Chuck Grimmett

Archives

Month: February 2024

  • Thirty-four

    What is the difference between these birthday posts and the year-end posts? The dust has settled on the new year reflections and this is a good time to think about my past year and the coming year outside of the context of holidays and resolutions.

    This morning Amanda and Charlie put out some birthday decorations for me. While Amanda was getting some balloons out, Charlie declared that he “will get the buses!” – His birthday was Wheels on the Bus themed, so that is what birthday decorations are to him. So sweet. While eating breakfast we played with little toy busses at the table. It was the best 🚌 ♥️

    I wrote this back in October, and it is still the main theme of my past year:

    It has taken two years, but Amanda and I are starting to feel like ourselves again, with the added bonus of having a sweet kid in our lives. (Contrast that with mostly feeling like caregivers the last two years.) Our energy and sleep are improved, which helps give space for our interests, projects, and new ideas.

    The toddler stage is completely different from the infant stage. Overall, things are good and Charlie is a sweet little guy, and I feel fortunate to be his dad. He is growing and learning at a rapid pace. I love how kind, curious, and affectionate he is.

    Last year Zeldman commented,

    One thing I did early on with Ava was draw with her, from the time that she could hold a crayon. In that way, I continued to make art (even if it was mostly deliberately very silly art), but my goal was not to make art, it was to make art with my kid.

    We started doing this a lot more and it has been great. Family art time is something we all enjoy. Thank you, Jeffrey!

    Work overall is good. I have a great team and Automattic is a good place to work. Always juggling lots of projects, but there are three projects I’m proud to have worked on this past year:

    Taking stock on last year’s vectors:

    • Keep prioritizing quality, fully present time with Amanda and Charlie, and our family.
      • I can improve on this. I should put my phone down more. The days we go have breakfast together somewhere feel special and like a highlight, so we should do that more.
      • I also can do better about prioritizing time with just Amanda, such as being more proactive about finding a sitter so we can go on more dates. That has been challenging with Charlie’s recent separation anxiety, but something we should work through.
    • Keep making things.
      • Getting back out in my workshop starting in November was great, and a big highlight the last couple months. I’m also really excited about the improvements I’m making in the workshop now.
    • Keep improving our lives & surroundings.
      • This played a bigger part in the last year than I thought! The deck, my office, the attic, the basement, the shed, hiring cleaners, shutters, glass rinser, maintenance on the car and heater, and definite plans for the fence and garden in motion.
    • Keep blogging.
      • I’m sticking with it and it feels good. This is a blog post!
      • I’m glad by domain longevity post is getting some traction. This is an important issue to work on.
    • Keep fostering friendships.
      • One key mindset shift I made this year is realizing that adult friendships are different than childhood friendships. In childhood friends are brought together by circumstances mostly out of their control, you gravitate toward people similar to you, and don’t need to be intentional about them. As an adult you need to be intentional and can form friendships based on interest rather than being alike. This leads to different kinds of friendships. Friends don’t have to be all-or-nothing like when you were a child.
      • I think the investments we have made in friendships this year have been successful.

    So, what do I want my thirty-fifth year to look like?

    Take care of my health. Read more, scroll less. Prioritize family time. Make things. Keep improving our lives & surroundings.

    Previous birthday posts: 33, 32

  • Weeks of Feb 12 and 19, 2024

    The big event two weeks ago was a snow storm on Tuesday. We got 11″ of snow here in Peekskill, the most in the region. Daycare was closed, along with everything else, so Amanda and I switched off hanging out with Charlie while the other worked. No snow days is a downside of remote work! (You still won’t catch me going into an office any time soon, though.)

    Charlie woke me up that morning by saying, “Daddy, it NO-ing!”

    Charlie and I shoveled the driveway and sidewalk twice, and took the sled out in the woods. Otherwise we hunkered down and stayed warm.

