Gift ideas for this holiday season…

Yes, I know it’s only August.  But I already have plans in the work for the up coming holiday season.  Being the father of two boys, I don’t really have much experience with little girls and what they like or dislike.  However I do have three nieces that we buy presents for, so I have to be somewhat in the know, so to speak.  I do know enough to know that my sister would severely frown on a BB gun for her oldest daughter.  Which I don’t really understand, because let’s face it… everyone likes a BB gun, right?

With that in mind, I sat down and was reading the latest copy of one of my woodworking magazines and there in the pages was a perfect solution to my problem!  Since it’s going to be a handcrafted item for each of my three nieces, I thought the sooner I started working on them the better.  I have a couple of shop projects to complete before I can get started, most notibly putting my table saw on wheels and enclosing the base so I can connect the dust collection system I’m getting.  (A friend at work is selling me his, barely used, for half what it’s worth.)  And then after that is done, I will get started on the music boxes for the girls.  I think they will really like… at least they had better.  Below is a picture of what it should (hopefully) look like upon completetion.

South Sister Hike

When the alarm went off at 0110 hours (that’s 1:10am for those who don’t understand a 24 hour clock), I clearly remember thinking to myself, “What in the hell are you doing?” Moments later, I received a text from Mark on my cell phone saying “Let’s get it on, bitches!” promptly followed by another, “Matt, we have fresh coffee waiting for you.” Now we’re talking my language.
Grabbing my pack and miscellaneous items, I headed out the door and jumped in my truck. A short drive to Mark and Julie’s house later, I was sitting in their kitchen nursing a cup of coffee and discussing the upcoming day. The plan was to hit the road by 0200 hours, drive to Bend for a quick breakfast then off to Devil’s Lake were the trail head to South Sister’s summit awaited us. Ryan arrived, we loaded the vehicle and hit the road. Despite the hour, and the fact that the majority of us had only been asleep for 2 – 3 hours before this, we were wide awake and in great moods.
3 hours of driving, joking and drinking coffee we pulled into Bend and spent about 40 minutes trying to find some place to grab a quick bite to eat. Once we accomplished that, we headed to Devil’s Lake. The sun was just starting to come up and the deer were out in force, saw several small bucks off the side of the road and a few that decided asphalt wasn’t just for cars.  Once we passed Mount Bachelor, we could finally get some clear views of the South Sister… honestly I had no idea what to expect until I saw that mountain.  It’s huge!  I started to seriously question my sanity.  Devil’s Lake was a very nice, small campground that apparently was holding a convention for every blood-sucking mosquito in the state of Oregon.  Even the cloud of OFF did little to deter the annoying monsters.  It was 0610 hours, and we were shooting for being on the summit by 1100 hours, so we grabbed our gear as quickly as we could and hit the trail.

The first 1.25 miles of the hike is through the trees leading up to the plateu at the base of South Sister.  It’s an uphill walk, not serious, but definatly enough to get your lungs working.

Up thru the trees.

It’s a very pretty stretch, lots of trees, snow in many places, and amazing rock formations.  The volcanic forces in this area, and the thought of the power behind these huge boulders being thrown all over the side of the mountain, is quite humbling.  The only downfall to this part of the trail, is that there is no view.  Not until we hit the top, did we actually catch sight of our destination.

A view of the top... finally.

It looked about a million miles away, and around two million miles up.  Luckily, the second section of the trail was a very mild section.  About 2 miles of relatively flat walking, beautiful views, oh and more mosquitos.

Morina Lake

A view from the trail

Mark and Julie before we hit the final leg

As we started to near the end of the middle leg of the journey, disaster started to rear it’s ugly head.  Even though it was an easy, flat part of the trail I suddenly found my right leg seized up with a horrible cramp in my thigh.  We decided that this was a good place to take a short break, have a snack and catch our breath while I stretched and tried to pound the cramp out of my leg.  The elevation was about 7000 feet and we had a mere 3000 more to go until we reached the summit.  After working the cramp out (and leaving a rather large bruise), we hit the trail again.

