I don't promise to blog regularly. I'll make a post once in a while when I feel I have something interesting to say or complain about. Or perhaps just for the hell of it.
When I moved house a few years ago, I got rid of most of my holiday decorations. Not that I had too many. I’ve never spent that much time or attention on seasonal (or any other kind) of decoration.
The obvious reason of downsizing was one excuse. The fact that I was moving to a larger, newer house, another. Then there was the fact that I’d lived in the old house for nearly forty years. A lot of what I had was old and decrepit.
So I kept a very few things for which I had special memories and got rid of the rest. My intention was to start out fresh.
I like the idea of seasonal decorations. They add interest and, I think, help me connect to the here and now. I spend a lot of time in my head or on a computer. There’s not much room for what goes on outside in those spaces. I need prompts. Decorations can be great prompts.
I don’t much like to shop. And pandemics give me even more excuses to not leave my house. So the rate at which I accumulate decorations for minor holidays is pretty slow. All of my Easter decorations, for example, don’t fill a shoe box.
Every year, I try to add one item to my decorating stash. That’s about all the time and patience I have for the process. I wasn’t impressed with what was available for decorations at the grocery or drug stores (big surprise), so, as is my want, I looked for what was available to print on my 3D printer.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of 3D objects available for printing. Some are adorable. Some are beyond tacky. Some fall into the class of private jokes. When I see a pattern that catches my eye, I save it in my ‘Easter’ folder. I’ve probably got a couple dozen items bookmarked that way.
As it got closer to Easter, I looked through that collection. Really, there was only one object that I had any interest in printing, the dragon egg. I’d gotten some new gold silk PLA filament recently and thought that might make an interesting print.
Well, when you put together a great design and beautiful filament, the result can be stunning. In my 2+ years of 3D printing, I count this as the most stunning thing I have ever printed. I liked it so much that I scaled up the model to print it in two larger sizes. So far, I’ve printed six of these eggs. I may print even more.
The dragon eggs as shown in the photo are printed in two colors of filament: gold and copper. The eggs themselves screw together from two halves so that you can hide surprises within. As someone with a container fetish, that really appeals to me.
Happy Easter!
I have this perhaps familiar dilemma: I only have a limited amount of time, I can either use it to exercise or to write.
As a writer, my head is filled with ideas screaming to be made into electrons on my computer. But I have a full time business (not woodcarving) to run. So my time for the 'fun stuff' is limited. I need to exercise: exercise helps banish many ills, depression, for one. Writing helps banish others: insanity for one.
So what do I do with such a choice? Why nothing, of course. I'm overwhelmed with depression and craziness. I'm immobilized.
Well, one way or another, I've decided that I will write and exercise my way out of this. I'm not going to allow myself the opportunity to make a choice of an open slot of time. Rather, I will make these things that I must do for my health and sanity ongoing tasks that simply have to get done. This is going to be my summertime experiment. You'll get to see my progress here, as blogging more frequently is one of the ways I'll be writing more. It's also a matter of credibility. I've also signed up for an exercise program, so I'm committed to that as well. If I make public that I am going to do something, tell it to someone beyond myself, the commitment is all that much stronger. So that is what I am doing here.
Here I go!
For several years now, Jim has dabbled with the idea of getting a smoker. He has the stovetop model, which has worked great, but he was ready to move onto bigger things. So the weekend before Memorial Day, he got a new electric smoker and assembled it.
Being a woodturner, bits of scrap cherry is not a rare thing, and he's been saving cherry chips for years to use in smoking. So after a quick raid of the scrap barrel and a few minutes on the band saw, we had enough small pieces to fill an old box he'd saved just for this purpose.
Now, the box is a nice size, probably holds enough wood chips to feed the smoker at least four times and even has convenient handle-flaps cut into the sides. This is a great repurposing of a well-constructed box that once transported toilet bowl cleaner.
Well, the first place this box is placed is in the family room, on the shelf, just inside the door from where the smoker has it's home outside. A generally practical place, and I don't mind wood chips being kept there, indeed, the room is filled with bins of larger cut-offs meant to feed the fireplace. However, being what it was, with Lysol in bold lettering, it made the shelf look like household chemical inventory overflow. So, I painted it.
For a long time, site has been hidden behind the subdomain, smallthings.acmfox.com. That was because when I originally went to create a website for my busines, Fox Computer Systems, I was unable to get www.foxcomputersystems.com as a domain name. That changed a few years ago and now that is the official business site. Because I had stationery and other materials that listed www.acmfox.com as the business website, both addresses led to the same content.
Well, it's been over five years of having the two domain names mirror each other and I've decided to make a change. Since acmfox has been my online 'handle' for years, I'm keeping this website, but changing its content to reflect a broader scope of the things that I do both professionally and otherwise. It still won't be comprehensive, but it will be more about me and my various interests than would be appropriate for a purely business site.
No one really wants or expects to get much snow in October. The leaves are still on the trees and the ground is still relatively warm. It happens, for sure, and it's always a mess, but not like this one. No matter where you look virtually every tree has at least one broken limb and many have simply split down the middle with the weight of 10+ inches of snow.
Life gets interesting with no internet, no electricity and melted snow to flush the toilets. But there is companionship, camaraderie and helpful neighbors. Somehow it doesn't seem so bad when you know that just about everyone else around is in the same situation. We joke about it, complain about the cold, and offer to share firewood.
ps: sorry about the picture formatting. As I said this site is a work in process, and there is still some template processing to do.
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