Phase Two

I had a big scare recently. I have a digital camera. Until recently, all of the significant events of the past few years are stored on the card of that camera. All of the birthdays. The baptisms of both girls. All of the pictures from when Hilton was born. His first steps. Pictures of the kids in Bluebonets. Christmas for the last three years.

One of my co-workers recently had his camera stolen. I thought about what that we mean to us. Jeanette and I talked about it. We decided to get an external hard drive to save our pictures and music.

I cut and pasted all of the pictures from the card to a flash drive. The only pictures left on the camera card were for work.

The next day I bought the 250 GB external hard drive.

Jeanette had been asking me when I was going to work on my blog. I could not find the flash drive. I thought it was in the car. I tore it apart. No flash drive. I went through out the house looking for it. No flash drive. I was even dreaming looking for it. Finally, after days of searching and prayers, I asked my co-workers if they had seen one.

Turns out, I left it in one of their computers. Needles to say, Jeanette is now backing up the pictures.

I was tagged: Six interesting things about me.

Finally.... Six interesting things about me.

First of all, after lots of contemplation I have to face it. I am not that interesting. But here we go....

1. I do not like cake. I like cookies, and I like pie. But cake is too dry. Even moist cake. Not moist enough.

2. Along those lines, I like to put ice in my milk.

3. Fresh jalepenos make me hiccup. I found that out on my mission. We had a missionary couple that would make a salad with fresh jalepenos. I could not figure out why I was hiccuping. It took a while to put it together.

4. I do not own a pair of tennis shoes. In fact, I own two types of shoes. Church shoes and work boots. I used to beg Jeanette to let me buy the girls boots, but she said no. Then, one day not long ago ...
I didn't even ask if I could buy Hilton a pair of boots. I just went and got them.

5. I love to watch movies over and over. Jeanette does not. I can have a movie running in the background while I am working on a project.

6. Probably the most interesting thing about me: I asked my wife to marry me on our first date. (Amazingly, she said yes).

Of course, there is a story. Jeanette and I met the day she came home from her mission. I knew her sister, Annette, while she was playing basketball down here. I would go to her games and met the rest of her family. I would sit with them during the games and really got to know them well. Her mom and I would talk for a long time.

Missions are tough, and Jeanette was having a difficulty similiar to one I experienced on my mission. I wrote her a letter of encouragement. She told me later, that when she got the letter and looked at the handwriting, she knew she would marry me someday. (She did not know just how soon that would happen). She got the letter in June and was scheduled to be released at the end of November. We wrote and sent tapes for months. Finally, the last day of her mission arrived. She flew home and was able to get released that day. It was a good thing, because we had a date that night.

When we met in person, it truly was magical. We went to dinner and then just stayed at her folks house, talking on the front porch. Somehow, I told her that I loved her and wanted to marry her. Next thing I knew, the sun was up and her dad came out to get the paper! Time for me to go. That was Thanksgiving 12 years ago. It is amazing how I have spent almost one-third of my life with this wonderful woman.

Just goes to show....I was right!

Phase one: First posting.

Though I have enjoyed reading the blogs my wife does, I never even thought about doing a blog for me. One of my hobbies that I wanted to post deals with furniture building.

There are so many things I enjoy about wood working. There is nothing more satisfying than sitting down and planning a project, putting it onto a scale drawing, then constructing it according to the plan. Here are the pictures of projects I have built.

This is our kitchen table. It was the first furniture project I built in our home. It is 4 ft. wide and just over 6 ft. long. I built it by using newel posts for the legs. I do not have a lathe and do not want a lathe. I used a sheet of plywood for the top and then used pre-finished flooring as the top. I put an edge band to hide the edge of the plywood and the flooring. I used a hardwood skirt and added crown moulding between the skirt and table top.

When the time came to glue the pre-finished flooring to the plywood, I couldn't figure out how to clamp it. I thought I would just put some weight on it. So, I got some boxes of the tile we bought. (I ended up tiling the house later in the year). I started loading the tile on top of the table top, and before I knew it, I had put 17 boxes of tile around the perimeter and also on the center. I realized that it was quite a bit of weight, so I weighed one of the boxes. It weighed 70 pounds!! Total weight: almost 1200 pounds! I am confident in the structural integrity of the table.

I finished up by painting the skirt, moulding, and legs with a semi-gloss paint that matched the chairs we bought. (Building chairs requires more tools than I have).

I have mixed emotions as I look at this picture. For Jeanette's birthday, I built her an entertainment center. I actually bought the TV first, then built the entertainment center around it. I have to say this is the most difficult peice of furniture I built. I am pretty proud of it. Then, the TV died. I went from a 36 inch screen back down to a 27 inch screen. I believe we are supposed to upgrade. Fortunately, I built it where a 42 inch flatscreen will fit in it. Hopefully, before too long, I will update the blog with good TV news.

When Jeanette and I were about to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversery, I asked her what she wanted. She told me she wanted a headboard. We had lived our entire marriage with just a bedframe. Being a typical guy, I didn't really care about it, but she wanted something to dress up the bedroom. We went down to a local furniture store to get an idea of what we liked. (When I say "we", I mean Jeanette). The head board had a couple of design features that she really liked. The crown moulding at the top and also the flutes in the posts really caught her eye. This headboard for a king size bed cost $3000.

I used the furniture store headboard as inspiration, and built a headboard out of material I had in the garage. I think I had to buy some crown moulding, an aluminum angle iron, and some paint. It cost me $30. That is one of the other things I love about building furniture. I get exactly what I want and I save a fortune.

Under Construction

Blog is under construction. Check back soon.-Jim