Flood

Every now and then a moment, or an item, causes a flood of emotions within me.  Now, that being said, those of you who really know me, know this happens more often than may be the norm for the rest of the world. I admit this, so now we can move on.

This year will be the fifty-fourth year I haven't had my father around. I don't tell you this so you will feel sorry for me. No, we all have things we carry in our lives seen by others as pluses or minuses. This is something I tell you as it strikes me that at this point, I have very few things left that belonged to him. The other day when I was cleaning up the shop, using the hand duster that I've used so many times, I was struck by the fact that it was my father's. Then I was noticed it was stamped with the sale price of $1.00.  An item that had been manufactured many years ago, produced and sold for a mere dollar, was still effectively doing its job. I actually laughed as I've purchased at least three refrigerators in the years that I can remember, at costs significantly more than one dollar.

The thing that I am really getting at here is that for me there are so many little things that help me to remember those who are no longer with us. Sometimes it can be a song, or a fragrance, or in this case a hand duster. And as I said, often it comes back as a flood. There you have it. A hand duster brought back all sorts of memories.

On to more current business. During the last few months I've been busy in the shop. I finished another library project for a unit in town that helps to protect young men and women. This time it was about twenty-five running feet of bookcases and a standing desk used to check out the books. All in all it looked very nice. I also completed four cutting boards for a dear friend and then, for another friend, I created a rack for hair ribbons for his daughter. I finished a Christmas present for my daughter, but I can't tell you about that  Not necessarily because she might read it here, but, one of you might tell her.  Along with these projects, I also completed card/literature holders for YESS, and a retirement box for my cousin's son. I started working on the kitchen cabinets for the house again, but I'm a little intimidated by those right now. I have the design work done, and the cut list complete, but the naming convention for the parts is a little confusing. I need to find the time to sit down and sort it out.  One of these days ...

The biggest excitement right now is that I just purchased a CNC router for the shop. This is completely a "hobbyist" level piece of equipment, but it will give me a good start at discovering all the ways I can use it to move my woodworking forward.  Maybe it will even allow me to add curves to my woodworking. Only time will tell. I am, however, very excited about it. I expect it to ship in the next week or so. There is about ten hours of assembly before I can test drive it. Additionally, there is a new software I will have to learn, so that will take time as well.  This is going to be a fun journey and I hope that you will be excited to go along with me.

Well, I finish this thinking about the fact that my daughter is just about to finish her first semester in law school. We had everyone home for Thanksgiving and it looks like we may have everyone around Christmas. Business and work have been good this year, and I have much to appreciate.  I hope that this finds you and all of your family and friends healthy and happy. 

Have a good week.

Introspection

It has been a couple of interesting weeks for me, and in looking back, I find I've been asking more questions about myself lately than usual. This may be because of the time of the year, or because things have been slow at work.

Then, as if by fate, I came across an old blogpost from Seth Godin and it spoke to me. I am including most of it here.

Some of the things to ask(myself):

            What am I better at?
            Have I asked a difficult question lately?
            Do people trust me more than they did?
            Am I hiding more (or less) than I did the last time I checked?
            Is my list of insightful, useful and frightening stats about my work, my budgets and my challenges complete? And have I shared it with someone I trust?
            If selling ideas is a skill, am I more skilled at it than I was?
            Who have I developed?
            Have I had any significant failures (learning opportunities) lately, and what have I learned?
            What predictions have I made that have come to pass? Am I better at seeing what's going to happen next?
            Who have I helped? Especially when there was no upside for me...         
            Am I more likely to be leading or following?

The overall article was about the lack of value of the annual review; the post suggesting these are the questions we should ask and answer about ourselves and the way we run our life.

This really spoke to me as we enter the fourth quarter of the year. This is the time I have a tendency to really look at the year we are completing and look forward to next year. What are the successes and the failures? What do I want to do again, and what would I like not to repeat. Are there big directional changes coming in the next year, or will it be mostly status quo?

Honestly, I don't have answers to these questions, but I still know the questions are worth asking, and worth thinking about. I know next year, or the year after will not be better if I don't process on these questions today. I'm sure each of you have a technique you use to look inside and think about these types of things.

