At The End of Everything be Sure to Buy the Merch

There was something that was supposed to happen yesterday, but I can't remember what it was...

Hmm.... Not exactly.

No, that's not it. Something else...

Kind of funny how this is likely going to upstage

that other announcement yesterday. Then again, Microsoft
owns them both, so I guess it doesn't matter to them.

Maybe? It is video game related...

I don't know about that. Midnight in Goldshire
is a wee bit different than Midnight in other places.

Oh yeah, that was it: something was supposed to happen at Midnight.

Or something like that.

Under the headlines of "I'm not sure they know their audience," This appeared in the WoW Classic tab this evening:

Mists Classic, 20th Anniversary Servers, Retail Midnight. Same difference, I guess.

But what got me was that email I got this afternoon, even before the "Adventure is Calling You Home" email:

I guess Blizzard knows their audience, but... Meh. The universe is ending; buy the merch! And buy the top end package for the housing exclusives and Early Access!

Unfortunately for me, I apparently never bothered to post about Retail's impending player housing --because I checked under "Retail" and couldn't find it-- but if I had I'd have said something along the lines of Blizzard making some aspects of housing dependent upon the Cash Shop. Well, the Expansion Price Tiers isn't the Cash Shop, but it's close enough for me. 

To be honest, I'm surprised that Blizzard isn't abandoning the lower price tiers entirely and just having everybody pay $100 or more for the expac. After all, look at what Nintendo is doing for the prices of their new games on the Switch 2, and WoW is deliberately orienting the contents of the various packages that if you want to be "serious" about raiding or collecting, you'd better shell out for the top end price.

I don't really have a leg to stand on here, it's just that what I spend money on is different than what others in MMO spaces do. Like on raw materials to make another one of these:

No appendages were lost in the construction
of that end table.

#Blaugust2025

Red vs. Birds, Part Whatever

I'm only being semi-facetious with that title, because I've had quite a Spring dealing with birds. 

My involvement with birds is mostly two things: don't let them get into the house, and set out seeds for them in the birdfeeder. They don't bother me, and I don't bother them. However, each Spring there is an ongoing battle to keep the birds from building a nest in the porch.

It's the robins that are doing that. Always the robins. 

One year, the robins made a nest in the bush right next to where our cars are parked, and one of them would sit on the side mirror of one of the cars all day long, making noises at it's reflection, and crapping all over said side mirror. I had to hose off that side mirror every couple of days until the baby birds in the nest grew up and flew away. 

However, for the past several years, the robins have been trying to build a nest in our porch, which would prevent us from actually using said porch until they left. (They have a habit of dive bombing us if we come close to where their nest is.) To prevent this, I've turned on the overhead fan on the porch for several days to keep the birds from landing on the fan and trying to build a nest there. This also keeps the robins from building a test on the rafters next to the fan by blowing away the twigs and whatnot.*

This year the robins were unusually persistent, but they eventually failed to build a nest and moved on. I thought that my work was done and I could turn my attention to staining the deck boards I put down last year. The rain had been unusually persistent this Spring, so for much of the past Spring the weather had either been too wet or too cold to allow me to go out and stain the deck boards. Finally, however, the weather turned and I got four days of clear weather for the deck to dry out and I could make a go of staining it.

Then the robins decided to take their revenge by finding a nice perch on the deck and start crapping all over it. 

I was planning on using a deck cleaner/prep solution on the boards anyway, but the appearance of bird poop all over the deck was quite unwelcome. I spent the better part of a day scrubbing the thing down, clearing it out, and then the next day there was more poop to clean off.

After two days of this, I finally said "Fuck it," and decided to stain the deck after work.

Partway through the staining, I finally remembered
to take a photo.

Using a paint pad as opposed to a roller made for a lot less splatter and made the process go more quickly than it had in the past.

The view from the porch after it was completed.
Yes, the screen is ripped, but that's an artifact
of the original screen that enclosed the porch. That's
a story that I'll have to discuss in another post.

I know it's not perfect; I can see the overlapping coats of stain in plenty of spots, but the entire point of this was to protect the wood, not look perfect. I can go put another coat of stain on later, but the current problem is fixed.

