Tag: Plausible deniability

What I want Thursday – Birthday Addition 2014

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

In about 3 weeks I will celebrate the 13th anniversary of my 29th birthday and the current plan is to spend the weekend in Porto, Portugal.  While there, I want cake (moist yellow cake with chocolate butter-cream frosting), snuggling, a nice glass or 6 of Port, laughter, and a few well thought out gifts. I will NOT work that day – just not going to happen – and I plan to pamper myself with a haircut and a strait-razor shave if it can be found. I might buy some new wingtips, just ’cause they make me happy. Cookies will be eaten and beef will be consumed in quantity.   

Below is my birthday wish list – mostly for my wife and children, but feel free to peruse and suggest.

I already have a bunch of crap, so my first request is that you give to a worthy cause.

Heifer International: Bees, Goats, Chickens, Llama, the whole Ark… 🙂
Doctors Without Borders/MSF
Diabetes Research

If you DO want to get me a little token of your love and appreciation:

Books:

Anything from my Amazon wish list
A signed hardbound copy of Campaign Furniture 
Theodore Roosevelt: a Strenous Life
I would like a signed copy of Chris Schwartz’s The Anarchist’s Tool Chest
Founding Foodies
A volume on handplanes or a tome on traditional woodworking
Twilight at Monticello
A Lost Art Press volume of The Essential Woodworker
James Krenov’s Cabinet Maker’s Notebook
Two Classic books on Shaker Furniture: here and here.

Stuff:
Don Julio Anejo Tequila
F3 Architect’s Wallet
Porsche Design TecFlex Fountain Pen (F Nib)
New bad-ass cufflinks or these or these…
A Global Chef’s knife, bread knife, and ceramic sharpener
Classic Cartoon DVDs (Bugs, Tom&Jerry, Loony Toons, Road Runner, etc…)
Stainless Omega Seamaster 007 or Planet Ocean with inscription
A fantastic sport coat

Tools:
A pair of 1/2 round molding planes
A Pair of Snipe Bill molding planes
A set of Mortise Chisels

Update:

In addition to a fine long weekend in Porto, my wife gave me a cute desert cookbook, awesome mustache cuff-links, and a watch that I have been asking for. My Father-in-law sent me the funds to buy a nice bottle of port. My Mom hooked me up with an apron for BBQing and the thoughtful gift of Heifer bees. Bottles of good wine and great beer from friends here in France and I got cards and online wishes galore. It all made me very happy. Thank you everyone very, very much!

Small parts holder for French Cleat wall

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

What happens when you are 99.98% done turning a bowl, there is a millisecond of inattention and BAM! And the bowl explodes off the chuck?? After you check your britches and finish saying dirty words, you pick up the pieces and make lemonade from lemons.

I thought about tossing it all in a fire, but decided to use the largest intact piece to make a small parts holder that mounts on a French Cleat. I am forever looking for a jar or a can to put small parts in while I am voiding a warranty or rebuilding something small and complicated.

Bowl to French Cleat 2014 (1)

Bowl to French Cleat 2014 (3)

Bowl to French Cleat 2014 (2)

Weekend Update – the gods of lawn maintenance are displeased

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We had a national holiday in France on Friday and I made the most of my 3-day weekend.

Instead of the stuff I needed to do I did this:

1. Got up at 7:30 on a holiday
2. Went up into the mountains with a group of Expats for a hike and a picnic – got some great pictures and had fine food
3. Worked on a design for wooden wine box/kitchen cabinets
4. Completely filled my Leuctterm1917 design sketch notebook – took 2 years
5. Watched a girlie movie with my sweet wife
6. Started a new notebook – a Rhodia Webbie this time (I like the paper better)
7. Spent too much time on the interwebs
8. Started formal permit process for garage shop and apartment above at our place in Seattle
9. Sanded, sealed and painted the “T” supports for the workbench/buffet table
10. Rough turned 4 oak bowls from a piece of tree blown down in a storm
11. Sent some e-mails out that I had let sit too long
12. Coated the bowls in wax and will let them cure for a year.
13. Cleaned and organized GROP – oak shavings were EVERY where
14. Composted the shavings with some grass and kitchen scraps
15. Sharpened all my lathe chisels
16. Brained myself on a low hanging bike – said f-word more than once
17. Went to a run along the river
18. Called my Mom and talked for a bit
19. Checked on the kids
20. Cut first 5” top sections for Cornebarrieu Workbench
21. Need a proper circle saw… the 18v battery saw is out of it league on 1.5” beech
22. Worked on the small cabinet rosettes for our neighbor – he also asked me to install a shelf while I was at it…
23. Played with the puppies – while Stamps-With-Foot had a girls night
24. Got sucked into Pinterest
25. Updated website a little (here and Tumblr)
26. Watched a little too much TV/YouTube
27. Took puppies for a walk around neighborhood a couple of times
28. Rode my bike about 10 miles – muddy
29. Cleaned and tuned single-speed bike
30. Played with puppies
31. Did some grilling with beer in hand 
32. Got up Sunday morning and worked for a few hours, – because I thought it was Monday. Damn it!
33. Closed office door and did not return for 24 hours
34. Told wife her hair was very pretty
35. Went for a walk with wife and puppies
36. Made a small parts organizer out of a broken wood bowl
37. Got glue on my favorite shorts
38. Wrote some snail-mail
39. Surfed the interwebs until I fell asleep with the iPad on my chest…
40. I did not mow the yard again. The gods of lawn maintenance are displeased with me.

Hiking august 2014 (3)

Hiking august 2014 (1)

Hiking august 2014 (5)

Hiking august 2014 (2)

Hiking august 2014 (4)

Rosettes for neighbor

Oak Bowls Aug 2014 (5)

Oak Bowls Aug 2014 (7)

Lathe clean aug 2014

Oak Bowls Aug 2014 (1)

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Last page of notebook Aug 2014

yard not mowed this weekend 2014

T-beams for bench-buffet table aug 2014

found trivet 2014

making shavings aug 2014

Wood Carvings at the Cluny in Paris

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We spent 3 hours at Musée de Cluny (Musée national du Moyen Âge) in Paris on a recent trip. I highly recommend the little museum and the adjacent garden. While I enjoyed the tapestry and armor and paintings, it was the wood carvings that really stood out. The detail… Braids, carved folds in the dresses, miniature figures and scenes in a triptych that were beyond belief, fingernails, pages of a book… All carved in 400+ year old oak. Astonishing.

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Side note: the plums in The Unicorn Forest (forêt de la Licorne) section on the garden were ripe and falling. I tried one ant it was delicious – upper sweet and deep blood red. They will make terrific jam. I may have brought 10-15 plums home with me and extracted the seeds. I plan to plant a few in a local forest and I have a sneaking suspicion that a very similar tree will grow in our yard in Seattle and in a friend of ours yard in Portland…

No More Facebooking at the breakfast table

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

I quit Facebook.

My wife drug me into it after years of refusal and I turned very quickly into one of those constant status checkers that everyone hates, but just couldn’t stop…

It is the data mining that finally got me. I had to get pissed off before I could put it down. Products were suggested because I went to a website 9 months ago, books were suggested “out of the blue” (Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America is on EVERYONE’S top pick list… Sure…) from my Amazon wish list, a friend suggestion was made for the cop that sends out monthly neighborhood safety bulletins for our neighborhood in Seattle. The friend thing was the final straw…

A couple of years ago my shop was broken into and a ton of irreplaceable (father’s and Grandfather’s) tools were taken. The guy who did it was a contractor we used. Facebook has gone through my e-mails and can see some e-mail traffic with the douchebag and BOOM! Facebook thinks we should be friends and keeps reminding me. Nope. It makes me mad every time I look at my phone now.

I have a large enough social media presence even without Facebook and if you REALLY want to see what I had for dinner, cute pictures of my dogs, travel shots, or some forwarded rant you can find me on Instagram, Tumblr, or here on my own site – which celebrates its 12th year in September.

~Matt

How to make a Chinese wood lathe work “right out of the box”

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I have mentioned that when planning our move to Toulouse, I realized that I would have to leave my big electrical shop machines in Seattle.   It hurt a little as I have become dependent on a table saw and compound miter saw for even the simplest tasks. I am looking forward to spending some quality time with my hand tools, but I have to have a lathe to complete 75% of the projects that I tackle. There is no way in Blue Blazes that I am was going to build a pole lathe or a foot-powered flywheel lathe – there I draw the line. I needed a fairly large machine to turn the posts, trenchers, stools, bowls, table legs, spindles, scoops, etc… that are on my “to-do in France” list.