    Charlie woke me up the next morning by saying, “Daddy, it Valentine’s Day!” – We’d been hyping it up all week, making cards, etc. He had a blast.

    My parents came to visit for the holiday weekend on Friday. Dad helped me a lot with the workshop upgrade project:

    • Saturday we finished putting in the rest of the insulation and installed the diesel heater (my birthday present from my parents)
      • I’ll put together a post once I finish the rest of the upgrades, but the heater is great. At one point we had it up to 70F in the minimally-insulated shed and had to turn the power down.
    • Sunday we went to pick up some items from an auction and some plywood from Home Depot with their truck, then framed in the workbench, routed out spots for the legs and vise, then biscuit joined and glued the three pieces of the top together.
    • Monday we put in the legs and shelving for the workbench, put a couple pieces of plywood up on the walls, and put in some electrical outlets above the new bench.

    It was great to have my parents here. Always nice to spend time with them. Charlie loves it, too.

    Wednesday night I hung lights above the bench and installed my vises.

    More on that auction: An old woodturner in Fishkill passed away and his family ran an estate sale. I ended up not winning any of the wood he had roughed out and stacked in his shop because the bids went higher than I was willing to pay, but when I went to pick up the ShopVac that I won, I asked if they had any wood that didn’t sell. I lucked out! They forgot to post some of it to the online auction, so I offered cash on the spot and took it off their hands. 🪵 🙌

    Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we did some clean up and gave away some stuff on Buy Nothing. For the unfamiliar, there are local Facebook groups where you can post things you want to give away and people claim them. We gave away a giant beanbag chair, our old couch, and some baby stuff. We also claimed and picked up a toy piano for Charlie.

    Friday morning we had a family breakfast date at the coffee shop.

    We did the clean up to make space for reconfiguring the finished half of the basement into a half work/half art space for Amanda. Her desk was already down there, but we put up some bookshelves and moved her workspace around a little bit. Today (Sunday) is organizing.

    Saturday afternoon and early evening Charlie and I met up with Jeremy and Miles to take the train to Cold Spring and hang out for a while. We went to the bookstore, playground, and dinner. Lots of running around outside, too. Everyone had fun.

    I finished The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler this week. Good, fun, easy read.

    One other cool thing this week: One of my posts was featured in the Stack Overflow newsletter!

    Okay, I’m off to do some more work in my warm workshop. I’m putting up more plywood today, which I’ll later hang French cleats on.

  • Week of February 5, 2024

    I decided to go forward with the workshop upgrades, so that has been taking most of my time outside of work this week.

    The current plan:

    • Insulate with radiant barrier.
    • Diesel heater for heat.
    • Put a bench along the full back wall. 31.5″ deep, set up 36″ high. Top made out of laminated 2x4s on edge. Shelf underneath high enough for bins to slide underneath for storage.
      • Mounting my carpenter’s vice flush with the front of the bench for better full-length support. Probably left site, 1/4 of the way in.
      • Standard bench vice is probably going on the right side.
      • 3 4×4 feet in the front, 2×4 nailers on the back and side walls.
    • Instead of a flip cart for the miter saw, I’ll build a platform to put the miter saw on top of my Shopsmith and use the tables on it to support the longer pieces. Saving the floor space.
    • French cleats on the walls for storage.
    • I may end up getting rid of the green cart/locker I’m currently using for storage. Every bit of floor space helps!

    I spent a lot of time this weekend glueing together 2x4s and planing them for the bench top. After not pre-planing and jointing them in the first section, I decided to do the 14 remaining boards, which led to a much better result for the second section. I guess the first one will go in the back. As I write this, the third section is still curing in the basement. (This glue needs 55F to cure and it is in the 20F range here at night.)

    I’m exhausted and sore, but I’m rushing to get the last section planed before the snow hits on Tuesday.

    I’ve put up a third of the radiant barrier so far.

    More future workshop upgrade projects in my digital garden.

