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June 8, 2020 – Am I qualified for this role?

June 8, 2020 /

This post started on Friday, like all tasks recently, I got interrupted and never got through it all. Now it is going to take a slightly different twist, somewhat of an analysis. It has been a long time since I talked about my faith on this site. In some ways, it is very personal but religion can also be very divisive.

I mentioned last Monday that I took a class on leading a small group for our church. Because we cannot gather as an entire church congregation on Sunday, this is a two fold effort. I will use my terms – one is to enable people to connect in a deeper and more personal level and the other is to build a deeper and more resilient organization.

I want to divert to religion and doctrine for a minute. I grew up in a church that was more liturgical. That means that the process of ritual and symbolism are important in the worship. I now attend a church that is evangelical and it is more about living values. As I have tried a lot of different things and explored denominations, I have not found one that I feel like ‘this is exactly like what I think it should be’. But, we were attending a different church for a while and one day the message was load and clear – don’t let perfect be the enemy of good (for attending church). If God is going to discriminate on denomination, then we are all in a lot of trouble.

In my introverted, liturgical mind, there are some things that are uncomfortable like asking for prayer and such. But, that doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with them and think that practices are more in line with how I interpret the message. I also often find that if you remain on the outside, these things never get easier or more comfortable. I guess jumping in, leading a small group and becoming vulnerable is a way to overcome that.

So with that, I am going go a little deeper into what we are doing. The following are the core values of the church and our group.

  • Safe
  • Serving
  • Submitted
  • Spiritually Awake
  • Sent

The initial kickoff of the group is to watch the service together and then dig in deeper into the message. There are some questions at the end to help facilitate that.

As I am writing this, it feels as if world is on ‘proverbial’ fire. We have riots and plague to a level that I have never seen in my life. With that, I have personally observed nastiness and name calling. Friends accusing others of racism when they don’t think you are doing your part or to the same level (even when you are agreeing with them). This is my attempt to re-center and lead by example.

The questions of the week are

  • What does freedom mean to me and what has God freed me from?
  • How can I love carefully this week?
    • What is it that you are saying that you think I need to know?

Admittedly, I struggle with empathy and forgiveness. That is definitely something that I need to keep working on. I could probably go on with analysis and so forth. But, I think that providing the gist of small groups and what we are about is a good start today.

April 15, 2020 – Admitting your darkest secrets

April 15, 2020 /

I am a very private person. I like to share ‘edutainment’ or an editorial political piece, but I have put very little out about myself personally. Today, I want to write about addiction. I want to put it into an abstract way so as to be approachable to others. I also cannot claim that I know everything, just my brand of problem.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a well established fact that tobacco caused health problems. That being said, every man I knew was well into his addiction of nicotine. Some later beat it and some did not. My generation was at the crossroads of medically wrong but socially acceptable.

In high school, I had a friend that I used to joke around with. It started with a ‘ha ha, look at me chewing this tobacco’ to lets get together and do it some more. This progressed to not a huge deal physically but mentally I started looking forward to this and associating tobacco to fun and reward. My first physical symptom that I was heading toward a problem was I was in math, the first class after lunch. I literally could not keep my eyes open. This went on for about a week and somehow I associated nicotine after eating as the solution to nearly falling asleep in class.

My other problem was that this behavior wasn’t legal. It drove that activity underground so to speak. Pretty early on I learned that if I spit my first mouthful out, I could swallow the juice the rest of the day. I even learned that I can swallow the tobacco. So, now this became like a candy. In my twenty some years of tobacco, there have been very few people that I have ever visibly used around, even though it has been constant for that entire time.

I tried smoking for a little while, but I couldn’t deal with the smell. The buzz was more intense, but it was also shorter. That led to smoking more but it was harder to hide and required more effort. Eventually, I moved exclusively to smokeless tobacco.

You tell yourself that you can quit if you want to. To a degree that is the absolute truth. You will only quit if you want to, and some days you really have to want it. You of course try half-hearted efforts to quit. Ironically, I think that it is harder to quit when no one knows that you are doing it in the first place. But, every time you fail it is some excuse you tell yourself that is the reason that cant do it. I made it thirty days once and to celebrate I bought some tobacco. A lot of the time, it was something to focus your energy.

