Wood Zealot's Workshop

Two Tuesday’s ago was a dreaded day at my workplace. My company decided to jump on the current fad that is known as layoffs. 700 of us would need to go. The direction given to employees the day before was to come in, sit at your desk, and wait for the call from 9-11 am. At 9:23 my phone rang and a chapter of my life abruptly ended. This probably sounds like a bad thing. Far from it…

As a software developer in “Corporate America” the work was rarely enjoyable and frankly completely devoid of any sense of real satisfaction by it’s nature. It involved endless hours of sitting idly and staring at a fixed distance. In retrospect, it is possible that the sitting idly part could have reflected negatively upon me. In any event, after 15 years of it, I definitely feel a change is and will be healthy. But change to what? Well, If you know me, you know that my interests and aspirations lie in woodworking and donkey training. Donkey training is a bear on the back so woodworking would seem the better fit.

So here’s the deal.  I’m giving myself 6 months to attempt to make and sell woodworking items, specifically keepsake boxes to start. At the end of this challenge I’ll evaluate whether there is any chance that I could do it for a living. If not, I’ll stow away my soul and find another software job (I’m making gagging sounds right now).

Initially, I plan to make keepsake boxes. A design I fell in love with was Rob Cosman’s wood hinge box. His instructional DVD on making the box is a perfect tutorial. I’ve emailed Rob to ask permission to start out making his style boxes for sale and he graciously permitted me to do so. At some point, I expect to have a fit of creativity and put my mark on things.

Contrary to my generally delusional mindset, I know the odds of this panning out are slim (like pick-4 slim). I’m also cognizant of the “grass is greener” mentality, meaning that when this hobby becomes a job I know some of the currently fun things may, and will, become not so fun things. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? So with that, I will now discard all remaining TPS reports and pick up my woodworking tools.

Things I look forward to during the challenge:

• Working my hours. My sleep clock hasn’t worked in decades.
• Pooping in private. I’ve never really enjoyed a good BM at work with feet atappin’ in the adjoining stall. In fact, the bathrooms at work broke every principle that should be observed in a proper bathroom (perhaps worthy of it’s own post).
• Being active… the sedentary nature of my previous job was the worst. If you closed your eyes and just listened you could actually hear your arteries clogging from your last vending machine run.
• Just being free from “Corporate America”. I no longer live in fear of HR!!! I can walk around my new workplace cursing like a sailor and slapping people on the ass (given that I’m the only employee I’ll have to get a little creative on that one).
• Not being employee 013776 anymore. My entire adult life I have been a number, in the Navy and in a ginormous Fortune 500 company. Working for myself I expect to be recognized as employee of the month at least twice every month.

Things I do NOT look forward to during the challenge:

• Arguing with the boss over what constitutes “extended Oprah breaks”
• Removing dried glue from clamps more frequently
• The hazing I am preparing to do to myself (everyone has to pay their dues)

My six month challenge shall commence on Cinco de Mayo which, so happens, is an observed holiday at my place of business (finally, a day off!). I do reserve the right to lay myself off anytime after 30 days, unconditionally and without notice if i haven’t sold one million dollars worth of boxes (Shhh, this isn’t true… I ‘m just managing expectations of myself… it’s a corporate motivational technique intended to induce anxiety and despair as soon as possible).

I’m writing this post with one hand and on drugs (so… a pretty standard post). No, it’s not because of a woodworking accident, thankfully. And no, it’s not because I’m “multitasking” my other hand at the moment. The reason is that while I am fairly skilled at roller-hockey I was not so skilled one day recently and ended up shattering my wrist.

As you can see from my x-rays, I am now part machine. Let me hasten to add that parts of me are still human. Before you pure humans cast me from society, I ask you… If you prick me, do I not bleed? I’ll just go ahead and answer that… yes, yes I do bleed. So please do not prick me. That really was the point of all this. I just don’t want to get pricked going forward.