Now, I have to work on the stairs, then address the railings. My budget might not permit either to be complete this year, because I had surprise car bills this Spring. I also decided to pass on finishing up my amateur radio license this year because buying ham radio equipment was out of the question too. Oh well, one thing at a time.

*It's not as if the robins don't have trees and bushes to build nests in nearby; there's a bunch of them around.

Being Present in the Moment

One of the things I've had to adjust over these past several months is to embrace the slow and steady pace of things. Not in World of Warcraft, per se, but in life as well.

For a guy who has been tinkering around with electronics since the late 80s*, I've had a reckoning while studying for my Technician's license. While I realize that for some people memorizing the questions in the potential question pool for the test is the way to go, that's not me. I prefer to learn how to do something so I can then figure it out every time. Sure, it'll slow me down on my test completion, but it's not like this is a timed test in the same vein as the SAT or GRE. 

But still... Holy crap have I forgotten a ton of stuff over the years.

Yeah, that. Wait, what was I talking about?
from Cheezburger.

This has been an exercise in humiliation. I can't tell you the number of times when a concept was presented in the study guide and my initial reaction was "Oh yeah, I remember this! It's... uh... It's..."

What's sad is that I've built a power supply and
antenna tuner before, so you'd think I'd remember this.
From The ARRL Ham Radio License
Manual (5th Edition), page 3-16.

I then have two directions I could take: tell myself that I know this and I'll be fine on the test, or admit that I don't really know it and that I have to study and review and practice more. 

While I really really want to take the former route -my ego wants me to go that way too- I've been forced into the realization that the latter is the better choice in the long run. Yeah, my ego drives me just like it drives everybody else, but even more than my ego is my fear of looking like an idiot in front of everybody else.**

Speaking of idiots, having this photo of Richard Garriott in the
book did not age well. And no, I'm not putting this here to try
to get a response from Wilhelm Arcturus, either. From
The ARRL Ham Radio License Manual (5th Edition), Page 1-7.

So I've been proceeding a lot slower than I hoped. 

***

If you play video games or are a fan of logic puzzles, you know that typically the best solution is to perform actions in a specific order. This kind of goes without saying for anything in life, from putting together IKEA furniture to cleaning out the garage to engaging in relationships.***

This includes figuring out my outside projects for this coming year.

The most critical part, replace the deck boards, was completed last year. Now I have to stain the deck once the overnight temperatures reach over 50 F (10 C) as according to the stain instructions. There's also the consideration that if I'm not careful, the stain will have a ton of pollen embedded in it as well. 

But there's the next phases to consider, and they involve replacing the stairs and the railings. And the skirting around the deck.

That's just the deck. I also want to paint the exterior of the porch, which involves me getting up on a ladder to paint the top portions of the porch. And that involves me clearing out enough of the garage so I can get to the ladder...

You get the idea. 

I have to figure out the order to attack all of these projects in the same way my Questing Buddy attacks her goals in WoW Classic, but I have to temper this with the knowledge that I don't have all the time in the world to do this, either. Some of these will get bumped to next year (or the year after), and I have to be willing to accept that.

(Yeah, right.)

***

Speaking of next year...

I reviewed the vacation days I've taken for this year so far, and all but two of them involved doctor's visits. And those two vacation days involved my travel for work, so they technically don't count.****

Admittedly, 3 of those doctors' visits involved me getting vaccines, so they're a once every several years event, but even then I'm starting to feel a bit run down by the constant drip of doctor visits, along with the knowledge that this is going to be my life going forward. 

All of these visits are starting to impact other things as well. For example, I'd like to take some time off to just rest and recharge, but the more time I take off for a doctor's visit means there's less time for other things. (See my projects above.)

The irony that I kind of need some time off to recharge but that my time off is already being taken up by health issues hasn't been lost on me. I've also had a nagging concern that the longer my life has gone on I've lost the ability to relax. Consider it an unfortunate byproduct of being on-call 24x7 for close to 30 years, but even when I have a couple of days off it takes an effort to not check work email. Or join a daily review session. Or... Well, you get the idea. 