What is the psychology of addiction look like? A coping mechanism – What I realized is that this is how I have been functioning for the last twenty some years.

  • Don’t know what to do…
  • When I am done with this…
  • I am glad that is over…
  • This is going to be very hard/stressful…

I believe that this why quitting is so hard, you cant undue all those years of training overnight. I have felt mental fog, a shaking like being cold and a sudden urge to use the toilet. The consistency of the symptoms fade and I have observed acute triggers like stressors. There has been some cases where I have told myself, ‘I don’t have time to quit’ because I didn’t want to attempt with withdrawal symptoms for a particular day.

I have tried patches, gum and cold turkey. After trying to calculate how much nicotine I consumed, I tried the 1st step patch (21mg) and supplemented with 4mg gum. After the patches ran out, I went to straight gum and was using 32mg daily. That lasted three weeks, during Christmas and New Years.

Recently, I went straight gum for nine days (24-40mg) and went cold turkey. This morning is day six. I am definitely not out of the woods on this. I am having strong urges still at times but I know that giving in today means going through this again. So, I am inclined to make this one stick. I suppose that this is one thing about quarantine has been a positive.

April 7, 2020 – Review: Save Me the Plums

April 7, 2020 /

‘Save Me the Plumbs’ by Ruth Reichl was the March selection for the Left Coast Winery Culinary Book Club. It is a short book detailing the time that Ruth spent as Editor in Chief at the magazine Gourmet.

This is the second book of hers that we have read as part of the book club. The first one ‘Garlic and Sapphires’ was a great introduction to Ruth as an author and a fascinating look at a food critic in an highly competitive environment. In many ways, this book is a continuation of that story because when she left the New York Times, it was for this job at Gourmet.

Ruth is a great writer. Her books are short with quick chapters and she pulls the highlights into each one. Even though this is a good book and a quick read, I have had a hard time making time and prioritizing this given the current circumstances. It has been hard to concentrate and be normal with quarantine as the norm and ‘Family Time’ as the expectation.

The focus of luxury and high cuisine from a magazine such as Gourmet feels a bit before my time. As someone in my forties, I am just beginning to appreciate (or be able to participate) in such things. I didn’t grow up around the magazine and am not really familiar with it since it went out of business in 2009. It does seem like the kind of magazine that that I would be the editor of where the story of the food was told, not just the recipes.

I finished the book last night and the ending made me wish that I had read it faster. I will spare the complete spoiler, but I can totally relate to the situation. This is an enterprise where everything seemed like it was going great only to have extenuating circumstances ruin a good thing. In the end, a person is grateful to have the opportunity to prove success but bittersweet that it isn’t more appreciated and recognized and at least allowed to continue.

Opportunities open doors when others are closed. I suppose Ruth may still be Editor of Gourmet rather than writing books and we still wouldn’t have these great stories. I enjoyed reading this book and there are a few recipes in it, some of which I have made. I think more than food, this is a book that is about a person’s self doubt, will to succeed and humanism. I liked this book because I liked ‘Garlic and Sapphires’ first.

April 2, 2020 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

April 2, 2020 /

There are several ways to spend time with firearms in during this quarantine. I am going to mention some ideas and focus on one in today’s post.

First and foremost, most indoor ranges are closed. Mine happens to have both an indoor and (mostly) outdoor component. The pro shop is closed, but as long as you stick to your personal space rules, you can shoot at the rifle range, shotgun range or one of the numerous private bays.

Then, there is dry fire practice. That is pulling the trigger on an empty firearm (please make sure it is unloaded!). There are a number of drills that you can do to practice trigger control. I have heard that professional shooters spend as much time dry firing as they do actually shooting. Try using your offhand, I bet you can use some strength training.

Something I like to do is reload ammunition. Unfortunately, I have loaded all of my spare brass. I will do a future post about this. So not to much more today. With kids, decorate paper plates to be later used as targets. You can make them up and put them away to be shot at later. They can keep them when they are done too. Clean your guns or inventory model and serial numbers for insurance are some other ideas.

