Andrew's View of the Week

Know Better

Posted on 05/07/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

I don’t have a woodwork post today – too much other stuff happening. Instead I’ll share this thought from one of my favorite blogs, Cast Light.

Cast Light

“Once you’ve lived enough, once you’re cried enough tears, you know how blessed it is to have something to smile about. People who are passionate about life don’t have a positive attitude because they don’t know any better. They’re often positive because they do know better. They know that heartbreak could happen any day. If it’s not happening today, let’s give thanks.” – Marianne Williamson, The Age of Miracles

How often we know better but we still question or forget how blessed we truly are. Looking outward instead of in, to the distance instead of the foreground, the past instead of now, the future instead of now. Be grateful for this very moment, this day.

As my 50 year anniversary of living approaches in October, I feel like I’m in my 30s, perhaps a bit smarter and caring much less about what others think or may think. I am starting my…

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Typing

Posted on 05/04/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

I am not sure when I lost the knowledge in my brain, but I can no longer tell you which finger I use to press the ‘a’ key on my keyboard. I think I used all of my fingers, including my right thumb (but not my left) to type what I’ve typed so far. Maybe. I find it odd that I can’t even tell you which finger I just used to type the apostrophe key, It’s possible it was my right little finger – okay I looked. I know that it takes two fingers to get a quote symbol (“). Which ones are a mystery to me. It just happens. I think of a word, a sentence, a symbol and magically my figures bang it out on the keyboard. To give them their privacy, I don’t look at my hands while they do this.

The scientist would refer to it as muscle memory.

My typing teacher told me 40 years ago that it would happen someday. Of course at 14, I didn’t believe her. I believe now.

I recall my first day of typing class. Part of me was embarrassed to be there – in the 70’s typing was for girls – but part of me kind of liked being in a class of mostly nice looking girls wearing very short dresses. Typing class was a sentence I earned because my handwriting was so awful that no, not even I, could read it. Perhaps typing became a crutch, but I still can’t handwrite.

There was a challenge to typing – speed and accuracy in copying someone else’s text into a nice letter or report. To increase speed we were taught to not look at our hand and to focus our eyes on the copy. To ensure we didn’t look at the keys to figure out where the ‘a’ key was, we had special keyboards – all the keys were blank. If you wanted to place that ‘a’ on the page you had to know that ‘a’ was in the home row, left little finger. Our teacher stressed that we had to commit these key locations to memory and with enough practice, we’d stop thinking about key locations and our hands would, “just know what to do.” She went further to say that in time we wouldn’t even think in terms of single keys but rather in whole words and groups of words.

It’s true. When I type, I think of words, phrases and my figures oblige my brain and the correct muscle movements translate my thoughts in to words, sentences and paragraphs on the screen which I then send to you.

It’s kind of like magic.

But all this does come at a cost. There are words I can only spell because I’ve learned them at the keyboard. When someone asks me how to spell a word, first I’ll laugh, then claim I don’t know and if they persist in needing to know I’ll type the word on my computer and read the letters aloud.

Muscle memory – my hands spell better than my brain.

Another cost, pain caused by repetitive stress injury. Human hands aren’t meant to work this way for the long hours that I often do at the keyboard. A few weeks ago I developed a major case of tendonitis in my arm and am now recovering from that. I am amazed how much it does hurt and dismayed at how long it takes to recover.

On the other list of things it takes a long time to recover from is prostate cancer – both the physical and emotional trauma of treatment. I don’t write about it much these days but this week I had my routine six month PSA blood test. It came in at a mere .7 which means that I can push the thought of that little health issue out of my brain for another six months and get on about the business of complaining about my arm.

Given the choice between the two, I’d rather complain about a bit of arm pain.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in Health, Prostate Cancer | Tagged keyboard, Prostate Cancer, repetitive stress injury, RSI, tendonitis, typing | 6 Comments

Wednesday Woodworking – helping the electician

Posted on 04/30/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

With all the work going on at the house, it’s a little difficult to get any woodworking done. My outside shop is filled with the new kitchen appliances and my table saw is trapped between the new stove and the new sink. I did manage to get one small project done – a soffit box for the wiring. We had a sub-panel installed in the laundry room and the wires coming out of the box needed to be covered. My electrician tells me that by the building code the wires need to be protected by either steel or 1.5 inches of wood. We decided the best plan was to build a frame out of 2x4s and cover it with drywall. It had to be done in time for the rough inspection so I went ahead and pulled my chop saw and pocket hole jig out of the shop and built this:

It isn’t pretty but it passed inspection.

