Random Picture

I found this picture a while ago, and I just stumbled across it while editing photos for the last post. It amuses me, since I work on both sides of cancer...causing and curing...

Setting up Shop

I've been getting interested in woodworking lately, and for Christmas this year, my parents got me a table saw. This one tool has really opened up the possibilities of woodworking projects that I can now tackle.

I started with a small project, camp chairs. I wanted some folding camp chairs that the family could take camping that were more than simple folding chairs. I found a plan for wooden camp chairs online, and I modified it by removing all the curves, making the chairs simpler. I ripped 2x4's into the appropriate sizes, and whacked out several chairs in a couple of nights. I stained the grownups' chairs a light pine, and the kids decided that they wanted bright red chairs.

Here's a couple of shots of one of the larger chairs; the chair set up, and the chair folded. It folds by sliding the seat out of the back frame, and reinserting it in between the back supports. It is actually quite comfortable to sit in. The kids' chairs are the same, but about 60% of the size.

After my last project, I added a dust collector to the table saw. Ripping several 2x4's without it filled my garage with pine wood dust. It was everywhere and on every surface. Since the laundry is in the garage, too, I need to control the dust. I tried using my shop vac, but it doesn't have the suction to handle the volume of dust a table saw creates. It does just fine with my hand tools, like a belt sander, but for a table saw, much more air flow is needed. I bought a small portable dust collector (~900 CFM suction), built a hood under my table saw out of scrap wood and a piece of 4" flashing, and I connected the dust collector with a section of flexible 4" Al dryer hose. That takes care of about 90% of the table saw dust. The rest I can deal with using the shop vac.

I'm looking forward to tackling more complex projects in the future.

Time to Update the Blog

I've been negligent about keeping the blog up to date. Things have just diverted my attention away from this; that's a good thing, I believe. Now it's time for some new posts.

I've got a new hobby, woodworking, and it's slowly taking over my garage. For now, I'll just leave a reference to a woodworking website that I've found quite interesting; good shop tips, practical plans. Woodworking for Engineers

Happy Birthday V! Happy Easter Everybody!

Happy Easter!

Today was Easter, and today was my daughter's birthday. We celebrated Easter at Mass this morning, and then we celebrated V's birthday this afternoon.

Virginia wanted to go to the zoo, so we were at the LA Zoo this afternoon. I was shocked at the number of people at the zoo today. We obviously weren't the only ones with this idea today. I believe the kids enjoyed it, there was bunny face-painting, and bunny ears for all the guests. The highlight was an elephant taking a shower (zookeeper with a hose). We finished the trip by stopping by the mall for dinner at the Red Robin, the birthday girl wanted to go out to eat. I've never seen an empty mall before; all the shops were closed, but a few restaurants were open. We played in the mall play area for a little bit, then ate dinner.

Since today was Easter, we went out to get Virginia's big present (from Grandparents Borths and us) yesterday. We took V to Guitar Center, and she picked out a guitar. We got her a beginner's guitar book, and we plan on lessons after she gets a little more familiar with the guitar. She now has a cherry red 3/4 size Fender. We went with an electric guitar because the strings on electrics are less difficult to press down than on acoustic guitars. That was a strong factor considering the size of V's fingers. Plus, an electric guitar is more fun than an acoustic (more knobs to play with).

(A confession from me belongs here. I will almost definitely try to learn to play V's guitar. Who knows, maybe I'll get one of my own someday...)

Easter Morning. Baskets from the Easter bunny,
and V is opening birthday presents.

Our bunny ears. If you look closely, you can see V's face paint.

Elephant shower. I believe he's drinking here.

The mall on Easter afternoon.
Deserted.

Rock on, V. Rock on.

The kids' B-day party

We had a joint birthday party for the kids today, and I think everyone had a good time. As usual, Liz did a great job planning the shindig, and the weather today was just fabulous. We opened up the sliding glass door and let the party spill out into the back yard.

Liz set up a pizza party for the kids. She pre-baked some personal size pizza crusts, and we let the kids spread sauce, cheese and toppings on their pizzas (outside, of course). They then handed the pizzas to me in the kitchen (we have a window that opens into the backyard; it was great for this), and I baked the pizzas for everyone. The kids all got paper cook hats (think the hat you'd see at a burger joint) and paper aprons to decorate and wear. After pizza was the cake. Liz did better than last year, check out the pics below. We then opened presents, and the kids got some wonderful gifts. Then, after about 3 hours, everyone left. By then it was naptime for most of our guests under 6.