On top of all of this, I have an unbelievable opportunity each month to speak to and learn from really smart people. This business round table occurred last week. Roughly once a year, each member of the group presents a challenge or opportunity they are facing, personally or business wise. The group works to process the information, often providing insights not obvious without their input. With that said, three or four people in this group continually astound me.

I have the ability to ask the questions above, or others like them, and assess where I am. I can even on occasion know what I need to do to be more effective. But some folks on this round table who have the next step locked down, which is where I struggle. The people I watch with fascination are those who can develop a plan on how to make the necessary changes, and then set about and just do it. I have a tendency to know which way I want to move, and if I get closer to my goal, I am satisfied with the outcome. These folks make plans and then commit to personal changes in their lives and the way they lead, and then move forward to accomplish it. Wow. I keep listening and learning, and know I continue to strengthen this part of myself, but there is always more to do.

Okay, kind of deep and personal. Let's move on.

The Toybox is currently packed, but only hours from changing. Saturday morning, I will install bookcases I have been working on for a group of kids. This is the moment in time where I find I am a bundle of nerves. I know I've done a good job on construction and finishing. I am proud of the project. The bundle of nerves comes from considering the installation itself. Since I've seen the room a total of one time, there could be small issues I may need to work around. When I say small, they will all be bigger than they should be as I am trying to install and get out of the way of the people working there. I know it will be fine, but sleep will not come  easy tonight. If you are up and around in the wee hours of the night, reach out and say "Hi". I may be there.

On the teardrop trailer front - the one I am building for my sister 0 I have finally overcome a hurdle I've been wrestling with. I wasn't sure how to finish the outside of the trailer to make it as impervious to weather as I wanted it to be. I finally landed on looking at boat builders, which almost instantly took me to epoxy finishes. Why had I not thought of that before?  Then to just make me laugh, when I figured out the right epoxy system to use, I discovered it in stock at the Woodsmith Store. I must have walked by it a hundred times, but never needed it. I was in there last night for one of their seminars and there on an end-cap, was everything I could possibly need. Excellent. I can hardly wait to tell you how it goes.

Finally, I'm thinking about something a little different. I am considering doing some writing about basic tool information, through my eyes. We will see where this idea goes. If there is anything you would really like to see me write about, let me know. Like I said, I'm still thinking about this.

Have a great weekend. Think good thoughts for me as I undertake the installation of these shelves.

Summer Heat

For any of you who don't live in Iowa, let me tell you about the way we do summer weather. We know there will be hot times in the summer and they will come with high humidity, but we are poised for those "dog days' of summer in late July and in August. In a typical Iowa year, this couple of weeks, people literally get through one day at a time. This year, though, we experienced this type of weather throughout the entire summer. Now it wasn't for long periods, but it cropped up in small chunks every now and then. None of us were ready for. So, with this heat comes some really interesting things.

First, we carry on with all sorts of additional discussion about the crops. This discussion topic receives plenty of air-time already, but in a year like this it garners even more attention. All summer there were discussions about how well the corn was developing, what everyone thought the yield would be, and when everyone would be in the fields. Early on, predictions spun out around the second week in August. As we enter the last week in September with much of the crop still in the field, it would appear that arm-chair analysts weren't completely correct.

Conversation now turns to "stand-ability." Will the corn be all right long enough to harvest without large losses? The feeling was a little different with beans. The people I've talked to put beans in later than they would have liked and aren't as optimistic as they are about corn. I'm sure you noticed I didn't speak in absolutes in the last few sentences. As an Iowan, my entire life (even when I was living somewhere else), I know there is always some part of the state, or some group of farmers experiencing the exact opposite as the majority. I am in no way trying to speak in absolutes here, as I know there are none.

Second, when you get high temperatures like this, everyone just gets a little edgy. You see it in the way people drive. You can tell it in the way team members interact with each other. "Iowa Nice" has just a little more of an edge than it usually does. I work every day with people doing very physical work, almost completely in the weather - either the hot of summer, or the bitter cold of winter. The heat of summer is the time of the year that gets to them the most. Things that wouldn't even be bothered with the rest of the year are BIG and need to be fixed right now. The depths of the summer are the times we have to take the most care of others as everyone is at the end of their rope.