I did mange to get some time to work on the cross and cut out 2 more church mice, but not enough to take a picture of. There is more of the soffit box but the space it is in is so small that I couldn’t get a good picture of the whole thing but I think you get the idea.

If you need me – I’ll be in the shop.

Andrew

Posted in woodworking | Tagged remodeling, woodworking | 4 Comments

The Wettest Drought

Posted on 04/27/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

It’s been a tough couple of weeks but there are now signs of it getting better. My arm finally feels like it is on the mend and the electrician is nearly done drilling holes in my house. He’s also a week behind schedule.

You have to expect problems when you’re working on an old house. I’ve tried to be patient with this whole process, but at times it can be a bit overwhelming – the number of details, the issues, and the wacky people you have to deal with – all conspire to drive you nuts.

Here’s one that drove us to close to the point of wanting to smash heads in: We bought a hood for the stove. It was a nice “island mount” unit. We researched it. Told the crews what we were buying and had it delivered. After it was delivered, the same crews opened the box, fussed, measured, argued and then pronounced, “It won’t work.”

grrr…

After a bit of gritted teeth discussion and attempts at staying cool under stress we decided to return the unit and get a different hood that everyone thought would work. We then called the company we bought the first hood from and asked about returning it. Their first reply was, “You can’t return it, you’ll have to sell it on Craig’s list.”

Heather’s reply was, “You’re insane.” I won’t report the rest of the conversation, but will say that it is a good thing she was on the phone and not at the sales desk. People could have been injured.

Yes, they did take back the hood, charging us a restocking fee plus shipping which I’ve recorded in the books as an “education fee.”

That’s been our life the last couple of weeks, lots of stresses that multiply rather than add. At night we have few lights, can’t find a comfortable place to sit and Heather gets to cook outside and wash dishes in the laundry room sink. During the day we have a house full of noisy workmen – hammering, drilling, cutting, and generating epic amounts of dust and debris while yelling at each other through walls and over the roof. Because of my tendonitis I’ve taken some medical leave and stayed home, resting my arm while sitting on the swing seat listening to the plaintive call of the electrician, “Andrew, where did you want this?”

And then there was the rain. Yes, rain. California is in the middle of the worst drought in recorded history and I’ve got to worry about rain. November, December, January, February, no rain. Not a drop. So March rolls around, we sign the contracts to open up the roof and presto: rain. Not much, not often, but just enough to delay the start of the project by two weeks.

It was just two weeks ago that we let the crew start tearing off pieces of the roof and I became obsessed with reading the weather forecast. At first I wasn’t worried – the weather would be clear for 10 days and after all we’re in the middle of this epic drought, right?

Yeah.

It was a week ago Thursday that we first saw the 20% chance of .01 inches rain for Tuesday. The roofer wanted $$ to put a tarp on the roof and the electrician warned that tarping the roof could on Monday could delay the project by another full week.

So Heather and I weighed the costs, risks and benefits. Another week of living in a dark house and cooking on a camp stove. In February all the storms swung north and not a drop landed here. Project is already over budget and behind schedule.

So we decided not to have the tarp put on and I pushed the electrician to get back on schedule.

You guessed it – it rained in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Not much but enough to get us out of bed at 2:45 am running for buckets, rags, paper towels and flashlights. I can’t be sure but I think I managed to get a bath robe on. It rained for about half an hour and the water found nearly every hole that had been drilled into the roof. By 3:30 the worst was over and we’d managed to prevent any real damage other than our frayed nerves.

The good part of our risk? It kept our electrician on schedule and we have a rough electrical inspection scheduled for Tuesday.

That wasn’t the only rain. Another storm system came through at the end of the week but this time, with a 50% chance of rain, we had the tarp put on. Good thing too – rained a lot on Friday, and a bit yesterday. Now the weather forecast shows us going to a dry period and a possible heat wave.

Which is good because, if all goes well with the inspection we’ll be able to have the roofer put the roof back together and we’ll be water tight by next weekend.

Just in time for the epic drought to continue.

Till next week,
Andrew