Some lessons learned in regards to having your wrist in a cast:

• It’s OK to stick stuff down the cast to itch things… but do not, I repeat DO NOT, proceed to sniff that scratching object no matter how tempted you are. There’s never a happy ending to that story.
• It feels natural to club things. I’ve accidentally whipped the cast around and clubbed doors, a plate of food, and my face (twice). In an unrelated event, I just ordered a baby seal off eBay.
• You must get used to placing objects between your legs, using your thighs to secure them. I even peeled a banana this way… it felt ironic. I was fairly comfortable with this technique until I was in full squat with a 2 liter soda wedged all up in there… the soda was from a pizza delivery guy who I’m going to say needs new shocks on his car. One of those moments when there’s no where to go…. nowhere to hide.
• Your groin is not the only place to stick things to handle/manipulate them…  Armpits, teeth, and other places will allow you to administer a python-like grip depending on the item at hand and your willingness to experiment. As Clint Eastwood said  as Sergeant Highway in Heartbreak Ridge “You adapt. You overcome. You improvise“. He also said “I’m mean, nasty and tired. I eat concertina wire and piss napalm and I can put a round in a flea’s ass at 200 meters. ” other than the “tired” part, none of that really applies to me but it seems like a bad ass way to end this post.

Tomorrow an appraiser will be visiting and assessing my home for a refinance. It seems that someone has run up some serious credit card debt, possibly related to tool purchases, and needs to consolidate. Sounds pretty standard right?

Well… ummmm… I’m freaking out a bit as I just took a visual survey of my home and I can envision an appraiser torpedoing the deal if they were to lack the creative vision necessary to see past how I’ve decorated the spaces. I imagine an appraiser is accustomed to seeing a dining room with perhaps a dining room table. Mine looks like this (these pics show things in a messy state… the notice on the appraisal was short leaving me little time to get organized):

Lumber buffet.

I must say that downdraft tables have long been overlooked in the dining room. Tired of having to pick up stray chips, pretzels, and cheerios from your dining table? What about trying to round up all those elusive crumbs? These nuisances instantly go away with one touch of a “start” button.

Going with the workbench motif

And yes, those are horse stall mats on the floor.

I’m guessing an appraiser is also unaccustomed to seeing a kitchen like this:

My spice rack. "A Dash of Stanley No. 3 sole rust makes any dish pop."

Requisite lathe for turning potatoes into fries (I actually saw that on a DVD once).

Even the living room is more like an office with a desk and light table in the middle of the room. It’s also where I store a post drill press (intended as a functional tool for the garage one day… the gears run like butta).

A living room? I probably should tidy up before taking pics, huh.

Standard living room accessory

If at any point I feel like the appraiser isn’t going to look past the current design of my home I’ll be prepared to remove him from the picture assuming the appraisal company will just send another one? Or maybe I should splatter red paint along the walls of one bedroom and just explain that “this is where I take people that prevent me from getting what I want”.

An observation that I made while writing this post it that I’m down to having exactly one chair in my entire home. Playing musical chairs when friends come over is going to end rather abruptly.

*** update: As is the norm for me, I didn’t get to publish this until a few days later. So, I can also report that the appraiser arrived and upon walking into my “dining room” exclaimed “Wow! I love this place!” and repeated that in mantra-like fashion until he left…  so I may have lucked out and am encouraged that things may go forward. My nerves are much less frayed. ***

Some days nice things just happen (and as we know, the other 363 days what’s mostly happening is something that only a dung farmer can appreciate) and I had one of those days recently as I noticed that the kind people over at Rockler had blogrolled me. Thank you Kim for this brief lapse in judgment!

In all honesty, as each day passes, I’m just proud that the references to me out there on the web are not for something embarrassing, such as a youtube video of me being caught riding a pony completely drunk wearing only a diaper (If I wasn’t clear there, I’m the one wearing the diaper… the pony is completely drunk).

I will strive to post more on topic about woodworking. In general though, I’m just trying to have a good time here… and for me a good time is writing a post that others find amusing, then a little disturbing, and ultimately nauseating. That is the cycle of life for my standard post.

Now time to head off for the weekend and celebrate with some beverages and Rhonda (Rhonda’s my pony). Wooohoooo!