I began to realize I might have a problem with relaxing when I sat down in a chair on the newly replaced deck surface and no more than five minutes later I got the urge to go work on another project.

This is not good, I thought, and got up and went back inside after trying to push those feelings away.

So yeah, I need to relearn how to relax. Be present in the moment. Maybe that's why I've been enjoying fishing this much lately.

Good luck with that one.
From Tumblr and Star Wars.

*Not to mention my bachelor's degree.

**I'm not talking about 'an idiot versus a know-it-all', but 'an idiot versus being actually competent'. If there's one thing I have learned over the years, being a know-it-all serves as a lightning rod for everybody who hates/bullies smart people, so blending into the background by not being a know-it-all is typically the smarter move.

***Figuring out what that order is in a relationship frequently is the hard part. Everybody is different and responds to things differently, although some general concepts are pretty universal. Otherwise, Psychology would be a crap shoot.

****And I ended up working while traveling anyway, because of course that's what happened.

Time to Rest the 'Ol Back for the Winter

It is finally done.

I finished replacing the deck boards. That includes the last board behind all the plants and the "mini" boards at the corners.

I highlighted what I meant by mini-boards
in red circles. They're very small compared
to the rest of the planks.

But all's not completely finished, because I'll be spending up through mid-winter putting the rotting boards and the leftovers in the trash.

I'd imagine that my allergies will improve once
all of those boards finally are out of here.

However, I don't need to do anything else about the deck until Spring, when I'll be looking at revving up for replacing the stairs and railings. (And the skirting. Can't forget the skirting.)

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around
it being warm enough here in November to go barefoot.

Some People go on Vacation to Rest...

...but I end up working on projects instead.

I'm not exactly sure why I derive such enjoyment from working on a project, but I do. Maybe it's that my job is a case study in never seeing anything truly finished*, or maybe that I'm naturally biased toward working on things with my hands, but when a job finishes up there's a wave of satisfaction that washes over me, if only for a little while.

Of course, things are never that easy. About halfway through a project I get an itch to start another one, and that presents a problem. Sure, the new shiny idea does capture my attention when I'm in the middle of something else, but it also means that I've forgotten why I was excited about the original project in the first place. If I can get through these urges, I can see a project through to completion.

As far as the deck goes, yes, I have felt those urges already.

Still, I've been pushing onward.

My workstation on the porch. I thought the
deck was completely attached to the porch,
but having seen the framing underneath, they
are actually separate. Go figure.

Thankfully I bought the miter saw quickstand, because I wouldn't be able to finish this deck project otherwise. The reviews talked about how light the Ryobi miter saw is, and if that's light I'd hate to lift the "normal" weighted saws.

I finished the last of this current batch of wood, but this also involved doing some other work on the deck.

See where that exit to the north is? That's one of the two locations where I'm going to replace the stairs. As you can tell, there's only one post there to attach a stair railing. Since you need two stair rails, that meant either I was going to put in a post now or wait and do it next year when I actually work on the stairs.

I chose the former. Do it now while the area under the deck is exposed so I don't have to take out boards later. 

Painter's tape is a wonderful invention.

I used painter's tape to attach a level, so I could work it without needing an extra pair of hands.

What's hidden by the support board are extra screws attaching
the post to the ledger board.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, that post is taller than
it's compatriot on the left side. I decided it was smarter to
install a longer post and then cut it down rather than
risk installing a post that was too short.

So now, with 2/3 of the rows replaced, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I have 3-4 leftover 16' deck boards that I'll use when the last batch of wood arrives, and once those are all installed I'll be done for the year. I think I'll use this Winter to let my back rest.

*If you work in IT, you know what I'm talking about. Sure, there are "projects" that end up being "completed", but I'd say only 1 out of 10 projects I've worked on ever crossed the finish line to my satisfaction. There's far too much horse trading going on trying to keep the bugs and disruption to a minimum versus finishing within a (so-called) reasonable time frame.

Red Needs Water Badly

On September 4th we received our next batch of wood for the deck.

The guy delivering the wood warned me about
some of the pieces. He didn't pull them, but if
he had he'd have gotten me better boards, as he
builds decks as a side job on the weekends.

That meant I worked on the deck this weekend.

