Slapshot

For those of you who know me, not just here but in the real world, you know I have a tendency to repeat myself. Well, here I go again. Back in January 2015, I wrote about seeing the world through "New Eyes" and I seem to have landed there all over again. It could be the time of the year, but as all of this crossed my mind again, I knew I needed to share it.

These thoughts started for me during the Christmas season as I watched children open Christmas gifts. The genuine unbridled joy of watching someone open a gift they had never considered getting is great for the soul. Although this happens with people later in our lives, the experience with children is incomparable. The most enjoyable gift for me to watch being opened was a small oil tanker we gave to my grandson. It wasn't a big gift at all, but at that moment in time, it grabbed his attention and all of his thoughts. And, for a few moments, as I watched him, there was nothing else in the world more important to him or to me.

I hope you have all experienced the joy of Christmas through the eyes of a child. Although I would say there is nothing like it, I discovered Saturday night before last there might be an experience which rivals the feeling. That evening, I had the opportunity to go to a hockey game with my company and we had really good seats. In fact, we were in one of the suites on the ice. We were extremely well cared for, with food and beverage, but the joy for me was watching people who had either rarely been or never attended a hockey game. They saw the game in a way you rarely get to watch, from just on the other side of the glass. When somebody gets body checked into the ice in front of you, it is literally right there, inches, not even feet away.

While watching this, I found myself thinking of moments in life that have this type of affect on all of us. As we go through our day-in, day-out experiences, what really takes our breath away? There are times these pass by and I tend to discount them as no big deal, rather than recognizing them for what they are. As I think about the last year, the kind of things come to mind are: Watching my daughter graduate from the University of Iowa, holding my granddaughter, Daisy, for the first time, running errands one day with my son, listening to the joy of my daughter's voice when she announced she'd been admitted to law school, watching Sara at the hockey game, and lately, for me, when I finished a quilt top, and laid down my first welding bead.

All of these things are special, once in a lifetime events, but for myself, I know I don't always recognize and celebrate them as they come by. To make it even more confusing for those around me, I tend to "celebrate" events like this very quietly, often times by myself. For many of the moments I listed above, nobody even knew were important to me until they read that last paragraph.

I guess I come to the question - what will I do with this? If this causes a moment of thought for you, what will you do with this? As I start the year, I think I need to acknowledge more of the truly wonderful things happening to me, and learn to share them out loud. I've actually become more comfortable in some ways talking to you about these things. I need to make a change there.

Okay, on the shop front. I am having a ball with the new CNC router. The accuracy it adds to the work I do is amazing. Things I have struggled with in the past are so much easier. I will admit to being surprised by the amount of time things take to be produced, but I'm even finding ways to speed up this process. I am also learning that when a project feels like a failure, it isn't. It is just a step toward success. While this isn't new for any of us, it is really good to remember it once in a while. The nice thing about what I am doing with the CNC right now is I can run something, look at how it worked and then go back and adjust the inputs and the results. There is already more success than challenge and over time this will only get better.

I already see that in the future this CNC will be for sale as I move to a more high capacity unit. Not today, but soon I'll have pictures of some of the successes I've already experienced.

Enough for today. We are facing bitter cold in the next few days. If you are in any area with challenging weather, be safe and be careful.

2019 Begins

As is typically the case, January is a time of reflection and introspection. Be clear, I am not a "New Year's resolution" person. I haven't had success over the years with stating on one given day the things I will change about myself in the coming year. It just hasn't worked for me. If it works for you, I applaud your ability to use this time of the year to determine your upcoming course of action and then do something with it. For myself, I've always had to kind of sneak up on something, starting a new habit or activity without the fanfare and public announcement of a New Year's resolution. Then some great deal of time down the road, I will either admit to what I have been working on, or my friends and family will just notice it.

Several years ago, probably four or five, I came across an article about ten essential DIY skills. At the time, I had seven of the ten. I can't remember what all of them were, but I knew there were three I still needed to acquire. The first of these was to build a computer from scratch.  I tackled. With the help of my son Andrew, and Newegg.com, I acquired and built a computer that still functions in my basement today. To be completely honest, Andrew did much of the work and all of the tricky parts, just telling me what I needed to do next. But, with that experience, I knocked "Build a Computer from scratch" off the list and had eight of the ten in hand. Then, as so often happens, time passed. A lot of time passed. Then, out of left field, my daughter Megan entered and helped me pick up the next skill.

Apparently, somewhere along the line, I had mentioned that I didn't know how to sew and would like to learn. In my household, this is really not something I need to be able to do as both Sara and Megan are quite accomplished, but it was on the list, so, I wanted to learn the basics. For my birthday / Christmas Megan gave me a jelly roll of fabric and the time and direction to turn it into a quilt top. For those of you who quilt a lot, you already know that a jelly roll race isn't the most complex quilting project ever taken on, but for me, it was big. Thanks to my daughter, I have now completed a quilt top. She and Sara will quilt and finish it. With my jelly roll race quilt top complete, I checked sewing off the list I was working from.

One skill was left. Welding.

I had considered taking a class through adult education several times, but always talked myself out of it. Typically, because the class was held on two different weeknights starting right at the end of my workday. Since I'm not good at leaving work on time, I knew it would be a problem, and I'd end up missing too many classes. But this year, they offered a Saturday morning class. This is perfect. If I were home, I'd just be paying bills or sorting paperwork, but now, for the next eleven weeks, I will learn to weld. Last Saturday was the first class, and yes, I learned to melt metal with electricity. This may not be for all of you, but I can't even tell you how cool this is. I know I will enjoy this experience.

If, after this class is finished, I never weld or sew again, it is like so many things. This is learning nobody will ever take from me.

Now, I thought the other thing I should do is to go out and look at the current list of essential DIY skills. Like so many other things, it seems this list has changed over time. Below is the list I found through Google today:
1. Emergency Preparedness
2. Jailbreaking/Rooting your phone
3. Building a computer from scratch
4. Photo Editing
5. Cooking
6. Home Repair
7. Auto Maintenance
8. Sewing
9. Working with Electronics
10. Coding

Well, it looks like there are a couple of things on this list that aren't skills I possess. I will need to decide if those are things I need to take on as a challenge or not. Where are you with this list?  Are you adding to your individual skill set? Do you have any good recommendations as to where to learn some of these things? Let me know your thoughts.

As you can tell, I am excited about 2019 on a personal basis.  I sometimes start the year not looking forward, but not this year.  I am excited about what lies ahead and I hope each of you feel the same way.

Happy New Year.