Dumb Animals

There is a resident in my home who seems to be much more in charge than I would ever be willing to acknowledge. Her name is J.C. Sara adopted this toy poodle a number of years ago. She'd been found in a grader ditch in Lucas County, more than likely discarded from a puppy mill after her productive years were over. She came to the house in horrible shape. She didn't know how to take a walk, or have a toy of her own, and medically was a mess. Slowly, but surely, Sara worked with her and on her to take care of all her needs. J. C. had to have all but five teeth removed and takes daily medication for seizures. It was a lot of work and commitment but Sara did it all. 

In the middle of the whole thing a very interesting thing happened. J.C. took charge. Not in an evil overpowering way, she just has a subtle way of letting us all know exactly what her expectations are. I initially thought she was just not very smart, but now I recognize it for the true stubborn, committed behavior it was. She had things she wanted to accomplish and set about doing it.

Somewhere along the line, I was struck by a very powerful thought. I remember thinking about people referring to animals as "dumb animals." What struck me was the realization about the people, not the animals. The only people who thought that had never been around animals. The rest of us know with certainty they aren't dumb. 

I thought back to some of the personalities we had in horses when we were growing up. A perfect example was Big Red. He was a quarter horse we all showed at horse shows. The thing that made him stand out was his behavior if we didn't get back to Grandpa and Grandma's place until after dark. Typically he would be left out in the corral next to the barn. If we were late getting home, he unlatched the gate to the upper paddock and then to make sure we knew, he turned on the yard light at the top of the hill. If we drove in and the yard light was on, we knew Red had decided we were late and needed light to get home.

Then there was Tillie. Tillie was part of my grandfather's chariot team. Yes, I said chariot. The full team was Millie and Tillie and Art. Just for clarification, Art was my Grandfather. Anyway, Millie had a quiet temperament and would do about anything you asked of her. Tillie, on the other hand, although not mean at all, had no intention of ever being fully controlled. This was pointed out the day one of my cousins decided it was time to ride her. Although a good horseman, maybe better called a cowboy, he had no chance of making this happen. He got bucked off a bunch of times. Even after he thought Tillie was getting used to being ridden, she waited for her moment and then bucked him off again. He finally gave up.

The other thing I have been hearing over and over again lately is how helpful animals are with people with a myriad of behavioral issues. I can not even begin to think of all of the newspaper articles in the last couple of years about animals helping humans. A lot of this seems to be around veterans coming home and working to move back into society here. It seems like time and again, the pivotal moment for people getting better involves an animal. Colleges and universities allow therapy animals. I think back to some of the students I watched fail at Drake and wonder if they would have done better and had a higher chance of success if they'd been allowed to have a pet.

So, tonight when I get home from the gym, and there is a small grey toy poodle sitting in the middle of the living room looking at me, I will know without question it is time for a treat. It's one of the things she trained me to accomplish in the time she has been in the house. Dumb animals ... right!

Blasts

Are you ever truly amazed by the way a thought will blast into your mind?

What made me think about this was a comment someone made about hot chocolate. I don't even remember what the comment was, but the instant it was made, the image of an old white enamel coffee pot invaded my every thought. I had to stop and ask why.

When I was a child, one of the treats we had as a family was hot chocolate. Typically, it was prepared on a Sunday evening, and again typically it was served with something like chili or chipped beef gravy on toast. Sometimes it was creamed eggs on toast, which I hated, but my sister loved. I guess it was a way to learn compromise, but with that I always felt I had lost. By the way, my sister didn't like the chipped beef gravy. No small amount of conflict, here. Anyway, hot chocolate softened the blow of not having exactly what we liked for dinner. Both my sister and I knew when the old coffee pot came out, it was going to be hot chocolate. This was before the days of heating water in a microwave, opening a pouch, and suddenly - hot chocolate. This involved heating milk, adding sugar and cocoa, and being careful to avoid scalding the whole thing while trying to get it hot. It was a process. Yes, and all of this came streaming back at me with a conversation about hot chocolate.

Fast forward to yesterday morning. As I started up the on-ramp to the interstate to go to work, I looked to my right and what should be sitting in the parking lot of the motel but the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile. A whole new set of blasts from the past. I thought about the Weinermobile and all the times it was shown on television, advertising different events. I thought of the small plastic whistles they made to support the advertising plan that has now gone on since the first was created in 1936. Those have been around for eighty-three years now. Simply amazing. All of this came back in a flash. And, just by the way, there is now a Wienermobile app so you can keep track of where the Wienermobile fleet is and make sure you don't miss them in your town. Who knew?