I have 42 rows to replace, so I bought enough wood for 21 rows plus a bit extra to compensate for any bad boards.

So today, I put down nine rows.

One more row here will barely fit within the
length of a 16 foot board, and then I'll have to use
combinations of 8 foot and 12 foot boards.

It was also quite the adventure, given that I dropped a couple of things that fell down under the deck, so I had to crawl under it to get to the drill bit and screws. I was sure not going to go on another trip to the hardware store for another countersink bit.

The hardest part of the deck work has been ripping out the old boards:

The damage.

I'm going to have to break those down and safely remove/bend the nails before I can get too much farther along. These 4 inch-wide boards may look pretty, but there's a lot more of them than there would have been if the previous homeowner had used the more commonly used 6 inch wide boards. Sure, I could have replaced the 4 inch boards with 6 inch, but that would have required me ripping out all of the boards so I could properly do it. And I really wasn't going to do that and leave the deck in an incomplete state for a couple of months.

The weather today was fantastic. Almost too much so, because in my focus on my work I neglected to hydrate and even eat some lunch. (I did have a handful of nuts, so I wasn't completely crazy.) Right now, I'm paying the price by nursing a headache while I drink water. 

EtA: It's countersink, not counterstrike. /sigh

What To Do on a Saturday

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day. Not humid at all, and a pleasant breeze coming from the northwest.

A good day to finish off this batch of wood for the deck:

10 year old grill not included.

I flipped over and began working on the side of the deck closest to the porch, so I could exploit the wood I had left. I could cut out the bad sections of the replacement decking and still have enough left to replace these small pieces. That photo is kind of deceptive, however, as the board lengths rapidly grew to requiring 12 foot boards.

I have now exhausted that first batch of wood and have about 60% of the deck rows left to replace. The length of the rows isn't nearly as important as the number of rows, because the number of cuts on the saw will be the same for most of what's remaining. I'm thinking of getting one batch of wood in September and then another in October, and that ought to finish up the decking. All I'd have to do then is wait until Spring or early Summer to paint the deck. 

Oh yeah, and begin Phase 2 of the rehab: the railings and stairs.

#Blaugust2024

What I Do When I'm Not Gaming

I suppose I ought to provide an update to my deck adventure, if for no other reason than as proof that I didn't abandon it again like so many other years.

Last year, car repairs ate up all available money, and the year before I was still in recovery from my little hospital adventure. And the year before that, 2021... Well, I'd rather not talk about that summer again.

But yes, I have been working on the deck this year, and I do have a long term plan of action.

The first stage was to determine if the top of the beams and joists were good enough to use as-is. If they weren't, then I'd likely have to replace the entire deck and... with costs for a new deck running $12,000 to $20,000 for a direct replacement, we don't have the money for that right now.

So I bought a couple 8 foot replacement deck boards and pried the old ones out on the far end with the intent of determining if the so-called bones of the deck were worth saving. 

Luckily, they were, so I replaced them and put in an order for decking that would cover somewhere between 35-40% of the deck. I give it a range because you always over-order on wood being delivered to your house because you have to assume that some of the wood is going to be unusable. 

Looks can be deceiving.

From this side, the wood looked pretty good. However, when I began flipping the boards over, I discovered that was not the case.

There's a reason why I put some boards up
high like this. This flaw just had to be in
the middle, because if it were on the end
I could have found a place for it and cut off
the bad section.

Some boards, however, could be made usable by merely flipping them over so the flaw wasn't showing.

Such as this one. I do sometimes wonder how
people at the mill where this is cut convince
themselves that wood such as this is perfectly
fine to sell at the same price as other, good boards.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been pulling out a row of decking and replacing it with a new one. Although I've been out there early in the morning from time to time, typically as stress relief from work, for the most part I've begun my work after 3:30 PM. That's when the deck is covered in shade from a nearby chokecherry tree.

If you notice that the last board on the end is an old board, that was done on purpose. I'm using that board to be able to snap a line once I'm finished and trim all of the excess off in one cut. That does mean that there are boards that extend pretty far out from the edge of the deck, and I've nearly thwacked myself a few times by forgetting that fact. When I cut the grass last Sunday, I forgot about the 16 foot deck board I set on the top of the rail and nearly smacked into it with my temple. 