Third, and this is my favorite, people talk about how severe the winter will be. Some believe a severe summer means you will have a equally severe, or worse winter. Some believe if you survive the heat of a really wicked summer, you will be rewarded with a moderate winter. In the middle of nearly every conversation, out comes predictions from the Farmer's Almanac - the true go-to for everything weather and planting related for the agricultural community.

IT only takes a few moments looking at "The Old Farmer's Almanac" https://www.almanac.com/, and we discover the word is, our first frost in this area should be around October 8 and the winter will be the mild side. One interesting note: I've already had people tell me they  read the Almanac and it calls for a very cold winter. Are there multiple Farmer's Almanacs?

With all of this said and thought about, the greatest thing right now is that today we are in one of the two perfect weather patterns the State of Iowa has to offer. Of course that's a completely personal, subjective opinion. Weather like we're having right now - with highs in the seventies and lows in the forties is just great. It offers the best. The good days are bright, clear and comfortable, and the nights are perfect for sleeping. The only way to improve it would be an early frost to take all of the allergens, pollen, and mosquitoes away. October 8th isn't very far away, so maybe it's right around the corner. We'll have to wait and see.

Things in the Toybox have been busy. I am working to finish another library space here in Des Moines, working with a person I have worked on in the past to do this type of work. This time we are doing twenty four feet of shelving, each section with five shelves. It should work great. Then I need to finish a project I am working on for YESS and finish the Arts and Crafts inspired bed frame I built for my daughter. At that point, I will try to get back to the Teardrop trailer as I need to move that project forward.

I hope all things are good with each of you. Enjoy the fall, winter is coming.

Buy Once

Well, I am facing a bit of a crisis at the Toybox. For ten to fifteen years now I have watched computer numerically controlled (CNC) equipment push from the large commercial shops into the smaller home and hobbyist shops. When I first started looking at this type of equipment, the Epilogue lasers were my top choice. This equipment used a laser to either cut out or etch product. You could use them to do laser engraving to decorate projects, or use them to cut through some material. I was absolutely hooked, but the better part of $20,000 would need to be laid out to purchase this kind of equipment. I figured that the thing to do was wait and let the price come down. In the years since I saw the first one, the capabilities have increased exponentially, and the price has come down by about half.

So, while I was biding my time, along came 3D printers. Early on, I told friends that I believed this would be one of the most disruptive technologies we could see in our lifetime. The time will come when rather than going through the manufacturing processes that we have all known, an item will just be loaded into a printer and appear before us. I actually talked about this in another post here. For a while, I paid a great deal of attention to where these were going, at one point even discussing with Andrew that we should buy one together. Again however, I figured that with time would come more capability and lower price. That is exactly what has happened.

Then, the final straw. In all of the time that I worked in the industrial sheetgoods and hardwood business, one of the things that I just loved was watching a CNC router cut parts out with an accuracy that would be almost impossible to duplicate with traditional woodworking techniques. Between the software that drives these machines and the way the cutting works, parts are virtually perfect and duplicate parts are exact. I was always fascinated but never really thought about it, as this type of equipment is tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and need to be used continuously to make the economics of the purchase make sense. Until now. At this point, it is possible to get a shop-sized CNC router for under $2,000. One that I have seen is available for around $500.

So you ask, what is the crisis?  Most of it comes from experience and listening to others that I respect in woodworking and other crafts. The first table saw that I bought was used and I gave $400 for it. I used that Delta Contractor saw for over twenty years, moving it at least seven times. It was a good piece of equipment and I built several very nice projects with it. A little over a year ago, I bought a new table saw, and paid nearly six times as much. I would not tell you that it is six times as good a saw, but I would tell you that it is three or four times as good. The accuracy and the manner that you can repeat the same setup with accuracy is incredible. It is an amazing addition to my shop. Thanks to the people at Powermatic. If I could have done it all over, I would have bought the saw that I now have the first time. As Alec Steele says in his vlog, "Buy once, Cry once." What he means is that you should buy the absolute best equipment that you can the first time. You will be happy and your work will be better.

So, still getting to the crisis, right?  Now that CNC routers have gotten down to the place that I can afford to add one to the shop, I am second guessing myself. Should I figure out how to invest more money and buy better equipment right off the bat? I am supremely conflicted. I know that I will add this capability to the shop and it will allow me to add new dimensions to my woodworking. But am I looking at buying something that even though it is in the several thousand dollar range is too low in its quality and capabilities. Should I just suck it up and find more to invest in a better piece of equipment, or bring this in as a way to get to know what is possible?