Machine tools in France are CRAZY expensive. Look at the US price, change the Dollar sign to a Euro sign and add 30% to the final price. I looked at a large Jet lathe and it cost more than my first truck. Even the small midi version was the equivalent of $600. I just can’t spent that kind of cash on something that doesn’t either feed me or take me to work. After some research, I found a bare bones, no accessories, Chinese made model that some of the local turners were buying for their second or third lathe. It was 1/3 the cost of a well appointed model with the same bed length and power. Sold. I brought all my chucks and jigs and accessories with me, so I thought “Perfect!”

There wasn’t one available in a 400 mile radius, so I had to order it at the home center in the next village over.  11 days later it showed up and I brought my new 400 pound beauty queen home in a Suzuki swift. I am sure the douche-bag that stood 10′ from me watched as I man-handled it into the rear hatch of my tiny car using old tires and 2X4s has already posted the video.

Now, it was advertised at “Ready to turn out of the box!” For that to be true you need the following tools:

  1. Rubber Mallet
  2. 1/2″ combination wrench
  3. Set of standard Allen wrenches
  4. Flat-head screwdriver
  5. #2 Phillips screwdriver
  6. 3/8″ drive ratchet
  7. 1/2 socket
  8. Long socket extension: >6″
  9. Standard Tap and Die set
  10. A large vocabulary of cuss words
  11. Drill
  12. Metal Drill-bit Set
  13. Large Bastard File

You will also need the following additional parts as the bolts and washers provided were likely scooped from a bin without counting and dropped in a bag.  There are only two small pages of instructions and they do not list all the parts, the number of each that will be required, or the order in which they are installed.  Take examples of the bits and pieces provided and get duplicates in the same size:

  1. Washers
  2. lock-washers
  3. pan head bolts
  4. Machine bolts

You will also need:

  1. four 8′ long 2X4s
  2. Wood Glue
  3. Sandpaper
  4. Pan-head wood screws or deck screws
  5. 4 sacks of concrete

I found out about the hardware issue right away and drove back to the home center in the next village for spares, but I had all of the other supplies on hand – I did not pack light for our move here 🙂   The base was my first obstacle. It was flimsy sheet metal and some of the holes were out of alignment.  I drilled and fitted, whacked with a mallet and said lots of dirty words, before I finally got the lathe on.  A quick tug showed that the base needed some serious beefing up.  If I put an unbalanced piece in it, it would shake apart.   I ended up building a crossed braced wooden skeleton for the whole thing – my Jr. High Wood Shop teacher would beam with pride.  The reinforcing process took me 4 hours that first night, but that was mostly because I don’t have a miter box saw and was making compound angle cuts with a sliding-T bevel and a Japanese pull saw. I ended up having to chase the threads in the cast iron lathe bed and on the head stock (really) with a couple of different taps and used Loctite on all the bolts.

All the handles and knobs had to be put on and tested and the tail stock and head stock had to be adjusted, tweaked, and tweaked a little more to get them in alignment. The cast iron tool rest was really rough, so I used a file here and there on it and sanded the tool bearing surface and finger groove with progressively finer sandpaper, from 80 to 400 grit.  This all took another 3 hours the next night.

After all was said and done, I clamped up a small hunk of 2X4 that was a cut-off from building the base and with just my skew chisel, turned it down and into a bunch of tiny beads.  The lathe turns great and has plenty of power.  I couldn’t be happier.  I saved 800-1000 Euros in exchange for 7-8 hours of me time.

From Trash to Basement Built-in

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I was at one of the architectural salvage places in the SODO area of Seattle one fine summer day 3 years ago and as I was leaving with whatever small treasure I had found (picture Sméagol with his Precious…), I spied a bit of white cabinetry and what looked like a paneled cabinet door in their free/meant-for-the-dumpster pile so I went over and looked to see if I could salvage a bit of whatever it was.  The hope was for a door that I could re-purpose or some cool hardware left intact, but I struck gold!  Some idiot used a pry-bar and a Sawzall to rip a built-in painted hutch out of a house’s wall during a remodel.  It was taken to the salvage shop without a back, one side missing, no top, zero trim left, and with rough recent tool/pry marks all over it.  All the shelves were there and the door that I had seen was one of four heavily painted paneled oak doors.  I saw some promise and had an exact spot for it, so I piled the wreckage in the back of my truck, roped it down, and sped away before someone could tell me no.

It languished in the basement for part of a year before I tightened the joints, squared it all up, made a back from pine bead-board, built a matching side panel, reinforced the structure and installed it on one of our basement den walls.  What used to be the open counter-top space between the original built-in base and top, became storage for boots or snowboards or books (which is what is there now).

I wanted to include Stamp-With-Foot in the project, so I took her with me to pick out some trim.  She found a section of fancy scalloped-cut chair rail/case molding that she REALLY liked and I went home and used it in a custom buildup: adding a section of ripped down base molding and a length of popular wood that I ran over with two different router bits to make the top trim.

After getting the piece installed, I realized that I would have a 5″ gap of dead space between the inside top of the cabinet and the finished top, so I rabbited in two shelf lips and built matching hatch covers to provide storage for long or seldom used items in the top of the cabinet.  The hatches were finished with brass ring pulls from a local boat supply hardware shop.  After some light sanding, Stamps-With-Foot and I put two coats of white cabinet paint on it and I had The Ruminator help me install antiques glass pulls and keyed latches while he was visiting for Christmas.   The piece looks like it was built with the house, the top is already filled with mountaineering books, and is a fantastic addition to our basement and home.

The Ruminator’s Summer Visit – 2013

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

My son will turn 13 this winter – I feel so old. He came out to Seattle this summer for a visit and I was able to take the whole time off from work due to our pending move and the prep involved. We had the best time together and I can only hope and pray that as he ascends/descends into adolescence that our summers and time together are at least half as good as this summer was.

He is at the age where he is starting to take direction well and can stay on-task for a bit, so I put his little butt to work. We had a mountain of stuff to get done before we leave for France and his extra set of hands was incredibly helpful. We shopped for steel fence and stair rail, installed a speak-easy in the front door, cut and primed two stair rails, I taught him how to used an HVLP spray-gun to paint furniture, we stained table legs, used the router, he learned the first steps in using a wood lathe (he helped make his own carving mallet and made his mother a honey dipper turned from European beech), and he helped me measure, mark and chisel hinge pockets in the kitchen cabinet doors. My toe-headed son helped dig the two 18″ holes for the front entry stair rail, dug a hole up front, outside the fence, and helped replant a root-bound rosemary there. Since he was in mole-mode, we went into the back yard and he helped dig the hole for a new receptacle and motion light power pole near the back fence. We then squared and leveled the pole, braced it, ran conduit for the wire, and mixed & poured concrete. It was a long day and he was a tired little puppy after the digging and concrete work. I guarantee that he slept like a rock that night – I did.

The Ruminator also learned about how to properly use hand planes this summer – he loved them. Left to his own devises, he would sit in the shop for hours banging away on scrap with the chisels and making piles and piles of long, curly, paper thin wood shavings. He was channeling Roy Underhill and I was so proud!

It wasn’t all work though – I am not a slave-driver. There were bike rides, visits to the park and the beach, movies at the theatre and on the iPad, Austin Powers and South-park voice impressions (much to Stamps-With-Foot’s dismay), ukulele playing around the fire pit, and he is probably the first kid in his hometown to have ever been indoor skydiving.

Knotted “survival bracelets” are popular right now and the one we tied up last year is now too small or was unraveled and used on some woodland adventure, I’m sure. We stopped at Home Depot on the way home from some outing and he picked out the paracord color and stainless steel shackle. We sat in the back yard with Stamps-With-Foot, chatting with a family friend while I tied a new bracelet. It fit perfectly and he beamed with gratitude. This was the summer that the Ruminator went to his very first Major League Baseball game – Mariners vs. The Red Socks – and had the whole hot dog/roasted peanut experience. We had great seats 23rows up on the first base line and the Mariners won. I was so happy to be there with him and it made my heart happy to see his face shine when a bat made contact and sent a ball into the outfield.

Probably the highlight of his trip though (for him) was when we went to the Washington Gathering of the Clans and he got a sword. A shiny steel Viking sword. Thinking back to when I was 12, I would have given up anatomy for a sword! I would have slaughtered vegetation, hacked fruit and veggies gruesomely, sheared branches, cut myself at least twice, tried to wear it to school, and gotten into some semi-serious trouble of some sort before my blade would have been taken away and put in that unknown place in my parent’s house from which there was no return – propped up next to my first pellet gun, beside that awesome surgical tubing slingshot, and near that box full of fire crackers. Anyways, I made him promise, not to do what I would have surely done – we will see how that works out. I bet he spent his first week back twirling the thing around like a mini blond Conan – to the annoyance of his mother.