Still, the project is continuing, and I'm about 30 - 33% finished:

That has left a lot of old deck boards to get rid of.

That pile is after I broke down a bunch of boards, took care of the nails sticking out, and set them out for trash removal. I sure hope that the trash people aren't gonna complain about the steady stream of old decking they're gonna see.

***

The plan going forward is to finish using these deck boards, then in September I'll get another round of wood, and go until that round is finished. If I need a third bunch in October, that's fine; October is usually our driest month of the year. 

Why spread it out? Well, the short answer is money. I can afford a bit at a time, rather than pay for it all at once. Since the cost pushed me into using pressure treated wood instead of composite*, cost is also determining just how much of the deck I can complete at one time. I'm a one man operation, so I don't want to have all of the wood delivered just to have it sit out, unused, for months.

Once the deck boards are replaced, then I have the Winter to plan out how I want to attack the next phase, which is either the railing or the steps. I'm thinking it's going to be the railing, but I could change my mind and do the steps instead. The last stage of the deck repair will be replacing the skirting and putting in some gravel and whatnot around the edge of the deck to keep the weeds away.

So yeah, multi-year project. One step at a time, however. One step at a time.

*At one point composite decking cost as low as twice that of pressure treated wood, but the price of wood has gone down recently. Still, I'd likely have to rework the deck by adding joists if I wanted to use composite deck boards, because composite isn't as strong as regular wood. Yes, I'd have to paint the deck more regularly than if I used a composite material --and paint is not cheap-- but having to resubmit the deck for review by the county inspectors isn't worth the extra up front cost.

Me and My Big Mouth

After that post on my upcoming deck project, I've been reading up on the building code for said deck. 

And I've found a few problems.

You know how I mentioned that I had no idea how the deck passed inspection because of the slope of the stairs? Yeah, I found that if there's three or more steps in place then a rail has to be there. That 3 steps is kind of critical, because the north steps have only one step, and a very steep one at that, so I guessed right and that they avoided needing stair rails there because of the lack of steps and barely making the minimum slope for the steps. Still, it's not optimal.

However, I did find out that the gap in the balusters around the deck was required so that a 4 inch sphere could not pass through the gap. Not because they don't want a ball falling off of the deck, but a toddler being able to stick their head through the gap.

And the gap in our balusters is 5 inches. 

/sigh

While I was measuring, I also found out that our railings were 35 inches high, while the code minimum for the railings is... 36 inches. That may sound bad, but I can actually make 36 inches by changing a few things on the rails. I was going to rebuild them anyway, but it is annoying.

I mean, really? REALLY? How close
can you get and still mess this up?
But yeah, putting a 2x4 or 2x6 on top
will push me over 36 inches.

For a few anxious moments I thought the length of the deck railing wasn't up to code either, as the "how to" deck books I was reading mentioned a 6 foot maximum length between railing posts, and ours were a maximum of 6.5 feet. It turns out that the building code for the county states a maximum length of 8 feet, so I don't have to do major surgery on said deck. 

And at least the spacing on joists is 14 inches, not wider than the absolute minimum of 16 inches.

Rebuilding the rails isn't that big of a deal, and I'd been considering it anyway as the railings had been out there, exposed to the elements, for 35 years. However, if I'd have needed an extra 5 or so rail posts, that might have been enough to require a rebuild.

And a reinspection.

/ugh

What I've decided to do is do what I can right now that is most important, and that is to redo the deck boards themselves. After that, if I've the time and money, I'll fix the north steps, the skirting, and the west steps in that order. Last on the list will be the deck railing, because a) it's been like that for years so an extra year won't hurt, and b) I don't have little kids who could stick their head through the railing. (Any more, anyway.)

It's Just Something To Do

Meteorological Summer begins this week in my part of the world, and the weather has had its share of humidity and thunderstorms the past few weeks.

It also means that its time for building projects to kick into high gear.