The next 2 – 3 miles of the trail, was pretty much a constant incline.  Stretches of rock, sprinkled with scrub pine trees, and sections of extremely treacherous snow.  It was starting to get just warm enough that the snow was getting very slushy and slick.  More than once my feet tried to fail me and I almost slide down the side of the mountain.  I found it easier to walk on the rock covered trail than it was to walk in the snow.  One of the reasons, besides it being slick was that the snow made the cramp in my thigh scream in protest.  And after one long and treacherous stretch thru the snow, I finally had to call it quits.  No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the cramp to go away and it was torture to put on foot in front of the other.  I told Mark that I would slowly make my way to the ridge at about the 9000 foot line, but not to wait on me any longer and I would meet up with them on the descent.  It took some convincing, but I finally won out explaining to them that I refused to hold them up and keep them from making the summit.  So with that done, I slowly made my way up the mountain to my designated ridge line.  I was very frustrated and disapointed with myself, aside from the constant cramping in my leg, I felt good.  I knew it would have been a struggle to make it the rest of the way (the hardest part was still ahead of us), but I was up to the challenge.  Unfortunately my leg wasn’t.

Mount Bachelor in the distance

A view from above

A view of the lakes

A couple of hours later, I met up with the other three and heard the story.  They did make it to the top, amidst the 60mph gusts and blowing cinder, they said it was perhaps the toughest climb any of them had made before.  I was extremely glad that they didn’t hold up and stop because of me.  I was also very envious of their success.

Julie and the other two sisters

The trek down the mountain proved to be nearly as difficult as the one up.  What was difficult with the snow before, was downright dangerous going downhill.  More than once we all found ourselves sliding down the mountain, sometimes on our feet, sometimes flat on our back, sometimes on our asses.

Julie taking the quick way down the slope

Myself, Ryan and Mark on the way home

As we got to the lower elevations, we noticed that the mosquitos hadn’t taken a vacation while we were gone.  They were back in full force.  With clouds of them circling our heads, we hurried down the trail as fast as our abused legs would take us.  At 1749 hours, we made it to the rig.  Almost 12 hours on the mountain, and after having been up for 17 hours, it was a sight for sore eyes.  Peeling off wet shoes and socks, damp clothes and our packs we sat down and enjoyed an ice cold beer among the blood thirsty bugs.

Cold beer and hard ground

Sufficiently sustained, we loaded our gear and headed home.  South Sister is a very challenging hike, but the rewards are well worth it.  Even as tired as we all were, we were already making plans for another ascent next year.  Next time, I’ll have some pictures from the top to share.

Technology… BLAH!

To say that I am a little frustrated by the technology in my life, would be a huge understatement.  In the past two days, I have done little besides fix things.  It all started a couple of weeks ago with my wonderful Dell desktop.  I was minding my own business (surfing the web, or playing a game, I don’t recall which) and my system crashed.  Crashed hard, blue screen of death type crash.  Luckily, I know just enough about PC’s to be dangerous and after a quick download, (a string of words that I haven’t used since my days on active duty), and driver update, I was back up and running.

Or so I thought.  Yesterday… once again, minding my own business trying to burn a cd (which brings about a whole new rant), when I come back into the room I see that the computer has gone to sleep.  Odd… but not overly concerned I try to wake it up.  No luck.  I find that it has completely shut down, and it will NOT boot up.  Finally after calling it every name I could think of, and some that I probably made up, it comes to life.  It boots the video card and immediately dies and will not come back to life.  Slightly frustrated, I leave the house because I have a previous engagement with friends from work. (Nothing like watching people try to eat a 2# hamburger and fries.)

A couple of hours later, I come home to find that I have sprinkler heads leaking!  Now, I love my sprinkler system.  I would be lost (or at the very least have a very dead lawn) without it, but this would be the third head I have fixed in less than a week!  To say that it is a bit annoying, would be putting it mildly.  So off I go to the local Lowe’s to pick up a new sprinkler head.  While I’m out I also pick up a cleaner disk for my cd player in my pick-up.  Why?  Because, you guessed it, the radio in my truck is going T.U. on me as well!  I was seriously hoping that my radio just needed a good cleaning, and then it would be back to it’s trusty self.  It’s been a good system, and it’s only 10 years old… I was flabbergasted that I was suddenly having trouble with it!  Anyway, so I pick up a disk cleaner… and of course, no such luck.  Strike one.