He has been promised that if he does well in school and minds to a considerable degree, doesn’t act up in class, and helps around the house, he will get to fly to France for the summer next year. It is an amazing opportunity and I am looking very forward to showing my son France and Europe! Hiking, cycling, road trips, climbing, food, culture, language, all of it!

Building Custom Cabinet Doors

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

1. Buy dimensional 3/4″ poplar boards.
2. Plane to uniform thickness.
3. Rip 2″ and 3″ strips on the table saw.
4. Two dado cuts on table saw for 1/4″X 3/8″ panel groove.
5. Run each section on router because table saw is a POS and there is depth variation in all the grooves…
6. Threaten table saw with large iron maul – mean it.
7. Grumble a little.
8. Cut door stiles (sides) to length – Measure opening for stiles, subtract 4″ for stile width and add 3/4″ for double 3/8″ panel slot.
9. Write all measurements down on a non-descript sheet of paper.
10. Put measurements somewhere safe.
11. Take a 2 week to 4 month break because life gets busy.
12. Lose paper with measurements.
13. Tear house and shop apart looking.
14. Give up and re-measure.
15. Cut rails.
16. Lay all parts out and label, check sizing, trim two pieces, and pray a little.
17. Set up horizontal drill press to drill for dowel joints.
18. Screw up at least 4 initial holes.
19. Hit head in shop at least 3 times.
20. Build sweet dowel trimming jig for table saw – let head swell a little.
21. Cut 3/8″ off each dowel (8 per door).
22. Drill 16 holes per door.
23. Sand the cut-off end of dowel.
24. Dry fit first door.
25. Success!
26. Get out every bar clamp, hand clamp, and Quick-clamp that you own and set up clamping station.
27. Find original measurements for doors in the “safe place.”
28. Say dirty words very loudly. Repeat.
29. Add glue to dowels and joints and assemble door.
30. Apply judicious blows from wooden mallet to seat parts.
31. Get glue on hands and in hair.
32. Clamp up.
33. Wipe extra glue on door off with wet rag.
34. Repeat last 6 steps 8 more times.
35. Scrape clue, plane joints, and sand doors with 3 different paper grits.
36. Check and adjust door fit to openings and prime after more planning.
37. Re-prime and paint with two coats of white cabinet paint.
38. Mark, mortise, and install hinges on door.
39. Install red glass pulls.
40. Mark and mortise hinge/door onto cabinet.
41. Check fit and adjust 2 to 9 times.
42. Repeat steps 28 thru 41 eight more times
43. Drink three beers and swear to never build your own kitchen cabinets from scratch ever again!

Roller Derby, St. Paddy, Dresser Building and an Anniversary Weekend

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

This weekend was busy with friends, a dinner out, St. Paddy’s Day activities, an outing to the Roller Derby (?!), and the 9th anniversary of the day that my sweet wife and I met was on Sunday. Even with all that, we still got bunches done around the house: Our under-bed dresser finished, bathroom table drawer installed (a little work on that left), wine crate storage boxes made, basement lighting installed, and the basement work bench is moving along.

The drawers for the under-bed dresser and the one for the bathroom all came from a wooden donor-dresser that my father-in-law drug home from a garage sale last summer. He paid $4 for it and it was in pretty bad shape, but it was solid wood and had potential. It was mistakenly left in the weather (plastic cover leaked) for a month before I salvaged the drawers, cut out off the top and used the sides for kitchen cabinet door panels. I re-squared the drawers, added dividers in the fall, and over the Christmas break sealed the insides (The Ruminator helped). After lots of filling and sanding and more sanding, I stained the fronts to match our bedroom furniture, then built ¾” plywood beams to hang the drawers from bed frame and used some scrap oak flooring as drawer guides/runners. The final product really looks good and is super functional. While some husbands bug their wives by filling the house with brought-home junk – I give my wife more and more and more storage and organization space.

On Sunday, I put the final coat of finish on the basement workbench top, let it dry, and then installed the three runs of aluminum t-track. Stamps-With-Foot bucked up and helped me wrestle its 200 pound beech and maple mass onto the steel base. I secured it with screws and covered the top with carpet squares while I finish the upper shelf/cabinet. I installed a outlet power strip under the main body of the topper and removed the old drawer dividers. I will soon add a plywood back with a mirror, a light under, a dedicated air supply line, install the desk drawers under the bench and mount 4 reclaimed letterpress drawers directly under the top as well. Happy with the progress so far.

12th Night in Portland – 2013

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A few weeks ago we drove down to Portland so that I could to do some off-site work for my J-O-B and took an extra day (on or dime) to both visit friends and attend an evening of the SCA’s 12th Night celebration – Being married to a trained costume designer means that one goes to these sorts of evenings.  Our friends have closets (yes, I meant to be plural – as in 4 closets) filled with period costumes and accessories.  My wife dressed me in a couple of different outfits until she was certain that I looked the part and then I went and waited downstairs for a couple of hours while the ladies prepped and primped like a good little puppy.

I agreed to this foray for three reasons:

  1. Happy wife, happy life…
  2. There was booze promised to me.
  3. There was to be a “huge” vendor area where all sorts of cool stuff like swords, and bows, and armor, and axes and like items would be sold and traded.

Now, the mention/rumor of armor and swords takes be back to being a 9-year old at my very first Renaissance Faire (the REAL Penn and Teller performed that year).  I wanted a “real” sword and a chain mail hood so bad that I would have licked the bottom of a Port-a-John seat for them at the time.  My son is now enamored with the same period of history, I live vicariously through him and thought that he would get a real kick out of the pictures of armor and swords

I was a little disappointed: no swords, one real armor dealer and sales area was lined with stalls that catered to the ladies fabric, buttons, capes, cloaks, furry hats, jewelry, etc…), but I did end up getting a few good pictures to send to The Ruminator and we ended up watching the fencing melee/tournament.  Helmets, steel swords, shields, daggers, very cool.  He would have been all in!

The rest of the event was good and the detail of some of the costumes was amazing.  Some of those folks put months and months of work hand sewing outfits just for that one night.  Our evening ended with a game of Cards Against Humanity – I won – and we stumbled home just after 1:00AM.

A giant sealed dome over our place would solve most of this….

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

There are some days where I want to just drop everything I am holding, turn off the lights, lock the door, and go on an extended vacation involving a sugar-sand beach and copious amounts of fruit laden alcohol.  This Saturday was one of those days.

I decided to work on the kitchen cabinet doors, cut some plywood sheets down, and tackle a bench top while the sun was shining.  I opened the shop, brought out a plastic truck-bed toolbox to cut on (my 4 sawhorses are currently being used elsewhere), pulled 3 full-sized sheets of ¾” and ½” plywood out of the lumber rack and drug it all out into the backyard.  After marking the first sheet, adjusting my saw blade depth, lining up my rip fence, and checking for clearance – I started my first cut and immediately ripped a 6” long kerf-cut into the top of the tool box that the sheet was sitting on.  Dammit! I cut the rest of the plywood up without incident, but grumbled thinking about the mistake (I will fill and patch it with molten P-Tex plastic at some later point).  After stacking all the assorted pieces of ply back into my cluttered shop, I man-handled the 170+ pound beech and maple in-work bench top from the basement and placed it on the now-damaged toolbox – trying very hard not to either herniate a disk in my bask or tear what is left of my shoulder.

My Shop/Garage is pilled deep and high with lumber, hardware, undone winter projects, wood shavings, tools, sawdust,  flotsam & jetsam, etc….  I spent an hour trying to set up my router and in all the clutter and mess I couldn’t find a ¼” collet for one router and the other does not have an integrated fence, so using my big monkey brain, I improvised a fence.  All I really wanted to do with the top was to route channels for t-track and thoroughly sand it down before taking the beast back into the bowels of the basement to apply stain and a tung oil finish.  All was going as planned and my first cut was perfect.  The second cut went just the same, but at the very end of the third cut my improvised fence failed and the router wobbled – gouging the top that I had spent a month building.  Jesus H. Christ I was pissed! – Mostly at myself, but there was some vitriol left over for the machine in my hands.  I said dirty, hateful, vile things while resetting the fence and making an adjusted cut.  I moved on to make my last cut in the very front lip of the bench and while the fence held, I stood up mid-way through the pass and the router wobbled, making the bit chew into a section of wood where I did not want it to go.  I gritted through the rest of the pass and finished the cut, but the second I was clear of the wood, I wanted to throw the still running router on the ground and beat the electric life out of it with the pruning shears that were leaning against the garage wall.  I had to walk away, hand over my mouth, and just breathed deeply with my back to the offending router, my own incompetence, and the damage they had both wrought.  My moment of reflection was short lived because just as I turned, I felt the first drop of rain fall from what was minutes ago a blue sky that had ominously darkened while I was focused on my router-rage (I swear it happened just like that – strait out of a hip urban dramedy…).  SHIT!!  I ran for something to cover the bench top.  The only thing I could find was a pink tent fly and a sheet of cardboard.  I covered everything and retreated into the shop, right eye twitching with disbelief/confusion/anger.  I spent the next hour drinking coffee laced with sawdust and moving piles of crap around in my shop.