That doesn't mean I don't repair or work on stuff during the Winter months, it's just that I tend to use power tools outside due to lack of space in the garage*, and if the weather sucks for some reason or another I tend to pass on doing outside work. Sawing outside when it's 32F/0C or colder tends to suck, and I'd rather not repeat that performance if I can help it.

I have decided that this year is the year I am finally going to do something about our deck.

Obligatory photo of deck boards that need replacement.

The old deck has been around since 1989** with a few boards replaced here and there by me about a decade or so ago, and while the bones of the thing are still in good shape I really need to go replace the deck boards themselves. I'd thought for years about replacing the wooden deck boards with composite decking, but while the price has come down it has remained high enough that I simply can't afford it. 

I have also discovered that the stairs for the deck, while probably up to code 35 years ago, are no longer good enough should I rehab this thing. 

So, barring any surprise financial issues, such as all the car repairs from last year, I'm going to fix the deck to make it usable once more.

***

I do have a plan here, it's just a matter of figuring out how to put it into motion. 

There are three big jobs:

• Replace the deck boards
• Replace the two sets of stairs
• Replace the skirting

That last one was the one I was most concerned about, ironically enough. While I'd replaced deck boards before, I'd never really touched the skirting. The skirting that was originally used was wooden paneling, making the bottom of the deck look like it was a finished basement straight out of the 1970s, and that paneling has begun falling off as it deteriorated. I really don't want to replace it with more paneling, but I'm also concerned that by altering the skirting I might also be creating a problem with erosion under the deck.

I put some of the skirting back up just to take this pic.
About the best thing about the deck is that the main
beams and supports are in good shape.

Here, let me show you what the basic design looks like:

Yeah, I used MS Paint for this. Nothing too fancy.

The two sets of stairs aren't very large, only about 2-3 steps each, but they need to be brought up to code with better slope and adding rails + lighting. (I suspect the lack of the proper number of stairs and their steep slope were done to avoid having to add lights to the deck.) The deck faces West and north, while the south has a covered porch and the east is walled off by the back of the garage.

Our weather comes west to east, which means the skirting facing west gets the brunt of the weather. Replacing that (now dilapidated) solid skirting with anything more permeable, such as lattice, might allow erosion of the ground under the deck. That being said, I've also discovered plastic sheeting that was placed under the deck when I began removing the skirting. 

Boy, was I surprised when I discovered the sheeting.

I suspect that sheeting is to prevent erosion --or it could be a lazy developer leaving it behind-- but I'll talk to a friend who is the son of a builder, and he's built his share of decks and porches over the years. He might have an idea as to what's going on, and what I ought to do going forward.

Still, it's a project for me to work on, and I've been putting it off for about 5-6 years too long. 

***

Why now?

Well, I've already tackled one stair issue around the house this Spring, such as the so-called stairs from the garage to the house. I say 'so-called' because when I went to pull the old stairs away from the boards I discovered they came right off as they weren't secured in place. They weren't a singular stair at all, but rather a builder-made step-stool. Basically the builder did it rather than putting in the two step stairs that ought to have been there so he wouldn't have to put in a railing. Before you ask whether I'm being a bit asinine putting down the builder like that, the more I've worked on the house the more I've found really stupid things that were put in by the builder as cheap "corrections" to errors made while constructing the house. If it were me, I'd be embarrassed about some of this shit, but I'm obviously not the builder, either. 

Yeah, there ought to be --at minimum-- one
extra stair there, and probably two given the slope
of the yard. I have no idea how the contractor
got away with not even supporting the steps right
and merely sticking a brick under the stairs, which
sagged as the bricks sunk into the dirt over time.

But the biggest reason is that it has to be done. Full stop. The wood is rotting, and it's past the point of anything resembling safety. So, hopefully, I can get this taken care of correctly without needing to hire someone. 

There's also another motive: it gives me something to do.

When I had my six month checkup with my regular doctor, in addition to him telling me things are progressing well he prodded at me to go take some time off. Go on vacation. Relax. 

This was the same doctor who told me to not worry about work so much when I'm off work, in spite of the fact that I am on call 24 x 7 and that I have been woken up at 2 AM plenty of times in the past. I understand his point, which is to reduce my overall amount of stress, but I also couldn't explain some of the hobbies I do enjoy. 

