For Father’s Day this year, Mason surprised me with a Powerpoint presentation that he made all by himself. Apparently he sat at our home computer and hand-crafted this masterpiece with skills he learned in his second grade computer lab. It was very cool on so many levels. I like that not all the time he spends in front of the computer is spent learning how to find Bakugan online. I also like that he’s clearly got an interest in marketing if he willfully made a Powerpoint deck on his own time. Another lesson learned…If I ever hear anyone say that they don’t know how to use Powerpoint, I now have living proof that even a second grader can do it.

Enjoy the presentation below. He also animated many of the screens which would only show in the Powerpoint file.

In November 2009 we bought a 2006 Forest River Shamrock 21RS from Camping World. Although it is only June 9th, we’ve been pretending it’s Summer since mid April by using our new-to-us camper. So far this year, we’ve been to Fair Haven State Park,  Cedar Point State Park, and a quick little weekender to Webster Park Family Campground. Up to this point, we are having fun and still learning how to do this nutty sport. It’s nutty for the fact that you pay a lot of money to buy a rolling hotel room, where after you use it you have to make the bed and…get this…empty the toilet.  You have no choice once you buy an RV to become an “enthusiast” - meaning you really have to get into the details of how to set up your truck, and “mod” your camper so that it is comfortable, safe, and easy to operate.

It is so worth it though. Our kids absolutely LOVE going camping. They get to hang out with their friends and enjoy freedom that they don’t have any place else. While they are off wearing themselves out at the playground, or riding circles around the campground on their bikes, the adults get to sit down and talk, drink, nap…whatever. I guess you could say that we get to enjoy freedoms that we don’t have any place else too. Plus when all that sweet alone time is over, you get the joy of going to some really enjoyable places as a family, hanging out at the campfire and “blowing the stink off” as we like to say. I’m really looking forward to more campering in 2010.

The day we bought our Shamrock 21RS from Camping World

All setup at Cedar Point State Park. We tow our camper with a 2001 Dodge Durango

Enjoying a zen moment with Tricia and Anna

The first weekend of September after Labor Day is a perfect time to make ketchup. That’s when my grandpa used to make it too. The tomatoes are ripe and the Farmer’s Markets have them cheap. So, it was the last time I made this recipe back in 1998, the year I got married. Tricia and I went to Dunkirk, NY to help grandpa make his ketchup, and to get those ‘damn pears’ off the tree in the backyard. I took copious notes that day on how to make ketchup Lefty’s Way. It’s a good thing I did because his short-hand recipe didn’t capture all of the details.

Grandpa passed away last year, 10 years after I made my last batch with him. I rescued his ketchup-making equipment from his basement then, and it sat idle until last weekend. The following is a video of our first ketchup odyssey on our own. Enjoy…

I look forward to every season in Rochester. As we entered the summer - a season that we cherish because it is so short around here, we set 2 simple goals for Mason and Anna.

1. Tie your shoes by yourself
2. Learn to ride your bike

As June turned to July (the coldest on record), we were still waiting for some kind of progress on both fronts. Tying shoes was always put off for something easier, like wearing Crocs or going barefoot. When they had to wear sneakers it was straight to the velcro. As for biking, it was like feeding the children ipecac syrup. One teaspoon of bike ride suggestion induced 20 minutes of whiny, complaint-barf.

As we turned the corner into August something happened. It was as if the kids realized their time to be little kids was getting shorter and shorter. Some kind of magic desire welled up inside of them to accomplish their goals. One day, Tricia simply told the children to sit down and tie their shoes. It wasn’t like we hadn’t shown them how to do it many times before. This time was different. Mason nailed the knot on the second try. Not to be outdone, Anna furrowed her brow and set out to tie both of her shoes. Within 5 minutes she had done just that!

Excited, they both untied and tied their shoes 3 more times that morning. With a little coaxing and the promise of a Seabreeze trip if they accomplished their other summer goal, they went directly outside and patiently tried biking with me for the first time. This time it was Anna who took the lead. 20 months younger and gifted with a natural sense of balance, Anna let me run behind her…and run…and run until I was able to let go.

Look mom, I’m riding!

Mason just wasn’t going to have his sister doing better than him. So, with a little extra motivation, Mason got his first assisted start that night too!

Mason on his own for the first time!

They say that you never forget how to ride a bike. Well, Mason wanted to make sure of it. The very next night as I setup to assist Anna with her starting, I turned around to see Mason riding down the street on his own.

To the Persistent Come the Rewards
Tricia and I were absolutely thrilled to see the kids accomplish what they had set out to do for the summer. Coming in just under the wire, we took them to Seabreeze for the last Friday of summer. It was a BEAUTIFUL, sunny and warm September day. For the first time, Mason was above the 48″ height limit necessary to ride the adult rides.

With his newfound biking confidence, Mason attacked rides that he cried bloody murder over just a year ago. I took him on the Bear Trax (kiddie coaster) to which he scoffed that it was too easy.

Mason had a blast. He insisted on sitting in the front by himself

In fact, 3 years ago they were so scared on the kiddie coaster that they vowed they would never ride it again.

Mason and Anna ride Bear Trax in 2006. Anna still won’t go on it

So, I proceeded to take him on the Log Flume and then to the vaunted Jack Rabbit. He was a bit scared on that, but didn’t quit and cry like he once would have…

So now, here we are. It’s the end of summer, and the kids are going back to school. Time for some new goals and new learning. They are growing up in the blink of an eye. 2nd and 1st grade wow!

I have had to take a few steps back to take many steps forward. With all of the new ways to share and consume family memories on Facebook, YouTube, my blog, digital picture frames, etc., there was a whole era of family memories from prior to these tools that that weren’t easily accessible. I have taken some time over the last month and a half to begin to digitize our analog life to make our digital life more fun in the long term.