I come home and start fixing sprinkler heads… luckily that really wasn’t that tough.  Hopefully I won’t have to replace anymore anytime soon though.

Finally, I come inside and start tearing apart the computer.  As I said before, I know just enough to be dangerous.  But luckily it seems that I knew just enough to fix the problem as well.  Not quite sure if it was my Nvidia graphics card or the AGP slot, but one of them went bad and yarding out the card and rolling back to my legacy graphics processor seemed to have solved the problem yet again. (Keeping my fingers crossed.)  Of course, this seems to be a weekly occurance now, so who knows what next week will hold for me.  But so far, I’m not having the best of luck with technology.

My shelves

I’m happy to say that I have finished my shelves and have most of them hung on the wall.  Hopefully today I will finish hanging the rest of them and then they can start gathering clutter, like most everything else in our house.  Now all that is left is getting the decanters and bar glasses that I like and my “wall bar” will be complete.

It’s rather nice to actually have something on the walls in the dining room as well.  After living in this house for seven years now, it seems like we have done very little to decorate.  As you can see from the two pictures above, one side of the room has shelves for wine glasses and bottles.  The top shelf holds six wine bottles and has space for hanging glasses underneath.  The bottom shelf has space for glasses under and then I put our wine decanter and other accessories on it.

The shelves on the other half of the room will be for liquor decanters, one for whiskey (http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=190&f=29486) and one for (the plan now) for vodka (http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?f=31860&c=190) since it also has martini glasses and our shaker on it.

All in all, I think this might be my best project yet.  I know my wife is pretty pleased with the outcome… I think she might even be glad for once that she let me buy all those new tools.

Now I can concentrate on my brother’s b-day present.  Got lots of time for that, but no sense in procrastinating.  Especially since t-ball has started and life has suddenly gotten incredibly busy!

Quick update

Just a quick update on my shelves.  I wasn’t happy with any of the test stains, so I mixed up something custom.  I used one part cherry stain to one part red oak, and I’m fairly happy with the outcome.

And in this photo, you can see the remaining 4 shelves are done and next to be stained.

Once these are stained, it’s a couple coats of poly and then time to hang them on the wall.

Update on my recent projects

I have been trying to diligently work on my most recent projects. Of course, work and family take up a lot of time, so my time to spend in the garage is usually sporadic. However, I did have a little time last week, so I made some advances on one of the clocks I am making, and one of the wall shelves that I started for the house.

In this picture, you can see that I’ve made the base and the center piece for my brother-in-law’s desk clock. The base is made from red oak, and the center piece from Oregon walnut. The clock dial is inset into a 1 3/8 hole which I put in place with my forstner bit. The center piece connects to the base via a mortise and tenon joint. I believe I am going to add some small wings to the sides of the center piece just to fill out the base. Once I have completed those, I will sand it to 220 grit and finish with tung oil and polyurethane.

In this picture, I show some of the progress I have made on the wall shelves I am building for our house. As you can see, the frame is cut and joined. On this shelf, I cut out the holes for the necks of the wine bottles. These shelves are being made from poplar, a nice easy wood to work with and one that will take a stain and dye very well. Now I just have to decide what my stain of choice will be.

Below you can see the product, minus the finishing. I have it set on the table holding 6 bottles of wine for demonstration purposes. Affixed to the bottom of the shelf are ¾ poplar pieces spaced to accept wine glasses. And attached to the edge of the shelf is ¾ by ¾ poplar that has a round over edge put onto it, giving it some definition and making it a little less plain. As you can see in the picture, one of my mitered corners isn’t fitting quite snug, so a little bit of finessing will be required before I finish this one. Four more of these shelves like this are on tap for the house. Each one will vary from the other slightly in the details.

I will keep things posted.