Rhonda getting ready to party

I was at the bench today and looked out my backyard window and saw this little guy foraging around. “Mittens”, as I like to call him, is a groundhog that lives in the bank of a stream at the end of my property. It’s hard to ever get a good look at him because, as rotund as he is, he usually skitters away before I can get anywhere nearby. But like many animals, he’s apparently susceptible to predators behind glass which is where I took photos of him.

Now that I think about it, I did have a previous, odd encounter with Mittens a few years ago. I was detailing my now estranged Mustang, “Sally”, and all of the sudden I see this huge mass of an over-sized, rat-like creature blazing towards me. I jumped back about 5 feet and yelled for a particular matriarchal family member as the rush of life and death encounter with nature consumed me.

After calming down and changing my pants (people who know me, know I have a tendency to piddle during such events) I get on all fours and look under to see it’s just Mittens chilling under my car. I had never seen him in front of my home so I guess he got a little lost and as it was an extremely hot summer day he was probably just ducking for cover and catching his breath. So I resume detailing the car assuming he will leave at some point.

Not the case… as I finished up, I got back on all fours (my standard workplace position) and tried to talk him out… he went with the “if I don’t move, he can’t see me” tactic and continued to lay there, motionless. I started nicely with “hey, little buddy, time to go”, then shouting “boo!” and lastly, in desperation, tried your momma insults such as “your momma is so ugly everyone thinks she’s a possum”. Not even an acknowledgment of my existence (Mittens win).

A Hot Mittens is an unhappy Mittens

Needing to move my car and having little desire to get his innards all gummed up in there, I switch to plan B and try to poke him with a stick. It got him to move, but he would just continually move out of poking distance (Mittens win). Time for plan C, I get in the car and lay on the horn like there’s no tomorrow. Amazingly, no signs of retreat or surrender by the groundhog, just a few cross-eyed glances by passers-by as they just see the unstable individual honking at his garage door (Mittens win).

A disinterested Mittens

Finally with plan D there is success. I grabbed pepper spray and a stun gun…. kidding PETA, I just squirted him with a hose and he ran away defeated by the more intelligent species… or he ran away thinking “it took that idiot till plan D to figure out that I just wanted to be hosed down to cool off” (I win?).

Coy Mittens

Why is common wildlife so amazing to me? Well, I live in NJ (exit 4, so you don’t have to ask). While NJ is nicknamed “the Garden State”, as decreed by our license plates, the only thing we seem to be growing anymore is condos. In my backyard is one of the remaining 56 49 (I originally wrote this a couple months ago) trees in the state. So when I see some wildlife in my backyard, it always intrigues me…. along with the natural curiosity if I could capture and kill it for sustenance in a survival situation.

Mittens being Mittens

I had a brain MRI recently and while flipping through the pre-MRI questionnaire I had to pause when one of the questions was “do you grind metals?”

Like anyone else, on occasion I’ll grind on some metal if I’ve had one drink too many… especially if it’s particularly shiny or in the form of dancing robots (as in the video below). But nothing out of the ordinary and I wondered how this was even relevant in the first place?

On second thought I realized that they most likely meant abrasively removing metal which of course I do all the time on the grinding wheel and even most recently sharpening carving tools on a belt sander.

Wanting to get the MRI done, my eyes dart left and right, and my mind thinks “nobody knows… I can do this”. Thinking it through a little further, my brain does me the favor of envisioning my head inside a massive electromagnet with metal floating in my veins and what the resulting experience may be like.

So without further hesitation I do what I have to do and quickly grab the nurse… she’s offended… I figured what did I have to lose? My metal-laden melon is about to explode so I might as well get a cheap thrill first (plus, in all the educational videos I’ve ever watched the nurse always seems receptive). Anyways, it turns out I can still do the MRI if a head x-ray called “orbits” comes up clean which it does so I’m green-lighted.