When my sweet wife got home she MAY have found me in the shop muttering to myself, pacing, covered in saw dust, contemplating the logistics of building a giant sealed dome over our entire lot.  She talked me off the ledge, helped me put the top back into the basement, patted me a little, told me I was pretty and smart and a good boy, put me in some fresh, sawdust free clothes, and took me out to see a movie.

I got up the next morning and after a yummy breakfast of flaky croissants, bacon, eggs and two cups of coffee, I went downstairs and chiseled out the offending screw-ups, then cut and glued maple patches in.   After calming down some and after a good night’s sleep, I felt better about the whole thing, but me and that router are still not on speaking terms.

I will end up muttering to myself.

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I have come to both love and accept my wife’s little quirks. I don’t understand them all and from time to time I have to just shake my head and mutter after finding something odd in the recycling or noticing that kitchen silverware was used to dig in the flower beds for example. I have also discovered that it is best to work within the confines of these quirks instead of confronting them/her with what most people would call reason. That confrontation would lead to a two hour discussion that would, in turn, lead nowhere. I would have to apologize for even bringing it up and then I would have to buy her something shiny for my transgression. In the end, I would be right back where I started – muttering to myself and slowly shaking my head with my lips pursed in an expression of both frustration and amazement.

Stamps-With-Foot is very visual and she has to SEE something for it to be real for her. Visualization of a concept like arranging pictures on the wall, where flowers COULD go in the yard, or where to move a chair in the living room is an exercise in frustration. This normally means that after a week+ of debating where a piece of furniture should go, I will move it 4-9 times before she decides that the original decision was the correct one. This comes up for me because we have been talking about to swapping offices at home. Her sewing/estrogen room will go upstairs to the sunny well-lit wood-floored bedroom at the front of our house and I will move my faux-Edwardian office/man-cave into the basement so that it will be co-located to my tiny hobby machine shop, work bench, and our den: A win/win for us both of us as long as I don’t have to move crap up and down and around for two days.

In the spirit of working with her previously addressed/documented traits, I formulated a plan to have it all work in my favor. I measured and drew a scale model of the room upstairs, showing locations of the doors, windows, and air vents. Then, I made scale cutouts of all the furniture that she could possibly have in the room. I left her with the drawing and cutout so that she could torment and second guess herself in peace while I went into the basement and worked on my new machine shop bench. 24 hours later and after looking at every possible combination at least 6 times, she had determined a location for each and every twig for her sewing nest and taped her choices for furniture location down on the drawing. I have elicited a promise that her decision is a final one and that if there is a change in any of the locations it will be made before the very first piece is picked up and humped upstairs.

Now all that is left for me to do is to bribe/con some friends and neighbors into helping move all the crap, putting it in its designated place and then to disappear in to my basement to plot my plan for world domination…. Mwahahahaha….

Basement Bench and Winter Workshop

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I have found that my workshop productivity goes way down in the winter/the six months of Seattle rainy season.  My garage shop is small and quickly fills with material, lumber, tools, and projects.  To add to the handicap of the small size, the lack of heat means that I can’t do any finish-work because of wood humidity, shrinkage/swell, and moisture.  I have made do in the unfinished side of our basement for the past three winters, but I am done my wife is done with the mess and clutter and my bitching about an inadequate work area when the weather turns crappy.  I need a little bit of dedicated space that I can work on the small stuff year round that doesn’t require power tools and a little bit of assembly/finish  space where I can glue and clamp some projects up, a solder station, a spot to reload ammo, work on my bikes, and  a clean/dry/warm space to apply stain or a hand-laid finish coat.  Add to this my current want of a small metal lathe and mill and I will have the makings of a nice little hobby shop from which to launch my plans for world domination …er, I mean a spot where I can make small parts, solder, or tinker.

Anyway, instead of buying a crazy expensive cabinet bench or making do with a thin metal and partial board Home Depot bench, I have decided to build the sturdiest all-around hobby bench that I can with the funds and material I have available (~$130.00), add some really nice features (aluminum t-track, lots of drawers, removable vises, power, lights, etc…) and make it into a finished piece of furniture that I will be proud to sit at and show off to friends for the next 30+ years.  To start the process off, I found a cheap older thick steel framed 6′ workbench at Second Use that I felt would make a bombproof, rock solid base.  I sourced a used IKEA cutting-board counter top that I cut down to the appropriate size and then used the trimmed pieces to add thickness and rigidity (I am still going to add some angle iron).  I thought about and sketched 3-9 different ways to add some shelving and some organization to the top and was still tossing around options in my head when a realized that an old buffet that my mom had just might work.  I took some measurements and looked into reinforcing here and there and realized that not only would it work, but that its style would set the tone and color for the entire bench build.

I decided that the drawers to be added under the bench top needed to be narrow and at least partially match the newly planned top section, so I looked for an older desk or vanity that I could cut apart.  I struck out at Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and Craig’s List, but Second Use came through again and hooked me up with exactly what I needed at a decently fair price, well decent after I haggled a bit…

The current state of the build is that the bench top is 2/3 done, the desk is cut apart, the steel legs are up and in place and I am 1/4 of the way done with reinforcing the buffet/top shelving unit.  I will update the build as it is completed and share some more pictures.

Weekend Update – 1/7/13

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My son was here for a week+ for the holidays and we did cool stuff as he is the Igor to my Dr. Frankinstein. He left on Friday morning and to keep myself occupied so I wouldn’t mope around all weekend thinking about how much I missed him, I busied myself with a few on-going projects:

Underbed dresser – 95% done
Letterpress drawers made into occasional tables – 50%
The never ending kitchen remodel – 85%
Sofa table rebuild – 20%
Bathroom drawer for wife – 50%
Candle box – 100%
Glass cabinet handle installation – 45%
Hall mirror – 22%
Helping a friend move – 50%
Etc…

While fitting the final pieces of the under bed dresser (built from an 1980s $4.00 garage sale upright five drawer) for our room and I transposed  two numbers and cut something a touch too long. Grumble… Grumble…  I went out to the shop, measured for screw clearance and put it on the table saw to rip down just a touch. I missed one screw, but my $56 carbide tipped cabinet blade didn’t. Sparks and bits of carbide flew. I said dirty words and came into the house to drown my sorrows in a Mexican coke, Jack with honey and an old Clint Eastwood western while propped up in bed with my grumpy face on.

Dear Santa -2012

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Dear Santa,

Below is my Christmas list for this year. I have been pretty good – no felonies. Please take a look and feel free to buy directly from the list or use it as a guide for the elves in the workshop – nudge, nudge, wink, wink…

Smart wool socks
For the all crazies at Westboro Baptist Church to smitted repeatedly with a bat.
A pair of red Chuck Taylor low tops – size 9.5.
Gift to Heifer International: Bees, goats, water buffalo…
Books: Theadore Roosevelt: a Strenous Life, American Sniper, Twilight at Monticello, Founding Foodies
Movie ticket/theatre gift cards
Zombie Targets
A new shaving mug
Illy coffee, Jamacan Blue Mountain, or REAL kona coffee
Wood burning kit from Woodcraft or Rockler
Don Julio tequila
Cabellas gift card
Glenlivet 12/15 or Glenfiddich 18 Scotch
For the both congressional houses to play nice and get some shit done.
Sam Adams “perfect” beer glass – set of 4
Any item from my Amazon Wish List

Now that you have been provided the above list for review don’t even consider bringing any weak-ass “Top Fiction” crap from the local B&N, fake Moleskines, cheap beer, ground Starbucks coffee, calculator watches, or any item that even remotely reminds me of Twilight. And don’t be gettin’ uppity when you slide down the chimney this year: We both know that the cookies and milk my wife leaves out are for me. If you touch my cookies there will be an elf beat down. Seriously. I will leave the liquor cabinet open again this year. As per our previous agreement, help yourself to the Bourbon. As long as you stick to the list, Mrs. Kringle will never know about you, Jim, Jack, & Johnny…

Merry Christmas, Santa!