I'm pretty sure that Alec would tell me to get better equipment, but those of you that know me the best know that I'm a little tight with money, so... there's my crisis. It will be interesting to watch this one play out. I have no idea what will happen.

On a side note, I have been tasked again with a couple of projects for kids' shelters here in the community. I am always so glad that I can be helpful in making it better for children and young adults who really need a little extra help. I will keep you posted as this goes. Hope that all is great with each of you and that you are working on all of the things that bring you joy.

Have a great week.

Out Back

In an average week, I think we often deal with things that could be called double-edged swords. These are of course the things that could either be good or bad; positive or negative.  I've had a couple of conversations lately that have really reinforced this around the openness and honesty that people use in their day to day conversation.

A couple of months ago, Sara decided she wanted to do something with the patio behind our house. She got an estimate for concrete work from a contractor that was working in the area. When we talked about the work and the amount of the estimate, we decided to look for another option. I know a gentleman who has done concrete work for my company for decades. His work is always top notch, and the fact that I've seen the way that his work stands up over the years told me that he is someone I'd be glad to have do work for us.

With that in mind, I called him. The project wasn't a big deal, only a yard or so of concrete. It's the kind of job that if you know what you were doing, there's an opportunity to make a little quick cash. 

When we finished catching up, and then talked about everything, he said, "Well Jim, you lost me at Out Back."

I'd told him that the work was "out back," behind our townhouse. He explained that he had decided somewhere along the line to be semi-retired and didn't take jobs any longer that involved moving concrete further than the truck could take care of it.

I have to tell you, I have never been rejected and felt better about it. I appreciated the fact that he was just honest and straightforward and told me how things were from his perspective. He could have gone the other way, told me a little story, or led me on with the idea that maybe he could get to it but that he was really busy, but he did none of this. He just told me the facts, from his perspective. I liked that approach.

Now fast forward to this week. I've had the opportunity to see both approaches to this kind of situation. The first is just wonderful. I called a company that repairs RVs as I need to get some work done. He was delightful, very nice, and explained to me that with the number of campers and RVs at the State Fair right now, this was his "Black Friday." As much as he would like to help me, unless I was on the State Fair grounds, there was no way he had time to get at the work I needed done. He also told me that he'd love to take care of the issue, and that if I could wait until after the fair was over, he'd be more than happy to come and take a look. I came off the phone call laughing, so appreciative of the honest, straightforward approach that he took. And heck, I can appreciate that when you are in the middle of whatever is your BIG time of the year, you take advantage of it.

Now, contrast that with another example from this week. 

I've been trying to get someone to look at an alarm system for a month now. The alarm has been going off intermittently, of course, most often in the middle of the night. I believed that I had scheduled someone to come out and look at this two or three times already, each time with nobody coming or calling. So, yesterday, I nailed down a plan whereby I would make sure to be in the office instead of out and about, and agreed to meet the service tech at eight o'clock in the morning. That time came and went. An hour and a half later, I called to see what was going on. I was met with a surprised response. The person I was talking to thought that the tech had already been there. Interestingly enough, a few minutes later someone showed up. They took a look at my system and declared that I had suffered a lightning strike and they would have to order a new board. As an interesting aside, I had been told weeks ago that they could see in the system that this is what had happened and they would need to order a new board.  I thought that today was the day that this would be installed, but instead today was just the day to look at it and make sure the right thing was ordered. Apparently there were a many examples of double meaning words in this whole conversation.

I prefer landing on the side of that double-edged sword that deals with honesty and openness. It's so much easier to have respect for the person you're dealing with.

On a final note, those of you that are heading for the Iowa State Fair, have a blast.  It looks as thought there are a lot of really great things going on there, and of course, the food is not to even be believed.  Gather friends, eat, drink, and have fun.

Kitchen Table

As you all know, I am a Southeast Iowa boy, born and raised.  I am not a farm kid, but rather, grew up in town. A wonderful community - Sigourney - the county seat of Keokuk County. That's kind of a big deal for towns in Iowa.

I spent the bulk of my life in two houses; the house that I lived in, and my grandparent's house. Although there were many differences between the houses, there was one thing that was very similar. The kitchen was the center of the house and the kitchen table was the center of the kitchen. so, in odd ways, there were a couple of kitchen tables that were the centers of my universe growing up.

