and todays hurdle came in the form of to roof repair we did to fix the cause of our problems was not as final as we had hoped.  A quick fix will mosty likely have to step aside for a complete reroofing.
Todays project was a concrete countertop. After buying all new cabinets I was tempted to get a premade top but cutting cost at this point was a nice change. for a 12' by 2' countertop with a 20" by 31" hole for a sink. only cost about 10$ for the wood top we used as a lid for the cabinets.Then we used scrap wood we'll pulled out earlier in the remodel to build our frame. Then stapled a layer of chicken wire I had in the barn to the inside of the frame. Three 80pound bags of quickcrete and a few cups of portland later we were adding color. After the area was set enough (about 3 hours after we started ) we drizzled some drops of water based paint on the surface and stricked it across until we had the effect we desired.
Now we let it set 2-3 days then we remove the forms.

Autumn Sky Watching.

 I have had my telescope out for a few months now and I am very excited about the upcoming Hartley Comet that will be visible for a number of weeks throughout September with the naked eye and for weeks now I've enjoyed stargazing at Jupiter, Venus, and Uranus. I really havent been able yet to differentiate between Venus and Uranus they have been so close together in the night sky.I am missing my lost pieces to my larger and more powerful telescope. The one I've been using is good for viewing the moons surface but lacks the light filters a extra power of some the lenses used in my nicer scope.
I havent posted much lately but plan to document some of the stargazing I've been filling my free time with lately.