Christmas Redecorating

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Each year after Thanksgiving, we take an afternoon, go to our local tree-seller and pick out a fine Noble Fir for our Christmas tree. I then pull out our integrated reservoir tree stand, a carpenter’s level, and set the whole assemblage on top of our large, round, lipped Christmas tree spill pan – I have very vivid nightmares about water stains on my wood floor…

Like most households that celebrate Santa/Christmas/Yule/Midwinter/etc…: The tree goes up, the ornaments come out, stockings are hung, etc. The only twist in our home is that in all reality, I am relegated to unpacking the 4 boxes of our handmade glass, pewter, and pine German ornaments and my participation in hanging them on the tree is verboten due to Stamps-With-Foot’s Tannenbaum OCD. Here is how it goes:

Tree in stand.
Wife surveys the straightness.
Tree adjusted.
Christmas music marathon begins
Dog trots in and notices tree.
Gets pissed off, turns his back to us and the tree and stares at the wall.
Slinks away after 30 minutes – Brodie HATES Christmas.
Tree adjusted again.
Tree must be turned to see which side is the best.
Decision made.
Lights put on.
Tree turned again.
Light strands removed.
Lights put back on in almost exactly the same place.
Light cords hidden.
Ornaments come out.
Lights on.
I have to turn the tree again.
Re-adjust.
Move some of the lights around.
Possible trimming of branches will happen at this point.
Hand wife ornaments – glass balls first.
Wife will walk back and forth and back and forth searching for perfect branch.
Previous step repeats about 150 times.
I am banned from giving her camping or climbing themed ornaments to place.
I sneak one onto the tree in the midst of her frenzy.
I go away and hang lights outside or hide from her Yuletide decorating wrath.
Find dog brooding over the nasty tree in HIS house and plotting to bite this Kris Kringle guy.
Toward the end of the evening, I am called back and I am allowed to hang 2-4 ornaments in a place I see fit.
Wife then moves them at least twice.
Tree trimming done 2-4 hours later.
I go to bed and twitch in my sleep to the beat of Nat King Cole, Elvis, Perry Como, and Sinatra as holiday music plays into the night…
Dog watches me sleep with hate in his heart because I was the one who carried the tree in.
Wake up sometime later and tree has been moved and completely rearranged.
Camping/Climbing ornament that I surreptitiously placed has been found, removed and place conspicuously on the table.
I look sheepish and she gives me the stink-eye over my transgression.
Presents are arranged by wife in a “certain order.”
Christmas music back on – maybe it never went off…
Brodie is put into his Santa outfit.
He somehow looks sad and furious at the same time.
There will be consequences for the red elf jacket that was forced upon him!
Am not allowed to touch area near tree until pictures are made.
Wife giggly happy.
Presents and ornaments rearranged at least once every three days until Christmas morning.

To save myself some work and time, I told her this year that I “could build” a lockable turning base so that she could move the tree over and over during initial setup and for decorating. You should of seen her face light up. The mere thought of it led to her running over and jumping on me saying “YES, YES, PLEASE, PLEASE!” I do love her.

Travel and Camping in the Land of shiny vampires…

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Every summer, my son and I go camping. Some years his sister has gone and my wife has started joining us, but there is a lot of quality father/son time.  Discussions swirl around knights, swords, native American tribes/practices, foreign places/peoples, battles, gvns, more sword talk, camping skills, camp cooking, and the merits of boxing/judo/Krav Maga/etc…  This year, The Ruminator and Stamps-With-Foot conspired against me and planned a trip to Forks, Washington to visit the Twilight tour stops.

The plan was to drive from Seattle to Forks, visiting La Push, and then completing the circumnavigation of the Olympic Peninsula – going from campground to campground.   The trip coincided with both Quileute Days and the Squim Lavender Festival – I have a soft spot for lavender.  I believe that the side trip to Squim was more of a bribe than anything else as our rainey destination and reason for going didn’t really speak to my heart.  My sweet, sweet wife, all her friends, my daughter, and most of the women I know are enamored with the sparkling undead.  I prefer my vampires to erupt into flames when exposed to sunlight, but I am old-school like that.

We packed the new truck, Tater, with tents, bags, rain tarps, food, cast iron, ukeleles, wood, sleeping pads, water, more tarps and headed west like 21st century hillbillies.  Our first night was spent near a WWII concrete anti-ship fort – we had to explore the depths and gvn emplacements twice in 24 hours…  Before heading to Squim, we stopped in downtown Port Townsend and explored the wooden boat center and some of the shops.   Another bribe.  Wooden boats and I have an unrequited love affair.  I can’t have one because I already have a wife and a full-time job, but that doesn’t preclude me from lusting over teak decks, tight joinery, and the naughty brass bits…

The rain came our second night of camping and never really left.  There were dry hours where we cooked and played dueling ukuleles, but for the most part the next 4 nights were an exercise in trying to keep from getting soggy.  Brodie was along for his first Talley Family camp-a-thon and was not amused.  All he wanted to do was sit with his mommy and crawl under the dry blankets in the tent.  That whole thing in the books about Forks being the rainest place in the lower 48 rings true for me.  We were there in the summer and never dried out, I can only imagine what it is like in the depth of a long grey winter.

Quileute Days was a side stop on our way to the Pacific coast and LaPush.  The Ruminator just HAD to swim in the ocean and no amount of persuasion about it being cold, really cold, would change his adolescent, made up mind.  After running into the surf and getting slapped in the chest by the first arctic-cold wave, his eyes got huge and he came up gasping for air.  He stayed in until his lips turned almost blue and we had to drag him out.  I have a sneaking suspicion that his next trip to the coast will involve a wetsuit.

Forks is a former logging town that is full of nice people who still seem a little bewildered by all the attention.  Two shops really stand out in my memory (aside from the Twilight one): a tackle shop that had the same organizational system as my grandfather’s garage: “I know it is here somewhere….”  mounted fish on the wall, a stuffed mountain lion, and a dog sleeping in her spot by the door.   The other shop was an eclectic mix of junk shop, antique store, book store, coffee shop and sandwich counter where we had lunch.   If you go to Forks – dragged by your significant other as well – you cant miss the latter; it is on the same side of the street of the now closed Twilight store and just to the north.

This summer taught us a few things:

  1. Full-on luxury glamping is awesome when you arrive, unload and stay in place, but sucks when you move every night.
  2. Zombie Gunship played on an iPad in the backseat makes the miles fly by and nary a “Are we there yet?” is uttered.
  3. Brodie hates camping, the woods, rain, campfires, and the ukelele.  Hates.
  4. Stamps-With-Foot makes a mean gumbo!
  5. The idea of spending time in the “Wettest place in the lower 48” sounds MUCH better than it is.
  6. I am more awesomer at checkers than my son
  7. Lavender ice cream is amazingly yummy
  8. Flailing about with bullwhip kelp is a fine way to get into trouble
  9. Bacon fried in a iron skillet over a campfire is another proof the God loves us and wants us to be happy.
  10. Future summer outings will be less Cormac McCarthy’ The Road (soggy,cold,dirty) and more Endless Summer or Smokey and the Bandit.

Hot tub installation and emergency preparedness

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I bought my sweet wife a hot tub for our wedding anniversary. We had been looking for a while for just the right used tub, but most that were out there on Craigslist and the Inter-Webs were utter crap or cost almost as much as a new one. We found a machinist who wanted to sell his immaculately maintained soaker so he could put in a lux outdoor kitchen. It is an older tub, but he had all the maintenance records on it, the interior looked brand new, it worked great, and we paid about what it would have taken for him to have it hauled to the dump. I hired three giant Pacific islanders to deliver it – money well spent – then dug the trench for the electric and ran the wiring almost right away. I then made five trips to Home Depot and bought 2,450 pounds of gravel and sand to make a base – my back ached for a week from carring and packing it all into a solid foundation.  The the hot-tub movers were absent on installation day, so I used my big monkey-brain and with the help of my nephew, I moved the tub into place with rollers, planks, a lever, and wedges.   It is within 1/2 inch of where I planned it on paper and is almost dead level – 1/8″ up on the west side.

Due to my homeowner’s insurance restrictions, I was not allowed to wire into my main panel – it voids my fire coverage (yours probably says the same thing…), so I hired three successive electricians to tie it all in (one showed up high, the second was a complete no show, the third finally doing the needed work). While the third and final electrician was there and since I was paying for his time, I had him install a generator transfer switch, an exterior generator plug and a grounded exterior outlet.   I reasoned that when the power goes out, I can crank the generator and we will still have the fridge, lights, TV/DVD, and heat as long as we have gas.

Stamps-With-Foot LOVES the tub. Given to her own devices, she will sit in it all day like a Japanese snow monkey. It was great when the snow storm hit us this year in January.   We sat in the tub with snow piled all around, reflecting the city lights off its white surface.   I will build a deck over our existing concrete pad, from the house to the tub this spring, which will make her doubly happy.