Upcoming Projects

As the weather slowly starts to warm up and thoughts of spring become less wistful and more reality based, (of course I write this as I sit and watch the snow falling outside), I start giving more serious thought to some of the projects I need to complete.  Having no heat in my “workshop” (my garage when I move the car out), makes it difficult to become motivated when the weather is cold.  But knowing that I will soon be able to work in my garage without having to bundle up like Ralphie’s kid brother in Xmas Story, I’m getting excited about it.  And due to an unexpected incident I see some new tools in my future as well… (thanks for hitting my car, buddy!  I’m looking forward to my new Delta bandsaw, planer, and biscuit joiner. )

There never seems to be any shortage of items on my project list however.  Over the years we have picked up some pretty chessy furniture because at the time that was what we could afford.  Now however, I look around and I see it as one more thing that needs to be replaced.   So here is a list of some of my upcoming projects that I hope to cover in my blog as I muddle thru them.

1.  Partly because I want a new TV, and partly because we’re just tired of the current one we have, a new tv stand is pretty high on my list of projects.  Something very similar to this picture, made of Oregon cherry and glass inserts in the doors to keep little fingers off buttons but still allowing the remotes to work. 

2.  My oldest boy kind of got the shaft and got stuck with a cheap, cheesy, MDF dresser when his brother was born.  Granted, he doesn’t care but I do.  I can’t stand his dresser, I hate fighting with the stupid drawers every time I open them.  Therefore, a new dresser is pretty much at the top (or nearly so) of my list.  I have the plans all picked out for this one, thanks to a local supplier with some great prices, I’m thinking cherry for this as well. 

3.  Storage is always in high demand in most houses, and it certainly no different in this household.  One of our hobbies that both my wife and I share, is wine.  We enjoy collecting it, drinking it and sharing it with friends and family.  I decided I wanted someplace to display our wine glasses, carafe, etc.  I thought for a long time that a cabinet in the dinning room would be good.  But then I found these shelves in one of my magazines and thought they would work very well for this purpose. 

4.  I have several birthday gifts that are in progress and need to be finished.  I’m making a couple of these desk clocks for my brothers-in-law birthdays.  And I have another gift in the planning stages for my brother.  I won’t go into detail, because he actually reads my blog.

5.  At the bottom of my to do list is the one project I’m probably most excited about.  I put it at the bottom however, because I know that being new to this hobby, I need all the practice I can get before I tackle some of the major things I would like too.  But with each thing I do, I find I’m getting just a little bit better.  So sometime in the future I have a grandfather clock like this one planned.  (No, that’s not me… It’s Norm.)  My brother has already said he will probably be ordering one once I finish my first clock.  So, I want to make sure I do a pretty good job on this one.

I think that is it for now.  Of course, that will all change in a matter of minutes I’m sure.  I have heard some rumblings about new book shelves, dinning table and chairs…  But I will hopefully keep things caught up as I work thru my current list.

Disposable Cars

As some of you probably know, my family and I were involved in a minor accident Sunday night as we headed home from a friend’s house.  I say minor, because in the grand scheme of things, it was minor… we were doing under 40mph, neither vehicle left the roadway, and no one had to be extricated from either vehicle.  The fact that I had both of my children in the back seat, did nothing to make it minor in either my wife or my mind however.  An accident is scary enough, when two objects hit each other with that type of force, when airbags deploy it’s surprising just how loud they are, my wife screaming on one side, but then you add in my 4 year old screaming in the back it made it even worse.  What really surprised me, was how calm my 1 year old was.  As I sat there trying to take stock of what happened and check on everyone, I turned to look at the kids in the back seat.  I could hear that my oldest was alive… or at least had air leaving his lungs.  When I looked at “T”, he was calmly sitting in his seat, blankie in one hand and looking at me like “Hey Dad… what’s all this white shit floating in the air?”

But the car did exactly what it was supposed too.  It hit a bigger object and the front end absorbed the energy and pretty much disintegrated.  I could have filled a wheelbarrow with the parts of my car that we swept into the gutter.

The people in Dallas who stopped and who came out of their house, have to be some of the nicest people I’ve met in a long time.  To stand around in the cold for over an hour to help out, covering up our kids with one of your blankets, and even sitting there and just keeping the boys occupied while my wife and I were busy.  I was extremely impressed and touched by their generosity and kindness.  Even the young man who decided to pull out in front of us, was a very nice young man… he just obviously shouldn’t be driving when his head is up his ass.  Although, I did feel a little sorry for him at one point.  One of the good Samaritans was talking to my oldest boy, keeping him entertained, asking his questions, etc.  She asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, his reply was “A cop like my Daddy.”  The look on the young man’s face turned to one of despair.