Liz made both of these cakes herself, and I was impressed. She did purchase the Care Bears, and the Car and Piston Cup on John's cake are toys, but she did everything else. Even the icing was made from scratch and dyed with her own color mix. I like the M&M rainbow (V helped with that) and the "3" road on John's cake. You can just see the oreos ringing the base of J's cake. Liz put them on because the looked like tires. V's cake is ringed with tiny marshmallows. They tasted as good as they looked.

We cleaned up this evening, and I'm enjoying some peace and quiet outside while the kids are asleep. I've got a small fire going in my new outdoor fireplace, and the wireless network lets me write this in the backyard. Today was a good day.

BTW- I'm sure Liz will be posing more party pics on her blog. I just wanted to share the cake pics first.

My $7 outdoor fireplace

I've wanted an outdoor fireplace since I bought my house. I have a gas fireplace in the house, but burning gas inside is not the same as burning stuff (wood, charcoal, etc.) outside. I like terra cotta chimeneas, but I couldn't stomach paying over $50 for one. So I decided to make myself an outdoor fireplace.

I wanted something simple and small. I wanted to be able to move my fireplace around without trouble, and I wanted to be able to put it away when I didn't want to use it. That precluded building a permanent fire pit in the yard. (But I know how to build one out of brick now.)

I happened to see a cactus planter at Home Depot, and it struck me as the perfect fireplace. It was a shallow terra cotta dish 15" in diameter, and about 5" deep. The only downside was the presence of a drainage hole in the middle of the dish. Well, I could fix that. I bought the planter for $7, and built a nice fireplace with materials I had around my garage.

I built a stand for the pot using 2x4's. The ceramic of the pot should insulate the wood of the stand from charing or burning. I kept the stand simple; I built a 1 foot cube out of eight 10.5" lengths of 2x4 using drywall screws. I painted the stand black with a can of spray paint I had leftover from another project. To seal the hole in the bottom of the planter, I used mortar to affix a broken piece of tile over the hole. We have used the fireplace twice this weekend, roasting marshmallows both times. I hope the family enjoys it as much as I do. (Although Liz does dislike the fact that our clothes smell like smoke when we're done. C'est la vie.)

Spending only $7 on the whole project is a source of frugal pride for me. But I still would like a chimenea. Maybe I could build one...

Here's the stand I built before painting.

I put a piece of cardboard under the hole in the bottom of the pot, put a layer of mortar down, and pressed the tile into the mortar. I also had a "test fire" in the pot before doing this.

Liz and Virginia enjoyed the fire. I think the black stand looks pretty good.


John was happier running, but he did roast a few marshmallows first.

Learning a new home improvement skill

I now know how to do basic masonry; I built a small brick wall today.

It's spring in SoCal, and it's time to start planting our garden. We have been planting a small (8' x 4') vegetable garden every year, and this year we decided to add to that. We put in a small herb garden (6' radius quarter circle) in the corner of our yard. When we installed our vegetable garden, we made a raised bed using 2x12's. It made amending the soil easier, and we were guaranteed to have good drainage.

We want good drainage for our herb garden, but we're not too worried about amending the soil. Herbs grow in just about anything. We decided to put the new plot next to our back patio, and we wanted it to look nice. Since a lot of the landscaping in our yard is brick, we decided a brick wall would make a nice border to the garden.

I have never worked with brick/masonry before, but I figured it couldn't be too hard, right? Actually, it isn't too hard; it just takes a little bit of time. I dug the garden and put in some temporary composite edging to keep the dirt in place and to mark the plot. Then I dug a small trench for the brick wall to sit in, and filled the bottom with sand. The sand provided a foundation for the wall, and allowed me to level the bricks. I had to cut a few bricks to fit, and I learned how to do that, using a brick hammer and a couple of chisels. I only ruined a few bricks learning. Applying the mortar was relatively easy after that. I only built the wall two bricks high (it's a garden border), but hey, I built a wall.