The thing that really brought this all to the forefront for me is twofold. First, my hometown, Sigourney, celebrated their 175th birthday last week. From all I can see, the entire week was very successful. Although I wasn't able to get to the event, I appreciate the photos and updates coming out of the community and the event. It really made me remember, Sigourney is my hometown. I need to get there in the next few months. Great work, everyone. Thank you so much for everything you did.

Second, I hope you had fun with family and friends over the holiday. My kids and grand-kids were all home, and we celebrated Independence Day together. This seems to happen less and less as everyone gets more and more busy. Time goes by so quickly and before we know it another generation is grown. It just happens so quickly.

Finally, coming up this weekend is the 2019 Corndog Kickoff. This will happen Saturday evening, July 13, at the Varied Industries Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. This fun event raises a great deal of money for the State Fair. It began in 1997 and to date has raised $6.2 million which is used toward fairground renovations.

One item on the silent auction this year is "Nick" a palomino rocking horse I built at the Toybox. I would suggest if you have a child, or a grandchild in the age a rocking horse is something they would enjoy, get thyself to the fair Saturday night and buy yourself a rocking horse. And if that does not work, be patient as I intend to offer the horse out on my Etsy page as well. I just need to get it done. Of course, like all of us, I can say that about a lot of things.

I hope you are having a great week. Reach out and send me a note if I have talked about anything you enjoyed here.

10320

There are times I am amazed in two completely differing directions.

First, I am sometimes amazed by the things I can remember, and at the same time, shocked by the things I forget. The picture I have included is a number that will forever be in my mind. This is the address of the first location I worked as an adult - the Payless Cashways store on Hickman Road in Clive, Iowa. I believe I will remember this forever. It is right there with things like the PO Box number my mother had, the phone number for my grandparent's home, and the birthday for Denny Dreuhl, a friend from Drake. There are many more of these, but this list comes to the top this morning.

Then there are those items on the other side of the ledger. Ask me today what I had for supper last night, I may or may not remember. Tell me something very important this morning, and it may well be gone from my memory by the middle of the afternoon.

What in the world is this?  Does this happen to everyone, or am I the only one who struggles with this? The most infuriating thing is the harder I try to remember something, the more quickly it seems to slip through my mental "fingers." It reminds me of a game we played when we were young. We would cover a watermelon with Crisco, throw it into the pool and then two teams tried to get it to opposite sides of the pool. One second you had the perfect hold on the watermelon, and suddenly, you realized it was gone. That is exactly what some of this feels like. Just like trying to hang onto smoke.

Then comes the next bit of the story. Some items I haven't been able to bring to mind will come floating back in, days, weeks, or sometimes months later. I know the human brain is an amazing thing, but just where in the heck has this information been hiding?  It astounds me when the information shows itself. Many times it is in the middle of the night, or at a time when I am thinking nothing about the topic. Maybe there is a "partition" of the brain that just keeps working on hanging questions. It is out there, in the background, trying to come up with the information not readily available.

Do you suppose that theoretically, every piece of information we have ever processed is actually still in there?  If so, I really feel I let myself down on some of those high school and college tests. I can remember looking at questions and having absolutely no idea what the question was even about. Now, that could mean I had never seen the information. I wasn't the best student. I got good grades, but I can't say I studied the way I should have. But there were those frustrating times when I would leave the test, and on the way back to my room the answer presented itself. Ah yes, the brain had been working on it "off-line."

If any of you have a secret on how to get some of this long processed information to come out, share it with all of us. I know there are things we would all like to remember. Times and places, and things said. Secrets we were told, now really secrets as we can't remember them. All of those things. If you have found the way to release all of this, share it with us.

On the Toybox front, there has been a lot going on. I have all of the aluminum pieces on the trailer and am in the process of putting the final coat of finish on it. I must tell you, it looks beautiful. I hope my sister and Karen LOVE it. All I really have left is some final fitting and tweaking of various parts, and the electrical work. There is not a great deal of this, but I would like it to be right so all of the interior lights work, as well as the trailer driving lights. This is something a little out of my element, so I will go slow and read a lot, and watch a bunch of YouTube videos. This seems to be my preferred way to learn things like this lately.

