Christmas Travels

A snow storm hit our travel path (specifically leaving a 10 mile back up in the mountains) to visit our families over our Christmas holiday, which made us leave a day later than expected, and Norah was going stir crazy. (Justin thinks she looks a little like Jack.

...however (@7:30am) the next morning was a different story.

Here's the (non-existent backup) snow covered tunnel.

and Norah complaining that we hadn't gotten to the tunnel yet.

Oops, she spoke too soon.

Wow that's cool. She LOVES lights.

Ah. Past the tunnel we decided to stop to find some yogurt for Norah with no luck, mainly because this specific exit was hit the hardest from the snowstorm the days before.

We were able to snack on some food that we had packed with us.

These are a handful of the cars that never made it out of this exit. Roads were drivable at this point, but this exit ran out of gas.

As you can see the roads were clean and we were able to enjoy the beautiful scenery.



We made it to our destination safe and sound and were able to visit with family for a while.

This outfit my grandma got for me from Hong Kong many years ago. It's one of the very few pieces of clothing I still have from my youth. Norah looks pretty cute in it.

We had to visit the Cincinnati Zoo's Festival of Lights since Norah's ultimate favorite things right now are lights.

The Christmas tree in the middle of the lake and surrounding bushes are covered in lights that change with the music. I was only able to get 2 snapshots of the light display. Norah BTW loved them.

The lights were intense and if we didn't use the flash and allowed the shutter to stay open a little longer, you can really see the intensity of the lights.


Norah visiting the giraffes.

One saw the cracker in Norah's hand and tried to eat it through the glass.

More family visiting.

Norah strolling around with her corn popper.

Hi Gramps and Brobee!

Ooh is that me?

Norah and her Grammie.

and Norah and her great-Granny.


We made it home safe and sound. The trip was way too short and we didn't get to visit long enough or even at all with the people we care so much about. *also there are many more important people who aren't shown here whom we did visit, but we haven't gotten good at taking pictures of anyone other than the children.

Norah's second favorite things are balls. Once home, we opened the balls her Aunt/Uncle/cousins gave her that she loves to play in. She seemed very happy playing in the box with them.

but here is the best place for these balls to be played in, Norah's indoor/outdoor pool that we purchased in the summer.

Alright, alright. Norah's indicating to me that I should wrap things up, so that's it!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday, Munchkin!

Its official! When someone asks how old Norah is, we can quantify in years!

Norah turned one yesterday and had a poorly attended but fun birthday party. She got a few new toys, a cool couch from the Schuler clan and some great stuff from Grami and Gramps in Kentucky and she loves all of it... but her favorite are the cool party lights Dad bought and hung up on the light fixture.

Birthday dinner consisted of homemade pizzas (Norah loves pizza!), cheese, and strawberries! Norah messed around with her cake a bit but wasn't really excited about it. Weirdo.







A couple random pics of the previous day. Norah and Nisha made paper hats and ponchos. Weirdos.

What goes around...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nisha's Dad, Bro, and our two neices drove down to spend Thanksgiving with us and brought really chilly weather!

How chilly?

Well, sufficiently chilly to produce near white-out conditions:





Yep. We got TP'd.

When we moved in, I noticed there were remnants of a past TP job in the trees. The story was that the previous tenants (one, at least) were high school teachers at a local Christian school (gotta watch them Christians) and as a senior prank their students decided to TP them, saran wrap their front porch, etc. And it looks like their knuckleheaded students don't know that they don't live here anymore.

Or maybe it was just karma working itself out. I took part in some pretty epic TP'ings in high school... Perhaps the universe is back in balance.

I filed a police report but I'm sure nothing will come of it. They weren't even interested in coming out and taking a picture or actually seeing it.

Thankfully our out-of-town guests chipped in and helped clean up what we could. We got 90% of it but will have to endure the rest until the leaves are back on the trees.

On the plus side, several neighbors stopped by while we were cleaning and introduced themselves... so maybe some good will come out of it.

Assembly/Electrons are for Sissies

*** Begin no new kiddo pic warning ***
As a courtesy to those interested in only cute baby pics, there are no new pics of squirt in this post. Much to our amazement, she just hasn't been very cute the past few days. Nisha and I confronted Norah and made it very clear that her only contribution to the household is not something that can be freely withdrawn. She apologized and promised to make a genuine effort over the coming days. We'll post updates as they're available.

Other than Norah's to-improve frumpiness, everyone is healthy and happy and looking forward to gorging on turkey over the next couple days.