Like many places where we spend time in our lives, kitchen tables had rules that had to be recognized and honored. There was a seating chart, although never discussed or written down. There was an aging process that let you have more access and authority at the table as you grew older and hopefully wiser. But no matter what your social lot at the table it was the place to be. At that table decisions were made and any information to be shared with others arrived there first.

I remember a Saturday morning at my grandparents home when the table was truly the center of everything. Grandpa and Grandma had bought an Appaloosa foal from some people in Minnesota when they'd visited family up there. Midnight Surprise was one of the prettiest horses that I'd ever seen. She also had a wonderful disposition. Grandpa put a lot of time and energy into training her and by the morning that I am remembering, she had been around for a year or so. 

Some people were interested in buying Surprise and they had come that morning to work out the deal. There were a couple of sessions of coffee at the kitchen table, and in between those, they spent time out looking at Surprise. As guests, the potential buyers were given room at the table and those of us who were typically there were pushed to the far side of the counter. But even with that, we got to watch. As the morning progressed, it became obvious that there would be a sale. The potential buyers wanted Surprise, and my grandfather never owned a horse that he wouldn't sell for the right price. That morning, the right price was a thousand dollars. In a time where you could go to the sale barn and buy a good pony for fifty or sixty dollars, this was huge, and it all played out, right there in front of us. Years later, my grandmother had told me that the sale of Surprise was the first time that they had ever had a savings account. This was a moment in time where many things changed.  It all happened around the kitchen table.

The kitchen table in my house was multi-faceted, but was again the center of the house. It could be a place to have dinner and talk about the day, a place to play cards with friends on a Saturday night, or a place to do homework and projects. It was all of these things. It was also the place where you knew trouble was coming your way if you were summoned there. Of course, you always knew that was the case because you were called by your entire name - first, middle, and last. This was the kitchen table that I grew up around, and if you asked my kids, was probably very similar to the one that they grew up around. I'm confident that they grew tired of the question, "What was the best part of your day?"

I think part of what we struggle with today is that we have lost the concept of the kitchen table. Watch people when you are out and about. How many times do you see two people in a restaurant at a table together, both on their mobile device. Walk across a college campus. Everyone is in their own world. Talk to friends about what dinner time looks at in the home today. Does it involve ear buds? This is just the little corner of the world that we can see. The time was that our leaders would get together and talk. I am just not sure that is the case anymore.

In the last week or so, I actually talked with someone that told me the goal of a conversation today is to figure out what you are going to say next, rather than engage in a dialogue. Have we come to a time when it is mostly two people talking at each other, not talking together? 

This is why we need kitchen tables. In our house, when company arrives, we still have a tendency to sit at the kitchen table and just talk. It's a great way to share ideas and come up with plans. 

I wonder if this would help some of the rhetoric that we hear today? Could it help if people could sit down in a comfortable, safe place, get to know each other, and talk?  What do you think?

DNA

I remember when my daughter got old enough to start asking about where characteristics like red hair and blue eyes came from. There was a little concern about what her next questions would be, but thankfully those didn't come for a while. It seems like in the past few years, DNA has become more and more important in  many ways.  It's used to determine guilt and innocence, and to reverse court cases that were decided years earlier.  Now, you can even pay to determine your geographical makeup based upon your DNA. More and more screening that is happening based on parents, and I'm not necessarily sure that all of the decisions that we make with this new information are decisions that we should make, but that's for another discussion.

What I'm really thinking about today is whether the basic building blocks that make us who we are also determine how we behave. This comes back to the Nature vs Nurture argument and although many really intelligent people have talked to me about this, I've never landed clearly on exactly what I believe. I have a couple of examples here that give me a moment to stop and think, and I wonder if they will for you.

I was a Senior in high school, a long long time ago. If you remember my house, we had parking for two cars on the top level, just outside the kitchen door. This was the door that everyone we knew came and went from that house. Anyway, on this particular evening, my mother and friends were sitting on the patio, just talking. I came home, parked in the parking place furthest from the house and came up to join the group. Some time later, my sister, Jaye, came home and parked in the place closest to the house.  When she came through the gate in the fence, everyone started laughing. Neither Jaye nor I knew what this was about, but we quickly came to learn that as we had each gotten out of the car, the things that we had done and the mannerisms we employed had been identical. Was this in the DNA, or just because we had lived around each other for so long?  I'm not sure, but I do know that if you call me a friend, and you meet my sister somewhere else, you will quickly recognize that we are related. Yes, there is a family resemblance, but more than that, the mannerisms that we both have are very similar. I don't know if genetics go to that level.