Since I’m claustrophobic my anxiety level was already on the high side as I know my head is going to be strapped down and my body inserted into a tiny canal (I almost made a phallic analogy here but I realized I would represent the huge penis in it). The technician gave me some blinders to wear which really helped… have to say though, after being harnessed in and blinders put on I was waiting for someone to feed me an apple out of the palm of their hand as I felt like a horse being broken. I just went with it and whinnied whenever I felt nervous, which is to say every moment.

While inside the machine, I wondered how large a metal particle needs to be in order to be spotted on the orbits x-ray? I mean I use 15 micron silicon carbide belts on the sander which make super fine metal dust. Are particles smaller than the resolution of the orbits scan not going to be pulled through vein walls and into my virginal gray matter? In theory, my heart was beating during the MRI so couldn’t have some of these particles decided to take the road trip from the lungs to the brain during the scan?? I guess getting answers to these questions would have been prudent before doing the MRI.

Trust is both a wonderful and dangerous thing. I guess there was no damage done, although I have noticed that I now tend to face polar north when standing idly.

In the end, I survived the MRI and the results come back negative which was rather deflating… I was so hopeful that they would finally confirm the existence of a brain after all these years. Oh well, time to go oil my joints (a reference to the brainless Tin Man, not a euphemism for self-pleasure (this time)).

Note:  certain artisitic freedoms were taken in this post and it should be noted that no robots or nurses were actually inappropriately grabbed or grinded upon.

In an amazing development for me, I’ve been blogrolled by “The Schwarz”… That’s right… the man, the myth and the legend of woodworking himself. Do I deserve such an honor? Absolutely Not. Will I take it and perform a happy dance? You bet your sweet @s$. Will I be posting a video of me doing the happy dance? Officially, No, as we do not permit torture in this country. Unofficially, if people do not leave comments on this blog feigning interest such videos may just pop-up and I can’t be held responsible for the resulting trauma.

With this post I’d like to give newcomers to my site who are clicking over from Chris’s sites a proper welcome. Soooo, hi there.. how ya doin? Can I be your friend? Am I moving to fast? Is this coming across as “needy”? Ok, just forget what I’ve said… moving on…

You may be asking yourself why you should read my blog. My suggestion:  stop asking yourself so many questions and just go with the flow for once.  I mean really, what’s with giving yourself the third degree all the time?!? You’ve ended up here and thus it must be destiny that you are to forever read this blog (You’ve always been told that karma was a bitch, but no one ever warned you about destiny did they?) Anyways, what I offer is a significantly warped/skewed view of the world of woodworking and the world in general. I tend to treat all subject matter in double entendre, sexual inyourendo, and general immaturity. I am currently in therapy for this but the prognosis for change is not looking good. Please accept my apologies in advance for this medical condition of which I have no control over.

You may notice that many of my posts are non-woodworking related. This evolved over time as I noticed that it seemed to increasingly annoy my readers, a.k.a. my co-workers, who were expecting and demanding content related to woodworking. While this social experiment has yielded me great personal joy, I promise that I will endeavor to keep material at least tangentially related to woodworking.

As far as what I have to offer in regards to discussions related to practical woodworking… well, ummmm… this is where the plume of smoke would appear as I attempt to flee. A discussion for another time, suffice it to say my first two years in this craft have involved great study and preparation for a life dedicated to this passion. In future posts I’ll elaborate on my rather unconventional beginnings and the rationale behind. If your looking for real woodworking knowledge please see the links in my blogroll. You’re probably already familiar with them, but if not they are must-reads!

Lastly, thanks again to Chris Schwarz. His refreshing perspectives on this age-old craft and witty writing style have been inspiring to me (may appear to be just overt brown-nosing, but is in fact,  unadultered brown-nosing wrapped around genuine sentiment). As I have become more and more engrossed in this new world of woodworking, and even blogging, I’ve sought to model the qualities of several woodworkers out there and Chris would be my “top model” in many respects (although I can’t necessarily speak to how he looks in hosiery so please don’t ask).

So why do those antlers on your wall smell like do-do?