I finished and delivered "Nick" to the Iowa State Fair Blue Ribbon Foundation this week. He'll be up for auction at this year's Corndog Kickoff. Bid early. Bid often. The State Fair has always been one of my family's favorite summertime activities. Keep an eye out on my Etsy store. Nick's brothers and sisters will be available to purchase later this summer.

Have a great week. Think good thoughts this weekend as I am installing an air conditioner for my daughter. Shouldn't be a big deal, but things can go wrong. We don't need that. Now if I can just remember where I put that tape measure.

Mosquitos

For the rest of you in the Midwest, and some of you in other areas, I am sure I am not alone when I talk about mosquitoes being the terror of the summer. For those of you further north, or in other cooler parts of the country, you can probably trade the word mosquitoes for black flies. Either way, I think we all are aware of pests that are so invasive at times during the summer they literally drive us back into the house. Here in Iowa, I knew with certainty we hit this point one night last week. I was leaving the house to go to the gym and one of my neighbors was out walking his dog. With a pained look on his face he told me I shouldn't be out any longer than necessary as the mosquitoes were terrible. As I was already slapping them off my arms, I agreed wholeheartedly.

Did you ever stop to wonder if the lowly mosquito provides any positives in the world?  Like so many things, with this question in mind, I went to Google. The first thing I found was a note that mosquitoes serve no purpose other than to annoy us. I had a moment when I gladly agreed with the answer. I decided to keep digging for more information. There was, in fact, much more. Apparently, the mosquito is a food source for many fish and birds and there is an argument the elimination of the mosquito could have serious ramifications up and down the food chain. On the other hand there is a belief the mosquito is the largest transmitter of disease in the world. So, like so many other things, I guess there is good with the bad.

I remember one summer we were in Maine to spend time with my sister. We had gone to camp for a couple of days. Camp is a nice little cabin on a lake in the more remote part of Maine. We had absolutely wonderful days there. The thing I remember the clearest however were the mosquitoes. Along one side of the cabin was a narrow screened porch with a counter built along the side to the screen/lake. It was a wonderful place to sit, have dinner, and talk or play a game. Just a wonderful place to be. But the thing I remember were the mosquitoes. It sounded almost like rain as they flew against the screen by the thousands, trying to get to us. I am glad none of them had tools to get through. It was still a bit disconcerting.

As I think about the mosquito hoards in the neighborhood last, I still find I can smile about all of it. It is all just part of the circle of living in this part of the world. We know we will have mosquitoes right now, but we also know when the weather gets hot, they will dry up and go away, being nothing more than the "flying drops of water" they are. And we know the summer heat will come, fall will be nice, and we will plunge back into winter. By the way, I don't know about you, but that whole cycle seems to go way too fast anymore.

Enough philosophy for the day. I talked to you in the last blog about CNC routing. I am enjoying the new challenge, but last weekend I had a little bout with breaking tooling. I've done some reading and it seems like I may have done two things wrong. First, I may have been running the router too fast which heat to build up in the bit, causing failures. The second thing is that I spent less on tooling than I should have. This is a recurring lesson for me. I start out by trying to save a little money and when I get all done, I discover (AGAIN) I should have just bought the good stuff in the beginning. With that said, I have some carbide tooling coming, rather than the high speed steel I have been using. I have high confidence this will make a difference. I will let you know what I find out.

If there are any of you involved in CNC operations and have thoughts for me on any of this, I would enjoy hearing what has worked for you. I know there are a lot of things I can use the CNC router to make, even if they are as silly as this reminder. I look forward to continued progress as I learn more about the machine and discover new and interesting projects to create.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

I hope you have a great week.

Creativity

When I talk about woodworking, I talk about straight lines and right angles.  You haven't seen me produce chairs with curved seats or highly sculpted pieces ... ever.  Those things aren't what I do well.  But I added a CNC router to my arsenal of tools and it allows me to now add different dimensions and shapes to the work I am doing.