    Charlie loves Home Depot. Good thing we’ve been three times this week.

    Crocuses are starting to bloom!

    Getting steadily earlier each year, according to my unscientific records:

    The weather was sunny and warm on Friday, so we picked up pizzas and met up with another family at the playground after work on Friday. The kids loved it. Nice to have the days growing long enough to do that again.

    Amanda and I started watching Griselda and we like it. So our two shows right now are True Detective and Griselda.

  • Week of January 29, 2024

    Charlie was home Monday and part of Wednesday because he was teething this week and had a cough in addition to the mouth pain. Unfortunately getting him to take any kind of medicine has been a struggle recently, so it was a tough couple of days for everyone.

    He recovered by the end of the week and had a great Saturday: Gymnastics with some daycare friends in the morning, then a kids workshop at Home Depot where he got to build and paint a Valentine’s Card Box with some of the same friends. Panera afterward, then home for a much needed nap.

    I got things started and Amanda helped Charlie finish. He loves using his tools.

    Amanda and I had our friends Jeremy and Marie over for dinner on Saturday evening. I roasted a duck and used the rendered fat for roasting potatoes and sautéing green beans with garlic and breadcrumbs. Marie made kartoshka from her grandmother’s recipe, a Ukrainian truffle-like dessert that we all enjoyed. Afterward Amanda and J played some flute duets.

    As I mentioned last week, I’m trying to improve my lathe turning skills. I realized that not using a skew is a serious skill deficiency, and in learning how to use one I found out that the 45 degree angle and straight edge make it pretty difficult to use for peeling and planing cuts. So I got a used Shopsmith-mounted grinder on eBay and reground my 1in skew to a smaller angle with a radius. It works much better now, and I used it exclusively to make this tool handle, without having a single catch. That might sound pretty normal to a seasoned turner, but it was a breakthrough for me.

    I’m also proud of myself because I haven’t done much tool grinding or shaping. I started out with the bench grinder and got the profile I wanted, but found it hard to make a consistent bevel on a 1in tool and a 3/4in grinding wheel, so I cleaned it up on the disc sander.

    Next steps:

    • I ordered some grinding wheels from McMaster Carr, which was the only place that had the combo of 5″ wheel + 5/8 arbor I could find.
    • I need to get some finer sand paper for the disc sander, or figure out another way to hone my tools.
    • Write up my sharpening techniques on my digital garden for future me
    • Perhaps I can mount the sharpening jig to the other side of the lathe for easy sharpening while I turn to keep things in top shape.
    • Figure out better storage close to the Shopsmith. I like the bottom shelf I have, but the sawdust and wood shavings are too much. Perhaps I need to enclose it.

    Charlie climbing and checking out the lathe.

    Before this he and I were looking at different kinds of maps (some local, some national parks) and drawing our own on paper. He is a lot of fun.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about building a new bench, moving things around for better layout, and insulating/heating the shed so working out there in the winter isn’t so brutal. Some things on the top of my mind:

    • Diesel heater or small wood stove?
      • Diesel heaters heat up quickly and turn off instantly, so I don’t need to start a fire and worry about it while i’m not in the shed.
      • Wood stoves are quieter and put out a nice radiant heat.
    • Foam board or fiberglass for insulation?
      • Both are kind of annoying to install, but foam board might be less itchy.
    • Can I make a flip-top cart with a router one one side and miter saw on the other? That would minimize dedicated workbench space usage and help me get things out of the way if needed.
    • I need to think about dust collection, but have no idea where to start.

    More to come on this. I’m talking to my Dad, some friends, and reading a lot online.

    I started using How to Draw Almost Every Day for some simple daily drawing prompts. I like it!

    The Roberta’s frozen pizzas are the best frozen pizzas I’ve had. I don’t know what they do differently, but they are excellent. Great crust that crisps up in the oven and great flavor.

    After not reading for most of January, I picked up The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler and am enjoying it so far.