Video games? Board games? Dungeons and Dragons?

If I told him that I was a gamer, he'd likely think I meant playing blackjack and slot machines at one of the local casinos.*** And trying to describe Gen Con was completely out of the question. 

But working on the deck, just building something from start to finish... Yeah, that's something both he could understand and something that I enjoy. 

And, lucky me, I actually need to get that done anyway. 

*One of my long term goals is to clear out the garage enough to use the damn thing to work in. There was a period of about a year in 2004-2005 when I'd cleared out enough space to do just that, but then my great aunt gave me her old Conn organ, and... well, that was that.

**How do I know the deck dates from 1989? Well, that's because I was told the porch and deck were put in place after tornadoes came through the area in the 80s. I knew that when that tornado hit it was 15 years after the Day of the Tornadoes (April 3/4 1974), because I was working during the Summer up at UD, and up there people know it as The Xenia Tornado. 

So, the realtor had told us that the cheap deck that came with the house was damaged by the hail that accompanied the tornado, and the owner at the time decided to put in a covered porch where the old deck was and added a new deck to one side of the porch.

***Judging by the commentary by my neighbors and others I encounter while out and about, it seems that I'm more the exception than the rule for eschewing any interest in casinos. 

EtA: Discovered the ** was missing almost all of its entry, so I fixed that (and corrected the grammar along the way)..

Busy Hands

I have a confession to make.

The urge to build, to construct, to create is deep inside my bones. 

Among the stories that my mom uses to embarrass me with* is the one that when I was about six, my great uncle came over to help my dad with some of the chairs around the house. There were two chairs that could spin around and then rock back and forth. My dad and my great uncle were going to try to lock down the chairs so that they didn't rock, because we'd had a few "incidents" with my brother and me wreaking havoc with those chairs. 

They looked a bit like this, only one was
red and the other was blue.

 

While my brother quickly got bored and wandered off, I stuck around, watching, while they tried and failed to figure out how to prevent the chairs from rocking back and forth. After a while, I spoke up and suggested that they bolt the two plates together by drilling holes in the plates and using bolts to tighten and hold the plates together. My dad and my great uncle looked at each other for a moment and went "Ohh....." Within about 45 minutes they had both chairs locked down properly.

A year or so later I was given for my birthday two items: a bonsai kit and a Handy Andy junior handyman set. The former had some seeds that turned out to be dead already --I planted and watered them according to the instructions, so I know-- and the latter had a real screwdriver, a hammer, a plane**, two saws*** and just enough wood and nails to build a toolbox to hold everything. 

Perusing the internet for a while yielded this.
Although it has a triangle and only one saw,
this model also had its own metal box.

 

I had to wait a week --a sheer eternity to a little kid-- before my dad had the time to help me build the toolbox. Once that was built, I wandered around the house for days, looking for things to build. Sadly, there wasn't anything to work on, and my parents weren't interested in suggesting things for me to build (something about me hurting myself), and my toolset eventually sat in a corner of the garage, gathering dust. I couldn't afford to buy any wood without assistance, because my parents seemed to think that we lived in 1957 instead of 1977 and would only give my brother and I a quarter per week for our chores****

Pleas for a chemistry set yielded a big fat "no", but I did get one of those 175-in-1 electronic sets from Radio Shack for Christmas a year later. Alas that my parents did not like the beep sounds it made when I built the circuits in the instruction book and took the batteries away from the set, again rendering the damn thing useless. 

This was the story of my childhood: I'd get something to foster my urge to build things, get partway along, and then my parents would step in and neuter the project before I could finish it. I think this is the origin story of my vast amount of incomplete projects lying around the house, because I was trained to expect to get hamstrung or sidetracked by my interests.

That being said, by the time I graduated college I began to build a few things using my own money, such as a bookcase I designed to hold mass market paperbacks. The entirety of my F&SF book collection was in mass market paperbacks, so I knew exactly what I needed and built the thing from scratch.

Here's the proof. It's still in
my basement, 30 years later.