Finally, I wanted to talk about air gun shooting. I suppose that you could also do Airsoft (I don’t have any) as well. Be mindful that in a lot of jurisdictions it is illegal to discharge an air rifle. In my mind, if you do this with some degree of discretion, it can be done safely and under the radar.

Air rifle with pellet trap

This trap I built during the summer. It holds two bags of rubber mulch and is constructed of 3/4″ plywood. Shooting pellets, I was shooting straight through 3/8″ plywood and BB’s were tearing up the rest of it. This rifle can kill a 20lb animal. My point is just because it is an air rifle doesn’t mean that you don’t have to wear safety glasses or treat this tool seriously.

My intent was to set this up and fire 10 shots or so a day. That hasn’t turned into reality, but my son and I occasionally set it up and fire a few shots. I think that I would like to eventually buy a better rifle because pumping 6-8 times gets to be a drag as well.

When my brother and I were young, we liked to setup catalogs along the fence line and shoot at them. Then we would thumb through them and be silly about how each shot would hit the different pages incidentally. We also liked to shoot at reactive targets (filled with water, etc) but that can get a little messy if you are doing this inside.

Its fun – Be Safe.

March 27, 2020 – Nearing the end of Spring Break

March 27, 2020 /

We took this week to have a stay-cation being that it was supposed to be Spring Break. Our plans were to meet up with another family and spend the week on the coast for some rest and relaxation. That changed first with them coming down with suspected Covid-19 and then the state lockdown.

Next week, we are instituting a much more rigid schedule that will include personal development (self paced learning, reading, art/music, etc.) time, earlier bedtimes and wakeup times. This will be in place until we get word that life will be returning to normal – hopefully April 28.

I am sure everyone that is enduring this period seriously is finding aspects of the quarantine challenging. I am a person that treasures my alone time and personal space, that has been hard to find. But I am also a person that thinks family time is valuable. Here are some of the ways that we have been enjoying the time together.

Puzzles an games for hours
  • Puzzles – This 1000 piece puzzle pictured above took us three solid days to complete. This is a staple activity for our vacation time. It allows everyone to participate and interact for long periods of time
  • Games – I went back in the waaaay back machine to dig out old role playing games (from the 1980s!), build characters and adventure. We also have played Monopoly, poker and Mind Trap.
  • Family movies at night – We have been working our way through the Twilight Series and in honor of Kenny Rogers we watched ‘The Gambler’ the other night.
  • Swap Day – The kids were the parents and the parents were the kids. They planned and executed all of the meals as well as led the entertainment decisions for the day.
  • Cooking- We have been making comfort foods. We have been doing the activity with different family members and involving them in different aspects. A lot more baking and deserts have been made recently.
  • Create parody video – We wrote, acted, filmed and edited a video that was a lot of laughs. We are still in the editing phase, but should be up on YouTube shortly.
  • Make-over time – Not really, but my wife has been bugging me to shave my head for years. So I did, to see what it would look like.

I have to say that a lot of these things I would normally not want to spend time doing. But it seems as though forcing the issue has made something like Monopoly enjoyable. As we head into next week, hopefully it will be an empowering time teaching the kids that they don’t need school to learn and find interest in pursuing their personal projects.

March 13, 2020 – Follow up on politics

March 13, 2020 /

Remember back on February 26, I wrote about how things will happen whether we get wrapped up in them or not? Well guess what? Since the legislature was dismissed and the cap and trade bill could not be passed, the Governor has decided to accomplish it through administrative regulation.

For all those people who were worried about this bill being passed, fear not. This is the kind of state that we now live in. So, you can protest, write your representatives, post on social media and so on but you are much better off doing something better with your life than worrying about politics.

March 6, 2020 – Repairing a planer

March 6, 2020 /

Maybe I am unlucky or maybe tools go bad after sitting around for 15-20 years with little use. This is another tool repair and casualty of the pantry project.

I have decided that I am going to talk about preparations for life (i.e. Caronavirus) next week. I will also likely finish my project next week. It will be a whole new chapter for me after that. So with that, have a good weekend.

