Cell phone pics

We haven't taken too many pictures with our official camera, but here are a few taken with my cell phone. I like the one where Norah is squealing. :)

Norah's 2 Month Check-up

Norah had her 2 month check-up today. Yeah and that means shots. Her daddy came with us and she showed off by only crying for less than a minute after 2 shots. Everything went well. Here are a few quick stats:

Head circumference: 75th percentile (39.5 cm)
Weight: 75th-95th percentile (a whopping 12 lbs!)
Length: 95th percentile (22 inches)

Family, Snow and of course New Pics!

Justin's dad Jim, Susan, and Andrew decided to stop by to visit. It was their first time seeing Norah...and we have a few pics!

Norah is already warming up to Jim. You know imitation is the biggest form of flattery!


*Don't blame me, Justin made me do it!

Here's a good one.



If only Justin could learn a few tunes from his pop, he could serenade our little one to sleep.




Here is a random shot of Susan and me.



Aaww now Norah is warming up to Andrew.



...and she's adapted Andrew's hairstyle :)



It was sad to see the family leave, but as they say bigger and better things were to come (well not better, but definitely BIGGER!) We had a huge (for Cincy) wintery mix mid-week that consisted of roughly a foot of snow and considerable ice, which left a lot of people without power. Lucky for us we never went without power, but unfortunately a few of our relatives in KY are still without. :(

On a lighter note, I didn't have to go anywhere so I was able to get a picture of my car blanketed.



Justin was kind enough to take a few pics of our frozen trees.






Alright, alright, alright here are a couple of cute pics of Norah!
Lately she has been a kicking machine.





Aaaww! My favorite baby and favorite comic characters taking nap time!


ps thanks big bro for your web blog inspiration and help...and imitation is the biggest form of flattery. ;)

Every princess needs a dragon

Norah was given lots of presents for Christmas and this is one of her favorites. I left her in her room looking at her present for a few minutes and on my way to her room I heard her cooing and caaing and figured she got carried away with the fun she was having...little did I know how much!


On another note, here's our Mii family. Norah's on mingle, so for those of you who are connected with us, she can travel to your Wii!

Long Time No Type

Sigh.

Besides the rigors of home life, Justin has been getting his hind-end kicked at the jet motor factory. We're coming up on the first major test for a the first engine of a big defense contract we're trying to win. Used to be I'd get home, maybe exercise, talk to the wife a bit, eat a bite for dinner and head downstairs to generate some sawdust or fire up the xbox. Doesn't seem to be much time for any of that sort of thing as of late. Work sure does get in the way of life.

We had a great Christmas break and got to spend lots of time together and with friends and family. Norah got to meet boatloads of Schulers, Sipeses, Robinsons, Shipps and Coxes ; I'm not sure she knows everybody's name yet, but I'm sure she'll catch on. Too bad we didn't have a few more weeks off. We did manage to document our visit with a couple of pics:






Three Stooges!!!



Nisha is adapting to motherhood like a pro. She amazeses me every day with her patience and her determination to wrap up her PhD. She's been able to squeeze in starting to write up her school stuff in between all the things required of a new Mom. She rocks.

On the Dad front, I have decided to try my hand at crafting her a Greene and Greene styled high-chair. Should be fun... hopefully it turns out nicer than the crib. I'll post progress pics here shortly

So, here are the Norah updates.

Went in for the 1 month checkup (at 5 weeks). Nisha didn't record the "official" weight but she said that Norah had gained almost 3 lbs and grown 3" in length. That blew me away. I knew she had gotten bigger but not on the order of 40% in weight and 15% in length. At this rate (40% increase per month) she'd weigh 4,392,819,960 lbs and be 6,941 feet in length (1,996,736,345 kg and 2115 m for you Canucks and other adherents (weirdos) to the metric system) by the time she was 5 years old. Whoa. Hopefully that slows down a bit.

Cute pics:

How much did that thing cost?!

Recession be damned! What better way to help prop up the economy than to buy a hideously expensive made-in-the-USA handtool that I've lusted over for a couple years.

Okay, my cool FIL paid for more than half of this thing through a very generous giftcard from Woodcraft... Thanks Pops! There's no way I could have justified this without subsidization.



What is this shiny wood and bronze contraption? Why, its a Lie-Nielsen #4 smoothing plane in manganese bronze, of course! Pretty, ain't it?

-An abbreviated but still boring interpretation of the history and impact of hand planes follows. Not for the faint of heart-

Back in the day, before all of those noisy, electron-consuming, finger-eating power tools that build today's crappily constructed houses and mass-produced furniture, craftsmen used hand tools to smooth, shape and join wood. As tools and construction techniques evolved though the 1800's and the first part of the 1900's, tool designers at the Stanley Level and Rule Co. reached what is pretty much considered to be the perfect balance of precision/functionality vs. cost for tools that were to be used by a craftsman that relied on his tools to put food on his table (but beat them up toting them around in a toolbox). They were available, weren't prohibitively expensive, and they worked. Stanley sold scads of the "Bailey" patent plane in several sizes and an improved version of the Bailey plane termed the "Bedrock". The fancy new plane I bought is pretty much a copy of the "Bedrock" design from the 1910's-1940's.

As power tools became more prevalent after WWII, nearly all hand-tool manufacturers died off or changed product offerings to stay afloat. Handtools that required a certain amount of skill and effort to operate were replaced by measure once/cut twice power tools and Chinese made junk intended to pass as handtools. Woodworkers who wanted to cling to old-school methods of work were stuck with trying to source antique tools from flea markets and yard sales.

As of the last 10 or 20 years, modern toolmakers such as Lie-Nielsen, Lee Valley/Veritas, and a few others started manufacturing quality hand planes and other handtools. The quality of these tools often exceeds what was produced back in the day, but production volumes are orders of magnitude lower. That means they're stinking pricey....

All you ever wanted to know about Stanley hand tools can be seen here: http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan0a.html

-End boring handtool diatribe-

Over the past couple years, as my woodworking obsession has grown, I've been accumulating a small fleet of hand tools, including Stanley hand planes in various shapes and sizes. These planes range in age from 75 and 120 years, so needless to say they've seen their share of abuse.

Yeah, its a pretty sorry shelf to put all those nice tools on:


The old planes all require "fettling" to some extent to get them to work as intended. I always thought it would be grand to have a plane I wouldn't have to fuss with to get to work correctly. Even if it cost an arm and a leg.

As it turns out, I'll have to keep looking.

You'd think that paying $350 for a tool originally designed 100 years ago would be a sufficient penance to the tool gods to reach smoothing plane Nirvana out of the box. This time it wasn't the case. Don't get me wrong, it didn't take more than an hour or two to get the thing functioning flawlessly, but my first experience with it was a bit dissappointing. It just wouldn't cut well.

To work properly the iron needed honing, the mouth needed to be filed square and the frog bed needed to be cleaned up. The end result is one sweet-working plane. Just took a bit of effort. And 350 bucks.

The iron honed:
Before:

After:





Out of square mouth... I couldn't set the mouth very tight without the blade impacting the short corner in the picture. I was pretty surprised that this one got shipped like this. Before filing the mouth square:


New and old:


And to reward your willingness to suffer through the tale of the handplane, here are a couple cute Norah pics.