Let's start  with the basics.  CNC stands for "computer numerically controlled."  The idea behind a CNC anything is that a computer will its control the movement.  So, a CNC router is a router controlled by a computer.  The computer makes the decisions to move the router in any of 3 directions, or any combination of the three.  The three directions, typically identified as x, y, and z, are left to right in front of you; closer or further away; and up or down. The combination of these in very small increments makes virtually any cutting pattern possible with patience and time.  This type of technology has been available in large shops for years, with price tags in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Recently, CNC routers have become much more accessible to woodworkers like me.  As with many things, when they came to market they were expensive and a little fickle. Over time they have come down in price, and have become much more consistent and reliable. As I have worked with my CNC router, I've destroyed some wood and broken a couple of router bits, but overall, learning this new technology has been relatively easy and straightforward. Now I just need to find additional things to make.

So far, I have created functional things for the shop. If pieces need to be exact dimension, this technology will let you dial that in. If you want to work to the thousandth of an inch, you can. I started messing around with inlays. The first thing I did was to inset a cutout of the State of Iowa into one of the cutting boards I regularly make.  It came out all right, but I still need to perfect the technique. I've made a couple of signs and one of them was good enough to give away, while one is hanging in the shop, good enough for me, but not the world.  With practice these will also get better.

This Star Wars trivet is nothing that I would have ever tackled before.  I wouldn't have even thought about it.  But with the help of Inventables, I could download the plan and run it on the CNC. 

For any of you looking to get into this kind of work, I have found Inventables to be very helpful.  They have a good website of projects that will let you get started. You can make a copy of the item you want to cut out and make changes to fit it to your personal needs.  Although I haven't taken advantage of the feature, you can even buy the product to make the project from for many projects on their website.  I have plenty of wood in the shop that I've been able to use and don't see that changing in the near future.

Okay, on other fronts ...

Those of you who have followed my adventures for a while might remember that this week was a big one.  This is the week I had agreed to have the teardrop trailer finished for my sister.  It coincides with a rather big date for her.  Enough said about that.  Anyway, although I am close, I was unsuccessful in completing this project on time.  Fortunately, my sister asked if I could keep the trailer until she has a place to store it.  It looks like I have a few extra months to get this done, and that is just about the amount of time it will take.  I have included pictures of how things are progressing.

It looks as though when I finish my sister's trailer, I may have another to work on.  This won't be a teardrop but a tailgating trailer. We are just beginning to work on the concept, but it should be a lot of fun.  This will, like the teardrop, take a bit of time but should be interesting. 

Thanks for reading my blog.  If you have crafts or projects you would like to share, I would love to see them.  Have a great day.

Valentine

This is an interesting day. All the way around.

After checking Wikipedia, as I thought this might be a thoroughly modern way to drive economics, I found that Valentine's Day, or the Feast of St Valentine has been celebrated since early times, with the holiday taking on its association with romantic love in the 14th century. But leave it to the capitalists and business owners to make this day really big.

Several years ago, I was invited to a Drake University event in Kansas City. I went because the person who invited me is someone I have a great deal of respect for. Don Adams  was my VP when I worked at Drake. It was a social/networking gathering, but the speaker was the CEO for Hallmark. Obviously, this is a big time of the year for them. I remember him telling us his Board of Directors was no different than the ones we were working with. They wanted a double digit net income growth year over year. That's all. The interesting thing is when you are talking about a company the size of Toybox Woodworking, a ten percent increase is easy to achieve. However, if you are talking about a multi-billion dollar company, ten percent feels different. And it is different. At that level it takes more people, more facilities, more everything.

At the level of my little venture, it takes one new project, a little more time. Now, the interesting thing is that the thought process is really not a great deal different. It still takes the leap where you say you are going to grow and change. Interestingly, I have one person I have a great deal of respect for and his first question in situations like this is always, "Are you sure growth is good?"  If you answer positively, you can be on your way to growth.

So if I set aside the look at economics, and just think about what this holiday, it strikes me that we should tell those we love and care about how we feel every day. It shouldn't take a day on the calendar to make the time to tell someone they are important. I know I try to make sure those in my life who are important to me know it, but I also know time is so fleeting. Sometimes it gets away from us and months or years go by without us saying anything. For that reason, Valentine's Day does serve a useful purpose. It is a stake in the ground telling us to let those we love know it. It is easy to get caught up in the consumerism of the day, but I need to let that cynical attitude go and concentrate on those important to me.