February 21, 2020 – Project update

February 22, 2020 /

Sorry, my sickness is still impacting my productivity and probably the quality of what I am putting out. It has been some time since I posted a project update.

I have made quite a bit of progress, all of the rough lumber has been milled. I am in the midst of fixing some mistakes before moving forward, like I mis-measured the refrigerator and it doesn’t fit in the cabinet I built. I didn’t realize that there was a hinge that caused the overall height to be greater than what I had measured. Normally, I would have built more tolerance into my work, but cabinets are specific (working) heights and I am pushing the threshold of maximum height already.

I already know about measure twice and cut once. So, my lesson today is when sizing something specific, look very closely at all angles to make sure that your measurements are adequate. Another note worth sharing is that mistakes can be very costly, in time. I am tearing apart the fridge cabinet, plugging the holes, relocating the shelf, re-assembling the cabinet, refinishing and leveling again.

I have also experienced some other tool failures recently. My 16ga brad nailer is not consistently returning the hammer back to the proper position. I took it apart and found that there is a plastic piece that has disintegrated. I am going to create a video repairing that next week. My planer is filling up with chips causing me to have to stop and clean it out every twenty minutes. What I know now is that that a few years ago, the planer broke off a knot and tried to push it through the chip blower. That in turn busted the fan housing and now chips are blowing into the planer causing the height mechanism to clog up. I will probably make a video about that too.

Have a great weekend everybody.

February 17, 2020 – President’s Day

February 17, 2020 /

Today is the third Monday in February or otherwise known as President’s Day. It was officially declared a Federal Holiday in 1971 as an amalgamation of Washington and Lincoln’s birthday the 12th and 22nd respectively.

Interestingly, it is not a holiday that is universally celebrated or recognized. Sources I checked said that twenty-four states recognize Presidents Day as a state holiday as well. Oregon is one of the twenty-four. There are nine states that do not recognize Presidents Day or any other individual President, like Washington’s birthday. Another interesting fact is that Alabama recognizes Washington and Jefferson’s birthday but not Lincoln’s.

I can remember as a child getting Washington’s birthday as a holiday. I think in the 1980s Oregon aligned with President’s Day over individual birthday holidays. In my adult life, I have always worked in the private sector and never had this day as a holiday. Ironically, my Canadian co-workers got this day off as ‘Family Day’ in Canada. Since I was home for the first time ever, we spent the time doing family activities. Back to regular posting tomorrow.

February 13, 2020 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

February 13, 2020 /

I feel really lucky that I have a shooting range membership. It could be considered a little pricey at $150/year but it makes me want to get out there and get my money’s worth. Before I got the membership as a gift, it was pretty hit and miss getting any sort of trigger time – in some cases years in between time.

As a natural planner one thing I like to do is set some annual goals. One of those came from an idea that I first heard of from Bob Mayne https://www.handgunworld.com/about/ called the ‘1,000 round trigger job’. The idea is that you need to spend some quality time with your firearm to get familiar with its intricacies.

This trigger has gotten the test

So what does that really mean? In my interpretation it means testing the durability of your firearm, how it functions with many brands and types of ammunition, what is best for accuracy, how your clothing and the season hinder motion and felt recoil, practice reloading and off hand use and so on.

My tastes can be eclectic and it can be expensive to perform the ‘1000 round trigger job’ so for that reason, it usually plan to shoot 100 rounds per range visit per firearm. I also try to get to the range once a month. So, it can take nearly a year to to do accomplish this if you do it with intention on a new firearm. If it was a used firearm, I would tend to treat the round counter as zero because I haven’t learned the intricacies of the particular weapon yet. Yes, I do keep track (roughly) of the total round count for each firearm.

One side benefiit is that I reload, so saving all of my brass gets me a great stockpile of material to reload and cuts down on future costs. What I have learned over the years is that 1) it is fun 2) it motivates me to keep my shooting skills fresh 3) I am not a great handgun shot 4) devising tests is part of the fun. If you like to shoot, try the ‘1000 round trigger job’.