My interest in building things isn't limited to woodworking, as I'd posted in the past about my attempts to repair/recap an old Sony AM/FM radio, but I've also been called upon to perform emergency sewing for school projects. Such as the one time I made a dalmatian outfit for the youngest mini-Red to wear for her school play, or the time my son wanted to go as Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor, for Halloween. If you know Classic Doctor Who, you know that means the scarf. Since I didn't (and still don't) know how to knit, I bought a ton of cheap felt and stitched it together using a sewing machine, using the lengths found on doctorwhoscarf.com as a guide.*****

Among my other hobbies/projects are my on again, off again affair with homebrewing, building/repairing stuff around the house (including putting a replacement roof on the back porch after Hurricane Ike hit back in 2008), stereo speaker building, and gardening. 

 

Living proof that I can actually complete
a project. And they actually sound good, too!

But one thing that has always caught my eye but I never followed through on was garb/cosplay creation.

***

If you've ever been to a Renaissance Fair you've seen people --some performers, some just fair goers-- dressed in costume. To someone outside of the community it appears to be just that, a costume. But to someone involved --or someone from the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA)-- that's known as garb. I've known SCAdians who rummage through various patterns at a Ren Faire, looking for that one pattern that would complete their formal outfit. Or people who take great pains to study costume and clothing from the Middle Ages to get something exactly historically correct.

The link I provided above shows Faire goers as well as Faire staff (from the Ohio Renaissance Festival), and obviously not everything is historically accurate, but it certainly appears quite fun. For me, however, I've an urge to create garb and/or cosplay just because. 

Oh, I wish. The T2 Paladin Cosplay from
tamuicosplay.com. Svetlana and Benni
work their collective asses off, and it's amazing
what they can achieve.

 

But, and this is the sticking point, not for me personally. I know, given my build, I'd be more of a candidate for mimicking Falstaff or, say, Henry VIII, but I'd rather not do that.****** I would like to make stuff for someone else, however, time --and most importantly, money-- willing.

 

Thanks a LOT, Shakespeare. From
the Mary Evans Picture Library, via
fineartamerica.com.

I need practice with a myriad amount of skills, which is kind of a sticking point. Like, say, sewing. Or foam armor making. Or dying/painting. Or simply "not burning the house down".

But I look at the compositions that Kamalia puts together on her blog Kamalia et Alia, and can't help but wonder how I'd put together that sort of transmog into a real costume. Like her current one, which includes outfits entitled "Restless Dreams" and "Like, Totally, Not a Death Cultist, Okay?"

Just, wow. Kamalia, I bow to you.

 

I think I really need to brew some beer to take the edge off of this urge to create. Or maybe design an RPG setting. Or something, because I simply don't have the money or space to create new hobbies for myself.

(I bet when you saw this title that I was going to talk about Elden Ring or something, right? Well, if you want to read about an older person trying the game, go to Tobold's Blog to read about his attempts to play an action RPG that's as unforgiving as the Dark Souls/Elden Ring games as a person whose physical skills aren't what they used to be. Like him, or me.)

*There was one time, about a decade ago, when I was helping my parents out around the house with something and my mom wandered by and said "Oh, you were breastfed as a baby." I looked around, bewildered, saying "Where on earth did THAT come from?" My dad just sighed.

**My parents, in their quest to make sure I didn't kill myself by age 10, immediately took the sharp edge out of. Which, of course, rendered it useless.

***One was a coping saw and the other a "regular" saw, which they took away from me as well. Okay, they let me keep the frame of the coping saw but took away the blade portion, rendering that useless too.

****One of the reasons why I wasn't big on making the kids do any chores for money was because my time was worth so little to my parents that they simply gave us a pittance, even for 1977, to spend. I mean, I could play exactly one game of Pac-Man on that quarter allowance, which lasted up until high school for me in the mid 80s. And if I wanted to buy a paperback book, they ran $2.50 in the late 70s and then $2.95 in the early-mid 80s. (Plus tax, you know.) That'd take me 3+ months to get the money for a single book.

*****If you try to put in https, your AV program might complain about the site because it only has an http version available. Just a note.

******And while it's going to be a very long time before I lose enough weight to get my health issues under control without drugs, if I did manage to do that I'd actually consider wearing something. 

 

EtA: Corrected a grammatical error.