November 2013 Update:

The tub ran like the German rail system for over 2.75 years. The water was always perfect, the heater and pump worked just like they were supposed to. I had a plastic fitting crack while switching filters that cost me $250 to have replaced, but that was it for maintenance. We ran the tub year around, turning the heat off in the summer for a nice cool soak on hot nights/afternoons. In the preparation for the move to France, I winterized it by shocking the water with chemical treatment, then I drained it completely. I vacuumed out all the lines as best I could – any water left should grow mold due to the shock treatment. I built a 2X4 platform and put the cover on it so that any accumulated snow or rain wouldn’t cause a cave in, before shrink-wrapping and tarping the whole thing to keep out any and all errant moisture. The cover has had it, and we will get a new one when we return to Seattle in a couple of years. My hope is that the tub springs back to working order and we have more trouble-free years together.

Zombie Eradication and Snowboarding

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My son, The Ruminator, spent his first Christmas in Seattle with us this year.  I had the fine fortune of being off work, so we got to hang out, read, watch movies, shoot zombies, build some stuff, eat cereal while watching cartoons, play the ukelele, snowboard, and just hang out.

This past summer, we went on a cabin-in-the-woods road trip and there was some mad campfire Ukulele and guitar playing and harmonizing.  The Ruminator was enthralled and I taught him a couple of songs so he could join in.  He asked Santa for his own and we made that happen – you know, Hendrix’s first instrument was a Uke that is dad found in an apartment he was cleaning out… We spent almost every afternoon working on strumming and learning a few more simple songs.  My hope is that he becomes the next Clapton and grows rich enough to spoil his dad in fine style in my old age.  No really, I would be happy as I could be if he and I could just strum a little together, sing a song or two and pass the Uke back and forth on camping and hiking trips.

The other thing that he REALLY, REALLY wanted for Christmas was to go snowboarding.  I find that my son often likes the idea of stuff more than actually doing it, but as he was adamant, so I booked us a shuttle ride to Crystal Mountain and him a days worth of lessons in snow school.  NEVER teach someone you love or care about how to ski or snowboard.  I have seen more relationships disintegrate on the bunny hill than I can count.  I have seen kids take their helmets and even skis off and throw them at their parent.  When an 8-year old in a florescent snow suit is cussing and swearing vile oaths, you know they mean it!  Trust me, snow school is worth EVERY penny, as it will save you a lot of heartache and make sure your ride home from the mountain will not be an “I-hate-you-fest.”

Conditions that day couldn’t have been better: a 5′ base layer with 12″ of new powder on the ground and blue skies.  I hadn’t been on my board in a couple years (OK, 5 years…) due to surgery, multiple international moves, and most of all – laziness…   I was chomping at the bit to dive into the powder.  After dropping the fruit of my loins off with the other Gortex-clad young-in’s, I spent the morning doing exactly that, though not quite like I planned.  After taking the lift up to mid-mountain, I hopped on a blue run as a warm up and spent the next 10 minutes of my life imitating a snowplow with my forehead and performing some serious feats of accidental aerial acrobatics.  Holy crap, I suck!!  The next run was better, and the next after that and so on, but by lunch, when I went to retrieve my progeny, I was still not a pimple on the backside of Shawn White.

The Ruminator and I rode together after lunch and it was probably the highlight of my week, maybe my year: to be there with my son on his first snow day…  I teared up on our last run together as he stood up and linked his very first turn.  He loved our trip and snowboarding and being with him made my heart happy.

Big Game huntin’ in the back yard

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I can say with certainty that there are some unique benefits when you are my child:  They are allowed to watch cartoons at any point during the day, expletives are allowed as long as they are in another language (points given for Chinese curse words), cookies (in moderation) and cold milk are a food group of their own, no brussels sprouts will EVER appear on their plate, I have the tools and childlike imagination to build most anything that can be dreamt up, big game and zombie hunting are allowed in the back yard, sword fights with foam batons are good clean fun, mohawks and blue hair are just fine, and I will trick out a BMX bike like a hustler will pimp out a Caddy.  Apparently, I am an overgrown man-child with credit…  I am constantly amazed that my sweet wife both puts up with my antics and is contemplating procreating with me .

My son knows all the benefits of “Dad’s house” and this summer we worked on a wooden boomerang, build stuff in the shop, and sniped at dinosaurs with a pellet rifle perched atop his Wimbledon Cup-worthy bench rest that I built for him last year.  He is a dino-slaying machine!

Sometimes I am too damn handy.

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

I have, for years, prided myself on my ability to make or fix just about anything found in our home or yard. Instead of having to hire a repairman or contractor, I have just done it all myself. That sounds smug, but I don’t mean for it to be – bear with me and you’ll see where this is going…

In the years since I met my wife, I have made: squirrel feeders, two loft beds, cutting tables (sewing), bird houses, 5 cutting boards, bookshelves, 2 hutches, kitchen cabinets, a hall tree, reupholstered chairs, refinished countless pieces of furniture, designed/built drawer organizers, patched walls, made a bat house (?!), hung drywall, sewn dresses, painted countless rooms (one with 5 coats of paint…), unclogged toilets & sinks, said some dirty words, welded a bumper, made a working boomerang for my son, etched glass, rescued old furniture from the burn pile, repaired a ukulele & 2 guitars, built window box planters, installed crown molding and fancy trim, bound books, constructed pellet gun targets, fixed printers/plotters, organized crap, made many of my own hand tools, hung doors, planted a garden, cleaned gutters, reseeded lawns, planted a mini-orchard, baked bread, made 2 yards Ireland-green, hung light fixtures, split firewood, soldered pipes, installed irrigation systems, pulled dents from two fenders, cut down trees, built 2 decks, sharpened countless kitchen knives, BBQed like a spatula wielding God, crafted raised garden boxes, installed 4 wireless home networks, baked turkeys, epoxied stuff back together, framed pictures, made pies, rewired lights & switches, changed automotive oil, installed shocks, brewed beer, hung about a 1000 pictures, replaced an intake manifold gasket, rewired the TV and remote, built-up 8 bikes, re-glazed windows, built PCs, replaced/rekeyed locks, and have been the entire family’s Computer Help Desk – on call 24hrs a day...

While this has saved me a few bucks here and there, it has had a couple of unwanted effects as well. 1: While I CAN fix this stuff, I don’t have the time to work, write, see the kids, snuggle my wife, and walk the dog and still take care of all the crap on my list of stuff to fix or build. 2: My wife knows I can do it all and so she is forever finding new tasks for me AND she breaks shit constantly. Now, the first thing is just one of those parts of married life that one has to just accept. It is like the 9th unwritten wedding vow: Do you, __________, promise to trap mice, carry grocery bags, repair the little things on the coming honey-do list, and put the toilet seat down, so long as you both shall live?

The second issue is more an unconscious development than a malicious attack on our household goods. Some examples:

  1. A cutting board gets left in a sink of water overnight and warps/splits. “It’s OK, you can fix it right?” She says when I find it in the morning and make the grumpy face…
  2. Kid who worked at the grocery store puts HUGE dent in car door with a train of shopping carts. No report is made. “Can you smooth that out?”
  3. First day in our home in Seattle… Me: Don’t use your hair dryer upstairs, the old wiring can’t handle it. Her: OK. After two tripped breakers when she plugged it in anyway the next morning, I found myself at the bottom of the stairs, crumpled in a ball, with a dislocated shoulder after I fell down said stairs trying to turn the breaker back on.
  4. Me: “Where is my bike lock cable?” Her: “Oh, that… I used it the other day and it fell off my bike somewhere and I didn’t notice.”

It is my fault, I have trained her to be this way – it is a learned behavior. If we had to pay cold hard cash for all the little/huge messes/dents/dings/cracks that seem to follow Stamps-With-Foot she would be more careful. I love my wife. She is amazing in so many ways – in most ways, but I swear the very next thing time I have to fix around the house (caused by her own personal tornado), my lovely/girly/sweet wife is going to get covered in sawdust, mud, paint, goo, putty, primer, glue, stain, and gunk – just because.

What I Want Thursday

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

This is blatant plagiarism. I slipped into the Wikipedia hole for like three hours this weekend and came out on a girl’s blog that was really sad: hurt, suicide, illness… but I did find a bright spot, one might argue the only one: She had a number of “What I want Thursday” posts. They were funny and sweet and made me think a couple of times – so I am stealing the idea. Is it plagiarism if I admit the theft? Probally.