The kids helped.

I finished the project at dusk. The rectangle of pipe against the wall is my sprinkler system for the vegetable garden. We pulled it out to turn over the soil. Below the sprinkler is Dweezel, the garden gnome. He'll go home when we plant the garden tomorrow.

"Is this the Deskjet?"

My son is precocious. He's still a couple of weeks shy of his third birthday, but he's been using the family computer. He doesn't just bang on buttons or watch movies someone else starts, but he surf's the web. Really. He bookmarked PBSkids.org on his own, and he knew what he did. He uses the bookmark to go back the webpage to play games, which he also does all by himself. He's been matching letters and rhyming words in the Word World and Super Why sections

Just today, he was playing on the computer, and he asked my wife, "Is this the Deskjet?" He knows how to print, and wanted to make sure he was using the right printer. He printed out a picture from Word World to color. Dude.

Yesterday my daughter participated in a jog-a-thon at her school. She's five, and she and the other kindergartners wore stickers on their backs for the jog-a-thon. They ran laps in the school yard, and each lap the kids would stop to have a parent mark their sticker to count laps. Other kids ran/jogged/walked and some of them took rests, but not my daughter. She ran full speed the entire allotted time, stopping only to get her sticker marked. She was passing other kids on the outside. Virginia ran 24 laps without stopping, and she was still ready to run when her class had to stop (after about 10 minutes). From what I heard, she was doing the whole 'Chariots of Fire' thing running laps, her hair flying in the wind behind her. That girl loves to run.

John can read...sort of.

I have been doing story time with John in front of the fireplace lately. It's cold for around here, but not really that cold (40's at night), but the fire is nice. John really likes to Make Fire! Also, by reading in front of the fireplace, John will sit still longer than in his room, where distractions abound.

We read "My Car" by Byron Barton a lot. It's John's current favorite book. Last night, I was a bit tired, and I opened the book and didn't immediately start reading. John took it as a cue that he should read the book, and he did. He needed a little help with "windshield wipers" and a few lines at the end of the book, but he read along, pointing at each word as he said it. I get a real kick out of hearing him say "I obey the laws" and "pedestrians." John read the book to me again tonight.

I know he's not really reading at this point; he has the book memorized. But he can spell his name, first and last, his sister's name, and he knows the entire alphabet. It's only a matter of time before he is really reading now. And Liz and I didn't sit down a drill him, either. Virginia taught him his letters and numbers (he can count to 15, maybe 20), and he taught himself the rest by just paying attention.

Pretty cool.

It's been raining in SoCal...Let's go sledding!

We've had a week or so of rain here in Southern California. It's been a bit of a bummer being stuck in the house (we're spoiled...we usually go outside all year), and I've been driving my car to work instead of riding my motorcycle. But rain here means snow in the mountains. And since yesterday was a good, hard rain and today is sunny, we went sledding! Good sledding in the mountains is about a 90 minute drive from our house, so we threw a couple of sleds in the trunk, made some hot chocolate and headed north into the mountains.

This was the kids first sledding trip, and they did great. Virginia is a speed demon! Once she learned how to ride her bike, she was seeing how fast she could go, and she only rides her bike fast and really fast. On the sled, she went as fast as she could, and she rode down the hill by herself. John liked sliding down the hill with me, but I think he enjoyed eating the snow as much as sledding on it. Hey, it just snowed last night, so the snow was fresh. No worries about him eating it. I took a few pictures between the snowballs and sled runs. Enjoy.

Throwing snowballs at Daddy.



Check out the snow spray.


A quick snack.

I tried uploading my first video, Virginia sledding. The file is about 7 MB.

It's nice to just play

Today was a good day. I can't say I accomplished terribly much, yet it was still a good day. The best part of the day was just before dinner. My wife took my daughter outside to ride her bike, and left me and my son inside to occupy ourselves. Usually this involves a lot of John getting into things, and me telling him to stop and redirecting him. But today was better. We both played. Together.

