Fall Is Near

Posted on by Jordan

I don’t quite know how it always manages to surprise me but it appears fall is here.

I know, it’s marked on the calendar, but I never pay attention to those dates, and they are generally wrong anyhow!

I headed out to Boone for another shooting competition (my 3rd ever) bright and early Saturday morning only to discover that my morning would be filled with numb fingers and some shivering between stages. Had I not forgotten about aiming on the last stage I would have been really happy with the trip, but the “missed target” time penalties really hurt.

Later in the day I got to listen to the Huskers on the radio and work in the garage on another project. I won’t be posting pictures of that one until I know it’s not going to be a total disaster… but it was something do to anyway 🙂

Sunday Heather and I headed to the International Food Festival. We did that event two years ago and, despite what that post said, we both remembered the food as being weird and not very good.

This year it was even more crowded, to the point where we often couldn’t continue down the street without waiting for the mob to unbind itself. The food was good this year, perhaps because we were less adventurous, but that does make for a better experience if somewhat less culturally exciting.

The previous week we attended the Latin American Festival, an event with slightly less food, and considerably more dancing. I didn’t take any pictures, but it was a fun event. We have some friends who are from Puerto Rico, and were excited to show us some of the items in the Puerto Rican area of the event.

As I mentioned at the top of the post, fall is unmistakeably here, so it’s probably good that we enjoyed being outside over the past few weekends. Between the encroaching cold, and Heather’s gradually reducing mobility our opportunities to enjoy being out and about are probably diminished for the near future.

-Jordan

99 Days…

Posted on by Jordan

If our baby hits her dates, she will be here in 99 days.

It’s a distressingly long, and short, time all in one!

Heather and I went to the Hospital to take our “accelerated” baby class a few days ago.

It was overwhelming to say the least. I was expecting to have too much information thrown at me, and maybe even to walk out concerned that I might not remember something critical.

As it turns out, those things weren’t an issue at all. Despite the quantity of information we felt it was fairly easy to absorb, and the instructors were very effective.

What I didn’t expect was to not know what to do with the information presented. After the fourth or fifth “raw from the delivery room” clip the nurse showed us I looked at Heather and thought “What did I get you into!?”

Heather seems to have been less intimidated by the presentation than I was… probably a good thing given her role in the process 🙂

While what we learned was generally speaking helpful and reassuring, the majority of it isn’t anything I will bother to recount here…

With one exception: Cold Sores

The nurse running the class was adamant that we understand that people with cold active sores not be allowed anywhere near infants. I don’t know if I had heard this before and forgotten, but apparently cold sores sometimes kill babies. That topic was one of the only times truly dire outcomes were discussed.

Beyond that downer piece of news, the class really did build up our comfort level and confidence that we will manage the birth of our child. It did thoroughly drive home the idea that the birthing process is in no way glamorous or dignified.

 

Sorry if this post ended up being somewhat rambling… I wanted to get the thoughts down before it went too long. Also, there would be a picture but, the obvious picture would be of Heather… and she isn’t really in the mood to have a pregnancy highlighting picture taken these days so, just imagine 😉

 

-Jordan

 

The Frame

Posted on by Jordan

This post is purely shop-project focused, so if you aren’t interested in that, perhaps you would enjoy an essay Heather found. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it as of late, maybe you will find it interesting too: I Don’t Wait Anymore

Ok, on to the project!

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had managed to sell the idea of buying a saw in order to frame something for the baby’s room. Well I got the saw:

But that means I had to actually try making this frame. To be honest I started feeling rather intimidated the more I thought about it. Intimidation or no, I had this fancy new saw on my bench, and knew I needed to give the frame a shot. Things did not get off to an encouraging start when I flipped a piece of casing end-for-end thinking it would be easier to cut right handed that way… only to realize that it made my cut completely backwards… after I completed the cut.

On the bright side, we had picked out some inexpensive casing, so the replacement board wasn’t a significant portion of the budget 🙂

eight painstakingly double-checked cuts later, and I was ready for the scary part: glue

You can kind of see the guide I made to help keep things square. It didn’t work out as well as I had hoped, but did at least give me something to brace against. I quickly realized that I need some clamps. Wouldn’t need to be anything fancy, but gluing doesn’t work too well when you can’t hold things together with a little pressure.

To that end, I carefully drilled some pilot holes in from the top and bottom sections to let me draw the corners together with a trim screw. My first two corners worked ok, but really should have been counter-sunk. The second two I stepped up to a larger pilot bit, and then free-handed a pseudo-countersink to finish it off, and had really good results. It really helped that the casing was blurring the lines between cardboard and wood, but I was producing respectable corners that were somewhat solid.

The picture above shows right before the last corner, where I may have become a little over-confident and let my screw pull the corner out of alignment at a critical moment. In the end however, it wasn’t so far off, and some putty, sandpaper, and black spray-paint  were next in the plan anyway.

After a few coats of paint, all that was left to do was add some hooks to the top, and double-sided poster hanging strips to the lower edges and we have a fairly nice looking map if I can be so bold:

I won’t say that I found a new hobby in frame-making, but it was a nice change of pace from my normal digital project! 🙂

 

-Jordan

 

A Week At Home

Posted on by Jordan

This past week, like many weeks this summer, we didn’t go out of town. To be honest I have really enjoyed it. Once the baby comes we may feel like we don’t have a choice in the matter, and maybe I won’t feel the same way, but for now it is really relaxing.

This is not to say we were bored!

Heather and a neighbor who is also expecting around the same time attended some sort of baby themed open house at the hospital where both of them will be giving birth.

I shot in my second ever pistol match. Not particularly well, but I had fun.

Heather and I walked over to the mall to listen to the  Dueling Piano act that was playing in the little amphitheater area there.

It was a really nice way to spend Sunday evening!

The only other thing of note this week is that the construction across the street demonstrated what it looks like when you hit a water main:

We were only without water for a few hours, so I can’t complain too much 🙂

-Jordan