So, to follow is my inaugural go:

  1. Better Penmanship – My handwritting is terrible , like a seventy-five year old doctor with the shakes writing a prescription terrible.
  2. A fine prosperous garden – As much for my ego as for our table and pocket book
  3. Custom letter-press stationary – Everyone should have their own!
  4. A clean, tidy and simple home – La Maison du Talley is currently flooded with the clutter of half done projects, piles in the basemet destined for Goodwill, and like 20 banana boxes of crap we are storing for other people.
  5. To finally finish the book I am writing about living in Hamburg
  6. A clean shop – Projects, sawdust, bike parts, and garden tools strewn about in a rushed haphazard manner.
  7. For my neighbor’s pine tree to die – I have cleaned my gutters three times in 2011 and they are full AGAIN. I have serious hate for that tree.
  8. Peace in the Middle East – I am throwing that on in because I, like the rest of humanity, really DO want it and because I am feeling like the rest of the list is all about me and flirts with self-absorbed douchebaggery.

Spring in Belfast, Northern Ireland

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One of the reasons my J-O-B pays me the medium bucks is because I will travel anywhere in the world with little to zero notice.  I again proved that last week when, with two hours notice, I hopped on a plane from Seattle to Northern Ireland two days before the Memorial Day weekend.  Stamps-With-Foot was none too happy.  I bought her shiny objects while there to quell the violence in her heart.  Man, she really likes shinny stuff because I haven’t heard one more cross word from her about my trip and I am starting to wonder if she relishes when I travel so that she can display annoyance and mock anger to receive sparkly bobbles and guilt-heavy jewelry.

Some rough initial, unedited opinions of Belfast:

  1. Strong northern winds blowing when I arrived brought in the smell of cattle and pastures – the sweet decay of manure and decomposing grass.
  2. Road right-of-way here is on the left side of the road.  This makes me a hazard to curbs, rental cars and living beings.  I also noticed after repeatedly walking against the flow of foot traffic on the street that people here walk on the left of sidewalk and escalators are left-flow as well.  It’s the little things one notices.
  3. There exists a weird pocket version of adolescence rebellion Northern Ireland: lily-white 12-18 year old boys who are overly groomed, cell phone to ear with hip-hop blaring, trying to look tough – Impossible when one is wearing his collar popped and has his feet shod in white leather slip-ons.
  4. I went on a hop-on hop-off city tour that included drives down the Falls Road and Shankill Road areas of town were 40’ high barriers, blast walls, bullet scarred bricks, and where victims’ and martyrs’ murals take up the entire sides of buildings and.  There is not an inch of street in those neighborhoods that doesn’t hold some palpable sad memory for some.  It was spooky and sad and made me say a prayer of thanks for my lower-middle class childhood.  Growing up in Belfast during The Troubles, in a constant state of fear and vengeance would have probably led me to a very angry and short life.
  5. This land is a sea of red hair. Most of it real, some from a bottle, one 20-something lass walked into view with natural ginger roots and pink/red tips. An Asian teen and a black girl with red dos also strolled by my people-watching perch – Were they red-headed just to blend…?
  6. I happened to stop in at a mass at St. Mary’s (walked out of Kelly’s Bar and there was a church, what do you do?) and police had to be called because of drunk/high/ crazy lady (maybe she was all three) interrupted mass and tried to take over the microphone at the pulpit.  – High drama.
  7. Traveling without my wife is lonely and sucky.  The sharing of things and people seen, food eaten, and the smell of the flower and grocery markets is a thing not to be trivialized.
  8. Every third word I here is “fock” or “focking.”  Spoken with gusto by men, women, teens and kids (one lad with spiky hair, maybe ten, at an international food market said today: “Ah fock this ma, I wanta go home”). It seems that the Northern Irish have such a great affinity for this word and use it as much as possible in an apparent attempt to claim it as their own.
  9. I went to Madden’s Bar to drink a pint and listen to the advertised Irish trad music. Walked in for the last 30 minutes of the Champions League final between FC Barcelona and Manchester United. As I sat down, Barcelona scored (final was 3-1 Barcelona) and the crowd cheered.  Apparently, I was in a Nationalist/Republican Pub…  I kept my United love to my focking self and drank my focking Guinness as focking quietly as focking possible. Music was great though.
  10. For some reason biking in Belfast is not wide spread. It can’t be due to a northern Irish aversion to 2 wheels:  I arrived on a Thursday afternoon and the roadways between villages were packed with road bikers all kitted up in multi-colored spandex.  Really, hundreds of them, but in the city it seems like almost no one rides.  I went out walking on a mostly sunny afternoon in the central part of downtown and saw maybe 15 people riding all day.  There was only one fixed speed wonder and only 1 guy on a trials bike (Danny MacAskill fan I would bet) out hopping on to park benches, walls, and planters.  It is not the weather – London and Hamburg are full of bikes. The Belfast streets are broad and flat.  It must be something left over from The Troubles, I don’t know and didn’t get a chance to ask.
  11. As discovered when Stamps-With-Foot and I were in Dublin – Guinness is better in Ireland!

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Fresh cut grass makes me tingle in the lower abdominal region…

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After 100+ days of rain, spring is finally here.  I only really know that because my lapin cherry tree and the ornamentals on the block are in full blossom.  Hopefully, all the hard work done in the rain and mud till now is about to start paying off.

Prep has been the theme for the past few months.  I spent some quality time killing yard moss, reseeding in the front and back yards, adding weed and feed, conducting property-wide dandelion genocide, planting 70+ bulbs, and getting the soil in the garden bed ready for the tomatoes, carrots, onions and garlic.  In addition to finishing the raised beds and converting the cat litter-filled pond into a flower planter for my wife, I have cut all the trash trees, vines, and blackberries from my south fence.  My neighbor on that side keeps his home and yard in the Miss Havisham fashion.  I have taken three loads of branches/leaves/vines to the dump and I can now see from one end of our property to the other.  So far this year his pine tree has delivered three 5-gallon buckets worth of pinecones in my front yard and I have had to clean my gutters three times.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the particular pine tree in question is not long for this world…  There is a holly tree of some relation that is not looking all that well either...

I finally got a great espalier apple tree in the ground, two columnar apples to flank it, and an additional cherry (a glacier) up front.  There is now a fig for Laurel, a dwarf Helena apricot from Dave&Sarah, a Satsuma, and an Improved Meyer lemon – all in containers so we can hot-house them this winter.  For the side yard, there are two huckleberries in bloom – ready to plant.  The last rose bush (a J&P Radiant Perfume) has been planted on the back fence and irrigation lines have been run to the roses, garden boxes, raspberries, and fruit trees.

The Apricot and citrus trees will stay in containers so that I can

move them into a hot-house when the temperature drop in the fall.

The multiple weird cold snaps this year have been decidedly unhealthy for my strawberry pots, but the kitchen herbs planted last spring are doing well.  The orange-mint has taken over a rectangular container and the rosemary is starting to bloom tiny baby-blue flowers.  The two sunshine blueberries in pots are covered in small white blossoms and the grass in front and back is thick, healthy, and Ireland green – I can’t wait to string up the hammock and snooze gently swinging above my lawn.  Although I still have dandelion farms on either side there have been very few that have dared to peak up in the grand lawn of Le Maison Du Talley this year.  Their appearance has been followed with swift and forceful retribution.  Speaking of the weed farms adjacent to me: It seems that someone sprayed them in the middle of the night with Scott’s liquid death.  Now all the yellow-orange flowers that they were cultivating seem to be shriveling up. I think it was the gnomes. -I have a couple of English garden gnomes that are leftist lawn militants.  The local dogs give our place a wide berth – narry a singe poop on the parking strip this year and there is a racoon living over at Miss Havisham’s and they are preparing to hunt safari-style…

The second of three loads of branches taken to the dump in the last month.  My neighbor loves me so much that he shares his trees and yard waste with me…

Evil on the inside

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My dear friend Rosy is currently feeling the sting of retribution.  It is his own fault and really more the result karma then anything I might have done.  I HATE snakes and he thought it would be giggly funny to send me an e-mail with an embedded surprise snake video – it may have made me fling my iPhone and pee myself…  Unhappy does not cover my reaction.  Even before his giggling subsided, I began “Project Retaliation.”

Rosy has a beautiful and loving wife, supportive parents, friendly neighbors, and ultra religious in-laws.  I decided to deliver payback through these good people.  The thing about my core group of friends – The Arthritic, Big Belly,  Hillbilly Climbing Assn., is that we are occasionally mean to each other…  There have been forced birthday paddlings, blow-up sheep in restaurants, public ridicule, chain-mails, doctored pictures, co-conspirators, and certain gross misdemeanors committed in the name of good fun, love, and friendly vengeance.  This is shaping up to be one of the latter occurrences.