Okay, second example. My grandfather drove a truck for Keokuk County, helping to maintain the county roads. To say that he knew all of the roads in the county was a big understatement. On top of this, he loved to drive around on Sunday and see what was going on in the county, or see where he thought that his crew should work the next week. This was always an "everyone in the car" type of event and we covered many, many miles in an afternoon without ever leaving the county. This was always enjoyable as we learned a lot. But the part that makes me wonder about basic proclivities had to do not with the trip, but with his house and barn. Almost without exception, as we headed out for one of these excursions, Grandpa would ask if the barn door was closed. As many times as not, we would turn around and go back to check. Of course, it got to the point that Jaye and I would just go check before we even got in the car.

The interesting point here is not about my grandfather, it is about me. Obviously, I don't have a barn door to worry about, but, I do have a garage door. And although the two items don't seem much alike, and I should be able to sit in front of the house and know if I closed the garage door, it is amazing how many times I get a few blocks from the house and wonder if I closed it.  We live in a cul-de-sac, and I'm sure that I have neighbors who think I am crazy as they see me leave one direction, and in a few minutes come back from the other direction, drive by, and leave again.  Okay, when I say it, it even seems a little crazy to me.

So, I guess that I am really wondering, if the family heritage that we have affects our hair and eye color and things of that sort, or does it mold the way that we think? Maybe this is part of the reason that many of us reach the point where we say out loud that we are becoming our parents. Maybe we never had a choice and this was just the way that it was going to be. 

Oh my ...

Practice

Some time ago, I shared with you that I had been given a great opportunity to work on a project I referred to as "Top Secret."  This Saturday I will turn the project over to the family members that I am hopeful will have this in their family for generations to come. I actually think this is their expectation too, so I'm not suggesting something here that isn't in the realm of reality.  As wonderful as that is, and yes, I will post pictures so that you know what I've been working on, but that isn't what I'm thinking about today.

I have the privilege to be acquainted with Dan Keller, the owner of RCS Millwork. I initially met Dan through Rotary, and grew to know him through Meals for the Heartland, but I really came to appreciate him when I was between careers. Dan was one of my most regular and vocal supporters. Part of this was that Dan had also gone through a career search at one point in his life, and part of it was that we share a love of woodworking - Dan as his vocation, and myself as an avocation. 

When we first met, I was just setting up the Toybox. Now, as I look back, I'd have to say that many of my woodworking skills were rudimentary. I knew what I was doing, but many things took lots of time and several "test pieces" before everything worked the way that I wanted it to. In one conversation I had with Dan, he  told me that if I wanted to be a better woodworker, I needed to practice more. Well, there was a earth shattering thought. I know that it was nothing new, in fact it's an imperative for anyone that wants to improve those things that they do.  But, for whatever reason, it came at a moment in time and found fertile ground in me. Those words and my response have caused me to work to improve basic skills and to continue to add additional skills in the last several years. I'm not about to say that I am ready for hand carved panels, or pieces with a lot of curves, but there are skills that I have added that make my woodworking much more special than it used to be. I hope to have the chance to show this off in the set of kitchen cabinets that I will be working on for my home in the near future.

In talking to others (not necessarily woodworkers) who have skills and talents that they bring to bear, and in comparing notes, we all seem to continue to discover the same thing. The more we do something, and actually the more that we screw things up, the more we learn and the better our skills become as we move forward.

I once read that in the scientific community, many of the biggest discoveries happen with scientists who are still in the first half of their career. I remember thinking that this seemed unusual. I would have thought that over the entire scope of their lives, they would continue to know more and discover more, i.e. more practice would lead to more and bigger discoveries. This disconnect made me consider a few things. I wonder if, at our foundation, we often stop practicing the skills we've achieved throughout our lives and professions on a regular basis. Without this continued practice, we have a tendency to fall into the trap of "regular," no longer creative and special.  I think back to the people I worked with at Drake and many others since then. We talked about the importance of being lifetime learners. Maybe what we were talking about was being a lifetime practicer. Maybe we all should consider our need to continue practicing as much as we did in our early days in every aspect of our lives.

