A Table

Blog, Woodworking

How long does it take to build a table and when do you really get to start counting? Does the timer start when you make the first cut or when you sit down to draft the piece? Maybe it starts when your cutting board doesn’t turn out as intended and you decide that it would […]

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Becoming Dad

Blog, Parenting

Throughout the pregnancy, I kept telling my wife things like, “The baby is all mine when she gets here,” and “You’ve been carrying her for nine months, I get the next nine.” I wasn’t being silly; I was just being impatient. I’ve been looking forward to being a dad, getting to put my own spin […]

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That was 34

Blog, Woodworking

The 34th year of my life was emotional. I was presented with a whole host of new situations, good and bad, which I suddenly needed to cope with. Overall, my gut says that things went well which is all I really ask for. Ukraine Early in the year, February 24th to be precise, my life […]

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My Heart Cries Out

Blog, Peace Corps

My heart cries out for my people. I saw the news as it happened last night. Russia launched an unprovoked attack on my beloved Ukraine. All the reports in recent weeks pointed towards this needless aggression, but the feeling of that happening hits different and all at once. Ukraine does not deserve this. Ukrainians deserve […]

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33 Years Down

Blog

You know? It’s been a year. Can we just take a moment to reflect on everything that happened in the past year? This was by far the year I expected it to be. We entered year two of a global pandemic, where we were more isolated than we have been used to and learned more […]

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Being 30


Blog

This is a post I meant to save for the end of the year, as posts like this tend to be placed there. But so much about what I have to say feels better to get it out sooner than later and move on to the next thing. Bear with me because there is light […]

November 21, 2018

Spoon Carving


Blog, Woodworking

At my last job I had a coworker who was the kind of person to know interesting people because she could be considered an interesting person herself. The kind of people who don’t sit in office chairs all day and instead work by their own rules on their own time making their own way. She […]

November 14, 2018

Basement Ceiling Drywall


Basement, Blog, Home

In our ongoing quest to have a finished basement, Ellie and I just reached a major milestone. The drywall in the basement has all been hung. It has been a long journey, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. We started this whole thing on a bit of a whim back in March. A pile of […]

November 7, 2018

Preserving and Canning


Blog, Home, Kitchen

I always thought my family was a bit different than the families of my friends. The traditions we kept, I just assumed they were ours. At times, I was embarrassed by them or didn’t know how to explain them. I figured other people would think the traditions were weird. Little did I know, more people […]

October 31, 2018

Basement Ceiling Loose Ends


Basement, Blog, Home

We started the basement finishing project back in March, I believe. Since then, we’ve had fits and starts when it came to getting things done. Some of the reason for that is that we were doing things we didn’t really know how to do and had to learn as we go. Other reasons include health […]

October 24, 2018

Craftsman Table Saw


Blog

If I haven’t already made this clear in previous posts, I’m not a rich man. I never have been though someday I hope to be more comfortable with my finances than I am now. Because of this, I sometimes need to be creative when I’m looking to get something new. I don’t think the things […]

October 17, 2018

Garage Drainage Tile


Blog, Home, Outside

If you don’t live in Wisconsin and/or haven’t heard about it on the news, then let me tell you that we’ve been hit with a lot of rain this year. There was a stretch of a few weeks where a good part of everyone’s commute was flooded in some way, shape or form. I was […]

October 10, 2018

Updating the Mantle


Blog, Home, Living Room, Woodworking

Sometimes projects take a while to complete. Sometimes, the simpler the project the longer it takes because you overthink the solution to the point of freezing on any sort of action. Sometimes, you learn a little bit of something about yourself along the way.  Want to know what I learned about myself along the way? […]

October 3, 2018

Encasing the HVAC


Basement, Blog, Home, Woodworking

As Ellie and I speed up on our project of finishing the basement of our house, we’ve broken the process down into bite-sized chunks to help us keep moving forward. The small projects were written in the order they need to be done, so we don’t end up getting ahead of ourselves. While writing out […]

September 26, 2018

Workshop Air Cleaner


Basement, Blog, Home, Woodworking

I make a lot of things, but the thing I’m best at making is a mess. The mess can usually be justified, by me, because I have a fairly good memory of where things are in the shop. However, I don’t live alone so I need to keep a cleaner shop in order to not […]

September 19, 2018