First, I went online and signed him up on the  Liberation Party website as wanting information and I gave them $10 in his name.  I used his wife’s email address for further contact – she has strong Republican sympathies and the rest of her family are Super-Tea Partiers.  Apparently, Rosy also gave the Tea-Party $10 and clicked every “send me updates and info” button that he could while making that donation…  My friend is now an official Lady GaGa Fan Club member and his picture and details are on one of the Justin Bieber freak/fan sites – they will be sending him periodic (hopefully daily) updates for all things Bieber.  I requested some dirty, dirty, adult toy catalogs for him and sent them to his parent’s address.  Then, a 1-year subscription to OUT! magazines was sent to Rosy via Amazon, but I used his conservative next door neighbor’s address.  Rosy will get a Bear of the Month-mail from now until the end of time and there were also literature requests for everything from hair-loss treatment to laser back hair removal to penile enlargement device specifications.  It really is the small things in life that make us happy.

A couple weeks later I got the text message below from his mom:

One might be tempted to think that I over reacted.  One would be wrong.  Rosy once contemplated releasing a live adult bison into my apartment because I teased him about his mom being hot and me having prior physical relations with her (I didn’t) – he actually looked at the logistics of getting the thing trailered in, really.  Rosy doesn’t have a stop or pause button – you have to decimate him to make it stop.  He fired the first shot in this little war and I had to retaliate with immediate and decisive force or there would have been more snake videos and pictures.  He will attempt some sort of well thought out retribution and I will then have to use the nuclear option: his turbo-religious in-laws.  Stay tuned…

Abu Dhabi is not exacty a vacation destination.

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I spent almost 5 days in Abu Dhabi and I wouldn’t exactly call it a vacation destination…  Did I mention that is is 22 hours of flight time?  It is a very expensive city ($100 dinner for one) that is full of heat, sand, and construction.  No old souks, lots of strip malls, Rolex watches on wrists as far as the eye can see, construction workers wearing flip-flops while wielding in the high steel…  I find that the place has very little soul compared to places like Morocco, Egypt, and Lebanon.   My magazines were censored with a black marker (really, really!) and I found that even some Wikipedia entries were censored.  Not a huge fan.

On a positive note, I will say that the architecture in the UAE is fantastic.  Serious aesthetic lessons could be learned by western students taking a semester to look at the body of work there – Office and apartment buildings with color, striking lines, curving details.  Really beautiful buildings!

So, I got there and the sun was pouring down and it was 90 degrees out.  I had no sunscreen and I stopped by the hotel store to pick up a bottle.  The small Asian clerk had her back to me when I asked and she started telling me that they had 5,7,10, 15 SPF and turns to look at me.  She gave me the once over and reached all the way left and grabs the 50SPF for babies and says, “you chubby and very white.  You burn easy.  Better you have this one.”  Son of a…  I know I am pale, but did she have to throw chubby in there?!?  I find that middle aged ladies of the Asian persuasion are brutally honest.  The next night I am eating Thai food and my waitress asks if I want some sort of pudding for desert and as I am saying ‘no thank you’, she smiles and says, “Better you don’t have it anyway.”  I guess I gave her a puzzled look and the shoots back with, “You have desert a lot, missing this one will be good for you.”  I am 5’8″ tall and weigh 173 pounds!!  I wear a size 43/44 coat and 32 pants.  It is not like they rolled me into the place on a cart.  I do have 10 pounds of cookie weigh from the holidays that I still cannot shake – 10 pounds!!  Man, run away from any tiny Thai/Viet/Chinese/etc… women in Abu Dhabi if your ego is teetering on fragile. 

Going to Abu Dhabi next week… At least it is not summer there yet

/ Matt Talley

Abu Dhabi ( أبو ظبي‎ ), literally Father of gazelle, is the capital and the second largest city in the United Arab Emirates.  My J-O-B is sending me there to look at some fiber optic issues on a commercial passenger jet.   I will be armed with a digital microscope, a satchel full of wire drawings, and bright shinny new passport as my old one was both full to the brim with stamps, visas, work permits and set to expire in less than 6 months.  I will have some time to kill waiting for access to the aircraft and for my flight out, so I am going shopping for nick-nacks to outfit our Moroccan-themed living room.  Maybe a small metal lantern or three and some brass.  Abu Dhabi is a shopping mecca, not the dusty souk kind, more like the 19 shopping malls in a five block radius kind of shopping…   But there are a couple of blocks where one can paruse store shelves filled with dusty stuff and not have to carry a sack of cash.

I cannot say that I am the happiest of campers to be traveling tho the Middle East while there are revolutions and air strikes afoot though…

Nerdy is the new black… Fountain pen love.

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A local fellow blogger just published a post about fountain pens that I wish I would have beat her to! Now I have to stand in her shadow and try to come up with a witty observation or two . Damn…

I started using or trying to use a fountain pen back in college after hearing the writer and historian Shelby Foote discuss writing all his manuscripts out longhand with a dip pen. As a history major, that sounded like something amazing to do and I took a cligraphy class and wrote letters at the dawn of the e-mail age with a leaky black bakelite stylo. Though, like many things started in college, it fell to the way side as the rest of life swirled around me – picking up my lone surviving calligraphy pen every now and then to address Christmas cards or to add flair to a note or sign. I didn’t become a complete fountain pen convert until we lived in Germany for a couple of years: ALL the “smart” engineers had a nice pen to initial drawings and sign docs with (being engineers, there was the ubiquitous mechanical pencil as well). I wanted to be Euro/Old-World cool!!

I jumped right in and bought a couple of cheap cartridge pens and worked out which nib size and ink color was best for me. I now have a quiver of Lamy Safari pens with different nibs (from EB to EF) and a weighty stainless Lamy that my bride gave me for Valentine’s day one year. I use it for signing legal docs and for writing her love notes.

After trying Montblanc and Parker inks, my pens are now loaded with Noodler’s Ottoman Azure, Bulletproof Black, and #41 Brown. I have some blue Lamy refills – just in case, but the only time I have used them has been on travel when I ran out of the good stuff. Note: I find that Montblancs seem to find their way into the hands of the pretentious…

I have converted my wife as well. Any ‘Thank You’ cards or notes she sends out are written with either her glass pen or a compact Scheaffer. Though far from a luddite, I hope that more and more people switch back to fountain pens as the amount of auctual writing we do every has dwindled, I feel it is important to add weight to the words we choose to scribble instead of type.

For like-minded brethren go HERE

And for Shelby Foote/Civil War highlight reel:

 

The First Ride of Spring – Rekindling My Bike Romance

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Let’s say that I have been neglecting my bikes this year.  If my road bike were a truly a woman, she would have already maxed all the credit cards and run away with that suave, skinny, tanned bike mechanic that so lovingly tuned her last summer.  With the return of Daylight Savings time, it is time to rekindle the romance with my many two-wheeled mistresses.

My oldest friend, Herbert, was in Seattle celebrating the rain/spring break/grey skies for a week and we decided to go for a long bike ride while he was visiting.   We cruised down to the ferry dock near Lincoln Park and took a couple bikes over to Vashion Island for a circumnavigation tour of that dot of terra firma.  I rode my commuter bike and Herbert rode my 1979 disco-orange Volkscycle.  The night before we installed some retro fenders on the orange beauty (Arron’s Bike is the SHIT! – incredible customer service!), thinking we might get wet, but karma intervened and we had blue skies and warm sunshine for the whole trip.

After climbing a nasty hill leading from the ferry dock, we rode south along the less populated western side.  Vashion is dotted with small farms, quite roads, tall trees, and beach front cabins.  The abject poverty of some of the homes we passed was quite sad:  3000+ sq. soot cabin with 3-4 acres of green pasture behind, a dock extending out into the Sound with a handsome 30+ foot sail bot moored there, panted barn, new tractor, happy cows…  so sad…  😉

We stopped for lunch and beer at the Quartermaster Inn – yummy red pepper soup – and made it to Vashion Island Coffee Roasters just before they closed.  Coffee…  I bought a bag of my favorite Ecuadorian roast, and enjoyed a fine cup of joe, sitting on the bench outside watching the world go by.   Getting back on the bikes was difficult…  after a wet winter of cheating on my two wheel mistress with beer and snacks, my insensitivity to her was repaid by the butt-numbing pain inflected by my bike seat.  Holy crap!  Herbert was in worse shape as the plastic 1970’s plush saddle h was astride turned into a crotch mounted torture devise after 25 miles or so.

All together, we rode 46 miles, drank some good beer, ate yummy food, ingested way too much coffee, laughed about stupid things done as children, lovingly remembered friends that have passed, and made some memories.

Post Script:

We had planned to paddle a kayak over to Blake island the next day, but our butts decided that wasn’t going to happen.  Instead, we hobbled around for a couple of days like two old guys in search of a hemorrhoid pillow…