Every once and a while you have one of those moments… a moment that rips you from the normalcy and mundane of everyday life and says “it could all change right here”. I recently had one of these moments…

Friday night I was leaving my workplace and heading home on the local interstate at 1:45am (I work odd hours thanks to serotonin issues). Surrounded in a slight fog I put my car in cruise control at 74 mph and relax for the 20 minute drive home. Nary a car to be seen except in the distance. I shuffle through radio stations… AM stations… to listen to people talk about politics and allow my brain to numb-down to the requisite level for the drive. Rather peaceful drive, and then it happens before I can think…

For some reason I swerve from the middle lane to the right lane and yet my brain has not been so nice as to even inform as to why.  Then with a mental “whoosh” sound, life returned to normal speed and I realized that I had swerved away from a sizable deer jogging directly across the lanes and not using blinkers or proper hoof signaling in any way. I hadn’t even had time to hit the break… the car was still under cruise control at 74mph well after the event.

This deer was by no means small… quite on the large side actually, to where I mostly saw legs from my perspective. To be fair though, it is possible that I may have momentarily, and from a purely instinctual response, assumed the fetal position from which it may have appeared taller. Suffice it to say it was definitely big enough for me to saddle it up and mount it. And I’m not that small a guy… I’m easily big enough for a large chimpanzee to saddle up and mount.

So immediately following this near miss my body is flooded with adrenaline and resulted in two things; one, I had a strong desire to go back and beat the deer down and two, I think it affected my “rational” thought (not my strong suit to begin with) slightly. Replaying the event in mind I had come to the conclusion that it was only my super-human perception and reaction times that permitted me to avoid disaster. It became clear that I could dominate NASCAR if I so desired or perhaps even fight crime from the shadows… as the adrenaline faded, I realized it was more of a luck thing… but I did let out a little whimper of “I’m the king of the world” before the last of the adrenaline was gone.

I hope this potential life-changing moment always stays with me, helping me to appreciate every moment for the profound gift that it is, so that no moment in my life is ever wasted again…. one second… ummm, gonna have to get back to this some other time, “Turner and Hooch” is on TNT again. Ohhh, that Hootch and his slobbering here and there.

As a bachelor woodworker with a day-job, my diet generally consists of what you see in this pic of my freezer after food shopping:

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

I recently received some intel claiming that not all food naturally exists in cardboard boxes ready for microwaving. I was further told tales of things called “fruits” and “vegetables”. Long story short, you eat these “fruits” and “vegetables”and you magically become healthier… more energy, smarter, and a longer pen… err, wait I’m getting the claims of this better diet confused with other phallicies.

So, I figure what the heck my gullet has seen worse and decided to find a way to get these substances in to my body in a reasonable way. Hearing that the taste of this stuff is so off-putting I seek supository form. No dice. Googlin around reveals that blending this stuff up into goop form is a good way to sneak this junk into your system. Bingo!

After a run to the food store and acquiring these foods of mass nutrition I start sperimenting.

Day one test: banana, various frozen berries, and some orange sherbert.

Fruit Smoothie Before

Fruit Smoothie Blended

Result: Does not taste completely horrible.

Day two test: banana, various frozen berries, spinach, and water.

Green Smoothie PreBlending

Blended "green" smoothie

"Green" smoothie PRIOR to ingestion

Result: Does taste completely horrible.

Some observations… my body seemed to reject this foreign material as observed by varying levels of cramping and increasing levels of methane output. Out of concern for our world I may have to suspend further experiments with these dangerous materials.

Taking out the trash this evening I almost walked into a very well-hung spider web. Silk was flying everywhere as these two spiders were spinning furiously together. The little one was doing all the work, ferrying new silk lines back and forth and handing it off to the bigger one to attach to the main web. Occasionally the big one would belch and scratch it’s belly as it waited for the little one to return. It actually was a pretty cool display of nature to watch… too bad I must kill them now as I am the dominant, alpha, pinnacle species and must exercise my dominance. Oops, just checked and I’m out of Raid… will have to demonstrate my raw, natural fury after a run to Sears.

Sadly, almost walking into this web with it’s rather intimidating occupant will only reinforce my normal reaction to walking into webs, which is to hop in circles while spastically slapping myself.