So there are some parts of my life that I have continued to practice on regularly and some that I have let get a little stagnant. Probably time to rethink some of that. Some of it may be fine, but there are probably a couple of things that I should practice again.

How about you? And on top of that, what about adding something new that you've never tried before? 

I am working right now toward adding the capability of doing CNC routing and engraving to my shop.  Of course I am concerned about spending the money, but even more overwhelming is thinking about working with a new tool that I have no knowledge about, and a new software that drives the tool. I know that I have work to do there, and I'm quite sure that I will create pieces that don't come out perfectly and will become tinder for damp fires. I'm happy that I found a great source to get rid of cut off chunks and pieces too small to make anything out of. 

Anyway, looks like more practice of several things in my future. 

I hope that you all had a great holiday celebrating our nation's birthday, and are working to get back to your regular lives. Unless you are still on vacation. Have a good week.

Storm Clouds

Most nights of the week, I go to the gym about eight o'clock. On a typical evening I'm there between an hour and an hour and a half, depending on the level of commitment I'm feeling. That usually puts me back home between nine and nine-thirty. Last evening was far from typical, at it allowed me to knock another thing off my bucket list. Most interestingly, it wasn't even something I ever thought was on the list.

If you aren't from around here, or, if you didn't see the news about this area today, you may not know that we had a “Rain Event” last night. Depending on the report that you use, you could argue that we had between 7-10 inches of rain in 2-3 hours. It overwhelmed all the infrastructure that was built to take care of rain.

Now, I had always believed that when someone talked about flash flooding, it was something that happened in the low spot that looked like an old river bed, a natural draining point when there was more rain than the regular streams and rivers could take. Last night, I discovered how inaccurate that thought was. 

When I finished working out, I waited for a break in the weather to get to the truck. I thought the biggest issue I had to deal with was getting wet. I headed home by my regular route. Toward the bottom of a long shallow hill, I realized that I was in relatively deep water. I decided to make a move for the local Kum and Go, cutting into the parking lot with water rolling over the hood of my truck. I was fortunate to remember one of those weird things that someone taught me when I was young: of you're in deep water, drive with both feet keeping the RPMs of the vehicle up so that the water doesn't stop the engine. Glad I listened that day.

Anyway, I got into the Kum & Go which was high and dry and decided this was my place to sit and wait. Before long, the power in went off, making the whole thing feel just a little stranger. Over time, I came to a couple of realizations. First, I knew that the rain was slowing and that large amounts of water would start to find ways to get to the regular places that drained water away. Second, I was relatively sure that I wouldn't be able to get home by my regular route. Knowing this, I reversed course and headed for the Interstate, thinking that I should be able to get around all of this and get home from the other direction.

That thought process made perfect sense at the time, but I was so wrong! About halfway between two exits, the one I used to enter and the one I was going to use exit, we came to a stop. Now, be clear; I don't mean that we slowed down, I mean that we came to a stop. Apparently, in Altoona there were some 50 cars inundated on the Interstate and traffic had backed all the way to where I sat on the western edge of Des Moines. Not only that, but all the off ramps in between were under water. So, we just sat.

After an hour, or so, we did something that I thought I would never do (here is the Bucket list moment), drivers (including me) turned around on the Interstate and drove back up the shoulder to work our way off the on ramp where I had begun this entire mess. I ended up at the Toybox, where things were high and dry. After waiting  for another hour or so, I finally made my way home. At that point, it was sometime after midnight.

As I looked around today, both in the media and by driving the neighborhood, I recognized my great fortune. We had at least one lost life in the water last night and the number of vehicles that are damaged or destroyed is simply amazing. I have heard it said that fire and water are unrelenting, and I know that I have a much healthier respect for the power of moving water after some of the things that I saw last evening.

We sometimes fail to remember how frail we can be when facing the full force of nature. It is important that we all remember this and make sure that we take every precaution possible. I will tell you for sure, I will be looking at the weather app before I head for the gym on any evening when storm clouds threaten.

I hope you all have a great Fourth of July celebration.