I tried not to laugh.  Honest.

… And the amazing adventures of “Iderman”

I’ve decided that there is something very wrong with the fact that my 20 month old son has very little interest in the things that I think he should for his age… Blue’s Clues, The Wonder Pets, etc.  Instead, he would much prefer to be watching Spiderman, or the Power Rangers, or Star Wars with his older brother.  Part of me is kind of happy about, since I personally enjoy watching Spiderman over Blue’s Clues… but I guess that’s kind of selfish.

My youngest even has his own Spiderman action figures, which he loves to grab, run up to his older brother and proceed to make “fighting” noises as he repeatedly strikes his brother in the head and face.  Inevitably, someone starts crying… and I have to stop laughing and actually act like an adult and scold someone for their behavior… maybe it would be easier if the youngest wasn’t so into Spiderman.

The Halloween before last, my wife picked up one of the clearance Spiderman costumes the day after Halloween.  It became a favorite dress-up toy for my oldest boy.  It’s red and blue and has the puffy muscles in it.  Lately, it’s become a favorite of the youngest.  He will pick it up and bring it too me with a very serious look on his face, telling me “Iderman!  Iderman!”  So I will help him into the suit, roll up the legs and arms and off he goes tearing through the house, arms out and making noises like he is shooting webs.  If it wasn’t so cute, I’d probably turn myself into DHS.  One day, I get him put into the “Iderman” suit and watch as he takes off chasing his older brother around the house.  At one point, the youngest was in another room so my oldest boy started calling to him trying to get him to come in where he was.  My oldest was calling him by name.   My youngest comes walking into the family room with a frown on his face, pointing at his chest and saying “Iderman!” repeatedly.  The look on his face was like he thought we were all completely stupid, as if to say “Ummm… hello?  Got the suit on, Friendly Neighborhood Iderman, DUH!!”

It all boils down to the fact that my youngest thinks his older brother absolutely walks on water and whatever is good enough for brother, by golly that’s good enough for him.  I wonder if it would be the same if one of them was a girl, I’m sure it probably would be to a point.  I think the sibling idology is pretty strong no matter what.

0630 Cocktail Hour

Living the life that I do, specifically being up working when the majority of the world is sleeping, puts a real damper on one’s social life.  (I won’t even begin to delve into the damper that two monsters under the age of 5 do to one’s social life.)    Not that I’m some kind of social butterfly… which became only too apparent based upon an email that went around work not too long ago where I was labeled repeatedly as “Shy”.  I’m not shy, I’m quiet… if I’m not talking to you, it’s probably because there is something wrong with you and I don’t want too talk to you.  So, take a good long look at yourself and make sure you fix whatever errors you find.   As I was saying, coming home and getting ready for bed at 0630 every morning when most of the rest of the world is heading off to work, really puts a damper in a social life.  It really puts a damper in one’s life when all you do is work and sleep until the weekend finally rolls around… one of the downfalls of 12 hour shifts.  But if I’m getting ready for bed at 0630, doesn’t that make it my cocktail hour?  But is it wrong to have a drink at 0630 in the morning?  Not every day, but sometimes you just have one of those kind of days where a nice short glass of Pendleton or Crown makes the memories fade away and sleep comes every so peacefully.  Even though I consider myself a beer affecinado, I just can’t drink a beer at that time of the morning, even though it is my nighttime.  No, when I find myself needing a drink, it’s usually a liquor.  Never having really been a liquor person… suddenly I find my tastes have really changed.  Long gone are the days of Southern Comfort, Jim Beam, and Wild Turkey.  Not that long ago, I even tried what I thought was an old favorite… Jack Daniels.  Although I have fuzzy memories of this being one of the high-end, most sought after drinks of our youth (Ryan, Paul… remember these days?)…  I couldn’t drink it.  It almost made me kind of sad, like another piece of my youth fading away.

I guess with age comes wisdom, and while I still greatly relish the memories (although some are very faint) of $4 tequilla with Mundo, I think I’ll stick to the top shelf for “Happy Hour”.

Cheers.