John has recently acquired an extensive Thomas the Train collection, and he enjoys building with the tracks and watching the trains run in circles. He got to building, and while I was watching him, I started building. Then our two track layouts ran into each other, and we linked them up. Then we put together a few cars with an engine, and started the train running around our track. We added a few tunnels. We flipped switches to send the train around different circles, knocked it off the tracks a few times, and ran around the moving train, getting out of the way with barely time to spare. We ended up doing this for almost an hour before I noticed that it was dark outside, and Liz and Nia were coming in. We all played with the trains for a while until we needed to eat dinner.

Like I said, we didn't really accomplish anything, but John and I were playing, not as a father and son, but as friends. I wonder if I was having more fun than him...

I stepped back for a moment to snap a quick picture. He barely noticed.

My First Motorccyle Camping Trip

Two weeks ago I went on my first motorcycle camping trip. I packed up my bike, and took off north on the 1. I headed past Santa Barbara for about 2 hours, and I camped at Pismo State Beach. Packing up the bike was not trivial, but since my camping gear was chosen for ultralight-weight backpacking, most of it fit pretty well in my saddlebags. I ended up tying the tent and my sleeping pad to my seat, along with a small duffel of clothes and a soft-sided cooler. The load didn't seem to affect the bike's handling while riding.

My camping site at Pismo Beach was pretty standard for a state park. That is, I had a parking spot, a picnic table, a food box, and a decent spot to pitch my tent; it was nice. The beach was a short 15 minute hike over the dunes. Nice beach, standard for a central coast sandy beach. (I guess I'm pretty spoiled since I can say that about the beach.) The only oddity about the beach was that off-road vehicles were allowed on the beach. I saw a few people camping out of their SUV's on the beach.

While at the camp, I met a fellow motorcyclist from Alaska named Tom. He was traveling from Alaska to San Diego (via the 1 in the US) on a Kawasaki Voyager pulling a trailer, with a dog travel cage. He pulled into his campsite around sunset, and I saw a dog tied up at his site. I noticed the dog, since it made absolutely no noise; the dog never barked all night. It wasn't until I met Tom the next morning that I learned that he was traveling with a deaf dog. We talked for more than an hour; mostly he told motorcycle stories and I listened. I hope he got to San Diego without mishap.

Ride safe.

Halloween Post

As has become tradition here, I carved Halloween pumpkins with designs of my own making. In past years I have carved the Dark Mark (Harry Potter reference), a ship of the line, and a stormtrooper. This year, due to my children's abhorrence for anything scary, I carved a very family friendly design.

Enjoy.

P.S. I will update about my motorcycle camping trip shortly. I've been distracted. Sorry.

Motorcycle Camping Trip Teaser

I just got back from a quick overnight motorcycle camping trip. I rode up CA 1 to Pismo Beach and camped at the state park there. Regular campsite, short hike to the beach, great ride up the 1. The trip was great. I'll post a few pics and some more details tomorrow.

Making More Gear than I Use

It's about time I posted before this blog atrophied...

First, my bike... Since the last post I've rebuilt the clutch (new friction plates) and replaced the front brake rotor and pads. It's been running great, and today I went for a morning ride with some friends through the canyons near Malibu down to Neptune's Net. There were 30-40 motorcycles there, but it can get much busier. It's a nice place to get a bite to eat and watch people and bikes. On the way back, we cruised by The Rock Store, but did not stop. Maybe next time...

I've been thinking a lot about backpacking lately, and I've taken an interest in hammock camping. I got a hammock with birthday money this year, and I've set it up in our back yard. If you've been to the family web page recently, you've seen a few pictures of the new hammock. The hammock is very comfortable, and that's my main motivation for putting together a hammock kit for backpacking use. The thought of lying down in a hammock to sleep after a hard day of hiking (rather than lying on the ground) sounds wonderful.

I've read Ed Speer's book, "Hammock Camping," and I've been perusing the world wide interwebnet for more information. My favorite site on hammock camping is Just Jeff's web page. He's got some good homemade gear descriptions, and the site is a good starting point for finding more info. With a hammock, I'll still be tarp camping, only now I'm going to be sleeping in a hammock instead of a bivy sack. I'm basically hanging my bivy between two tress instead of putting it on the ground. When suitable trees aren't present, Ican use the hammock like a bivy and camp the way I have been.