On a separate note,  a little over a month ago, I was responsible for hosting a meeting. We had the meeting at a restaurant in downtown Des Moines and part of the morning was a tour of American Dream Machines. If you haven't spent time on their website, I recommend you fix that.   We were fortunate enough to have a top to bottom, front to back, personal tour of the entire place and all of their inventory. I landed on the 1949 Chevrolet pickup like the one in the picture. I have never been a Chevy guy, in fact I have never owned a Chevy, but I have a memory of my Uncle Norm's pickup. It's a good memory.

Anyway, given the day, and the color of the truck, if any of you have hit the lottery, or had your money tree bloom, and you are looking for a tangible way to tell me how much you care, I will make a place in the garage for this truck.

Wow, in a few hundred words, I went from cynical non-commercial to the most self-serving person ever. Truly though, I had been looking for a way to show you this truck and the opportunity presented itself. If you are interested in muscle cars, particularly from the 1960s and 1970s, go check out the website.

On a final note today, I wanted to let you know that last Saturday one of the gentlemen who teaches the welding class I've been taking told me that at this point, I can weld. I can knock that one off the DIY list. This weekend I will start putting veneer and epoxy on the Teardrop trailer. We will see how that goes. Additionally, I have another project I am starting for YESS. I love doing things for them.

We traveled a long way today and talked about a lot of things. I hope you have enjoyed it. Drop me a note or comment if you did.

Lazy

I started my day today by reading something from Seth Godin called "Hard Work." Click on the link. You'll like the post. I found myself laughing out loud as I read it, thinking about my mother and her words to me about this same topic.

When I was young, I'd spend time thinking about the most efficient and effective way to accomplish tasks. My mom was always on me about this. She told me I was lazy. I remember a specific instance where I had figured out a way to lace and tie my work boots in about half the time it had taken me in the past. I was particularly proud of this accomplishment and I thought I should share the approach I had discovered. After showing mom, she clearly explained that I was lazy and should go back to lacing my boots the way everyone else did. She was quite pointed about this, but as some of you know, I can be a little obstinate. To this day, if I have boots that require lacing, I do it the same way, the way I discovered as more efficient.

Fast forward to about a month ago. I had someone ask me how many hours a week I worked. My answer was fifty to fifty-five. Then I was stunned by the follow-up admonition that I wasn't a work-aholic. I didn't respond, but my mom's voice came back to me loud and clear ... LAZY. It rocked me back on my heels. I thought I was past this, left way back in my childhood, but her words came roaring up again to raise the question. The fascinating thing for me was the fact someone could make a determination about my entire work ethic simply by hearing a number. There was no discussion of how effectively I worked, or how much I slacked off during the day. With one single number I was compartmentalized into a segment of the workforce. I call bullshit. I'd much rather have three folks working for me who are intelligent and thoughtful, bouncing ideas off each other to make the result better than ten employees who just plod ahead, doing things the same way they always have. Seth Godin would call them cogs. Give me the smart ones every time. I will win the battle with those folks.

As I contemplate this today, it makes me wonder two things. First, how many of these types of landmines did our parents plant in our lives with no real intention of doing so?  And second, as a parent how many of these have I landed on my kids, or my friends and acquaintances? The second question concerns me more than the first. As for the things my parents and grandparents saddled me with, honestly they are at this point mostly in my past, or are so clearly part of my life they will always be there. This "lazy" thing is obviously one of them for me. But in truth, at this point I have gotten past most of this and found a road forward. Regarding the second question, I'm not sure how to think about it, or how to change it going forward. When this person challenged my work ethic solely on the number of hours I work, and not on the quality of my work, it was enough to make me pause. But have I done the same thing to someone else?

It seems to me the learning here is about the way I carry a message and the way I receive a message. Lately this has come top of mind again, not solely through this exchange. The business and working world is transforming as the average age of those in the workforce continues to get further and further away from mine. (I think I found a really elegant way to say older.) I received an email from a vendor a couple of weeks back asking for feedback on a customer situation. I gave very clear, concise feedback and the next thing I knew I received a follow-up email asking why I was upset. I wasn't in the least upset. I had just given the requested feedback very quickly and succinctly. Apparently this had not been the manner my much-younger (millennial) vendor was prepared to receive the information.

Long and short, communication is the hardest thing we do. It is tough because of the history we have with family and others and it is hard because of where we are aligned in the ever forward march of history. It takes time and effort every day to get it right, and even then, we will only be so close to right. Tomorrow is another day to fight the good fight and try to be closer to understood. If we all try, we will begin to find middle ground.

Have a great day.