Those without time or interest in some unemployed knucklehead's woodworking exploits can close the browser and return to their other pressing matters.
*** End no new kiddo pic warning ***

The bench looks like a bench!

Progress! I assembled the base (this time with glue!) and had to get Nisha to help heave the top up on it. That sucker is heavy!

Though it was fairly close after glue-up, I flattened the top with my Stanley #5 jack and #608 Bedrock jointer plane. You can see the plane tracks left as intersecting diagonal lines in the following pic:

Once things were sufficiently flat, I pulled out the smoothing plane (thanks Pops!) and made a big pile of shavings and left the finished surface flat and smooth as glass:

Time for vices! Er, vises.

Seeing that the bench is one huge expanse of yellow pine, I figured I'd add a little bling to gussy things up. The fact that I've got a huge pile of cherry boards that I regularly trip over may have had something to do with it as well. I sketched up a couple ideas of what a well-blung leg vise would look like and started hacking.


Having settled on a design and assembled the vise chop, it was time to bore the 2.25" diameter through hole for the vise screw/thrust plate. I don't have a 2.25" hole saw (and probably wouldn't have tried to use one anyway), but I do have a bit brace and a 2-3" expansive bit. The cherry board I picked for the vise was a particularly hard example; boring the one hole wore me out. I couldn't imagine having to many of them everyday day. Don't get into a fight with an old-time woodworker. They'll kick your butt.

Followed up by drilling pilot holes for the vise mounting screws:

Et voila! Only things left to do are to install the wagon vise and board jack and bore bench dog holes. This project has been really fun!

Getting Close / Stupid Hurts

There's a glimmer of light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. And routers are nothing but raucous, 30,000 rpm implements of death and destruction.

I spent a good part of yesterday laying out and drilling holes to for the draw-bore pins in the 12 mortise-and-tenon joints and routing the tracks for the wagon vise and a sliding jack located on the front of the bench. Things were going swimmingly until my lack of an attention span bit me.

I had layed out a 5/8" wide by 1" deep by 42" long track on the underside of the benchtop and just finished setting up my plunge router (which I hate using due to noise, mess and just being a general hazard to anyone within a 15 foot radius) to make the cut. I went through the mental checklist I run through when using these cursed machines...
-bit/chuck tightened correctly?
-cord out of the way?
-guides set up correctly?
-unobstructed path?
-saftey glasses/ hearing protection? / respirator? (yeah, I wear a respirator when I make a significant amount of sawdust as I'd like to continue woodworking down the road)
-router positioned correctly?
-good grip on machine?

Looks good, lets do this. Turn it on... Click - Whhhiiinnnneee - CHUNK - JUMP - "%&?! %##&*! !@)#!"

Next I went through the mental checklist I go through when I do something incredibly stupid:
-concious?
-tool turned off?
-feeling in extremities?
-bloody spray/gushers?
-digit count?
-what hurts?
-what did I just muck up?

Nothing huts. All digits accounted for. No new red stains on the workpiece or myself.

Thankfully, I was able to get through the "did something stupid" checklist with the only consequence being a chunk cut out of the front face of the bench top. When adjusting the depth of cut prior to switching on the tool I must have gotten a little bit of grit or dust in the plunge mechanism and the router didn't fully retract prior to me beginning the cut. When readying things for the operation I had placed the machine down onto the workpiece, resting on the soon-to-be spinning bit instead of the bottom of the router base. When it was switched on, the bit spooled up, dug into the surface of the bench, and skitted the machine across a path of destruction before I had realized what was happening and able to turn the thing off. Good thing I had a good grip on the tool prior to switching it on.

I've only had to go though this checklist a couple times and hopefully don't need to in the future. I was pretty steamed at just putting a giant idiot mark on the front of the bench as I'll be looking at it for the next couple decades, but perhaps it will serve to be a constant reminder to slow down and focus on what's in front of me. Ugh.

After I had cooled down and thanked my stars that the chunk was taken out of the benchtop and not my person I assembled the base as a trail fit. Looks pretty good!

I spent an hour last night cutting oak pins to assemble the base and hope to have the bench fully assembled, minus the vises, by the end of the weekend!

Apparently, a review solely of woodworking activities is insufficient in a blog post. The fam is doing fine. One of Nisha's work colleagues loaned us a walker type thing while squirt transitions from quadraped to biped. She's really starting to get the hang of things... this stuff happens so fast!

We're looking forward to seeing everyone over the holidays!