I've made a hammock, and it's been successfully tested (it holds my weight). I have a few minor adjustments to make to the hammock (weights on the bug net, sleeve for holding a pad for under-body insulation, etc.), and I need to seam-seal my new tarp (I made it, too). Then I'm off to the mountains for an overnight gear test. Unfortunately, I'm busy with work (travel) and home projects for a couple of weekends, so I probably won't be getting out with the new kit until October.

I'll leave with a few pictures of the kids and me in the new backpacking kit. The hammock is very comfortable and my new tarp is very spacious. I'm looking forward to using this.

Done Spraying Paint

Today I finished spray painting my house. I masked and painted the back of my house with the power painter today. The front is finished, and I've replaced two outdoor light fixtures and the doorbell. I now need to paint the trim and soffits on the other three sides of the house and replace one more light fixture. I also found an outlet that is not working; I'll be troubleshooting that sometime soon.

I used the Wagner Power Painter Pro with the Wide Shot tip to paint my house, but I killed the tool. When I had finished painting my small house (three bedroom single story), everything about the power painter except the motor was worn out. I wore out the Wide shot nozzle; it sprayed paint in large globs instead of a fine mist. I wore out two swirl valves; these break the paint into a fine mist be imparting rotational motion to the liquid spray, i.e. they spin the paint to make droplets. I wore out the pump housing; even off, the pump now leaks. If I am to ever use this tool for another project, and there are other projects, I will have to replace all of its moving parts that contact the paint. I'm wondering if it would be cheaper to buy a new power sprayer... We'll see. A contributing factor to the wear on my painter was the type of paint I used, masonry paint (I was painting stucco). This paint is very thick, like primer, and I did not thin it since the power sprayer was able to handle it.

I'll leave you with a picture of story time from tonight.

The Joy of Motorcycle Maintenance

There are many joys to owning a used motorcycle. The bike cost me fewer pesos than a new one. It's got a little bit of "character" already, so I don't worry about where I park it. It feels really good to keep up with someone on a shiny new bike when I'm on my 9 year old machine. I'm not afraid to take it completely apart, figure out how it works, and put it back together again. Keeping an old machine running well is a source of pride. But...the true joy of an old bike is the maintenance.

There is always something that needs doing on an older machine. I had a fuel line leak about 2 weeks ago. A fuel line swelled and did not seal on the hose barb; that needs to be replaced. My front brake rotor looked noticeably worn; Checking it revealed that it was worn well beyond the service limit. I'll be replacing that. Lately, I've been noticing that my clutch is slipping. When I accelerate quickly, try to maintain or increase my speed against a strong wind, or when i engine brake, I can feel the bike oscillating between catching and slipping. I just took my clutch apart this evening, and my friction plates are all worn to the minimum service limit. More telling is that every friction plate is glass-smooth. They will need to be replaced, too.

I've got to order a few parts for my bike, but I'll be replacing everything when all the parts come in. It's about 700 miles early, but I might as well do an oil change while everything is apart. I had to drain the oil to take apart my wet clutch anyway.

No pics tonight; I'll post something when it all goes back together.

Finished the front trim

The front of the house is presentable. Saturday evening, I finished up the trim on the front of the house. The house numbers are freshly painted, and a new porch light is up, too. I've yet to clean up the detritus on the walk from removing the gutters in this picture, but you get the idea.

There are many days of painting left (back of the house, and three more sides worth of trim...), but at least I'm not a neighborhood eyesore.

First picture of the new house color

I'm a few days behind on my posts, but here's a quick picture of my new house color. Previously the house was a medium tan, and there were water stains on the columns where the sprinklers had gotten the house wet. I've completed painting 3 sides of my house with the main color (not the back), and I'm starting on the trim. The gutters are off the house in this picture. I will be replacing them later this summer. (I won't see rain till fall, so there's no hurry.) I will paint the gutters to match the trim before I install them on the house.

TTFN

Working on my week off

I've started painting the house this week. I've completed painting the stucco on one side and the front of my house. I've been using a power sprayer to paint for two days, and I'm ready to take a break from using that machine. It's very loud (I wear earplugs when using it), and it vibrates such that my hands get numb after a couple of hours of use. I've spent a total of ~10 hours painting the past two days, plus prep work and clean-up (probably ~8 hours). I'm going to paint trim tomorrow, by hand, and I will post some pictures of the house.

TTFN