Family Videos from Mini-DV to DVD
I bought our first video camera in 2001, right before Mason was born. Since then we have captured 25 tapes worth of firsts including the birth and first few years of his sister, Anna. While Mini-DV at the time was the only way to do any digital editing whatsoever, I found that a combination of slow computers and way too much footage just kept me from editing the tapes. We never watched any of the content, because it involved getting out the camera, rewinding the tapes, then doing the old fast forward fun just to get to a little content to show the kids. What was supposedly “Digital” was no easier to use than hooking up a reel to reel film from 40 years ago to project on the wall.

Getting all of the Mini-DV tapes into something digital took a TON of consideration. I briefly checked into having someone do it for me. Wow, was that expensive! The Do-It-Yourselfer in me just couldn’t swallow the thousands it would take to accomplish what I knew I already have the equipment to do, given enough time. I set out to digitize all of the tapes using Firewire into my PC or my ancient Mac. When I plugged in the Firewire cable like I had done many times before, nothing was found. What a disadvantage! Now I would have to find another way. Luckily I had a TV card in my Gateway Media Center PC that also has video input. The only problem is that Windows Movie Maker didn’t recognize the capture card. So, I found a program that would - Roxio Creator 2009.

I went a tape at a time, typically overnight, playing it all the way through to capture the content into the PC. If the computer or Roxio didn’t crash in the process I would have a .mpg file in the morning. In theory, I could have filled up my 1TB external hard drive with all of these files to access any time in the future, or to do all of my editing at once. I have been bitten by a failed MyBook before so I decided to go directly to DVD’s with the content as I went. After a restart, I could open Roxio MyDVD, and import the .mpg of the tape. Next, I would use the Edit Chapters feature to automatically find breaks in the content to set as chapter points, a process that played the entire tape through AGAIN!. Barring any crashes, I then could title the chapters and make a few edits to the simple DVD theme I was using. After all of this work, I could then burn a DVD. This process failed a few times giving me beautiful DVD coasters. I learned to burn a disc image to the hard drive first, which could often take over an hour to encode. The last step would be to burn the disc image to a DVD.

From tape to somewhat edited DVD took no less than 3 hours per tape, and sometimes could take 8 hours if I had to redo more than one failed process. If you do the math, this project took me more than a month of every spare moment of computer time that I had. Do I wish I had all of the files still digitally on a hard drive? Only a little. Ultimately you only watch family movies once in a while. It is actually easier to go find a DVD in a cupboard than it is to worry about managing gigantic 7G files on a hard drive. Do I worry about burning DVDs just as Blue Rays are becoming more prominent in the market? Yes, but all the source content is standard definition anyway, and I’m sure something will be around to play DVD’s for years to come. Now that I’m caught up, I’m hoping we’ll invest in a direct to digital video camera of some kind in the very near future.

Onward to Photos
After all that video work, you’d think I’d be tired of all this archiving. Instead it has only increased my desire to have everything digital. I cringe at all of the photo albums in our basement. Even more fun is looking at photos from our parents and grandparents which are all in boxes and albums scattered everywhere. Again this is something that I know we can pay to have taken care of, but the cost and potential danger of losing photos with a vendor is prohibitive. Instead, I have scoured the internet to find an invaluable tool for scanning old family photos. There is a discontinued Epson scanner (the 3590 Photo) that supports the best family photo archiving companion on the planet, an automatic photo feeder.

I went on Craigslist and found the scanner for about $80, then bought the feeder new from Epson for around $150. We have had this for about 2 weeks now and have been tearing through stacks of family photos 20 at a time. You just load up the machine and walk away. Brilliant! I don’t know why this stuff is discontinued, but I highly recommend it. My goal is to load a good amount of my extended family’s photographic history onto my external hard drive backed up to DVD. This little distraction has taken me from my blogging habit for a bit, but the way I see it, I’m just managing another asset in my digital life.

When you hear things more than once in a week, you know that someone (God maybe?) is trying to send a message. First, I listened to Father Jerry Appelby’s compelling homily at his Jubilee Mass celebration this past weekend. The punchline to his sermon was that just showing up is 80% of life, and that if you just keep showing up, somewhere during that time, you will accomplish what you were meant to do.

Then, I was sent this compelling video of Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love as she spoke at the TED conference on the topic of creativity and divine inspiration. In her speech she suggests that you just show up for the job you were meant to do, and that amazing creative power will pass through you when you invite it to show up for its job too. She referenced the bullfight chant “olé” to acknowledge the inspiration’s presence.

It is so true that just showing up for anything, be it your job, your marriage, or anything you are involved in is 80% of the effort. The rest is waiting on that mystical inspiration. So with that, I’ll start today by saying olé!

We finished our build of a Lifetime LTM 60005 plastic shed on April 5. It was the only sunny day squeezed in amongst some really crummy early Spring Rochester days. Thank goodness we started early because it took us all day to complete.

Raising the Walls
We started by laying down the plastic floor onto the very solid base we had already constructed out of stone. Then came the wall raising. Each wall section requires the strength and weight of a full-grown human to get to clip into the floor. When I say strength, I mean herculeanstrength. Every muscle in my upper body (my gluteus ribimus, or whatever) was pulled. This is, in fact reassuring because you don’t want your building separating from the floor in the future.

There were a couple of key things we learned at this stage that weren’t in the directions.

1. When putting up the first few walls, make sure to brace them with a 2×4 or something. We were doing this on a breezy day, and a few gusts came up and blew the house down.
2. You really need access to the outside of the walls to easily get them into the base. Since we had our shed up against the house we couldn’t get at the outside of the back walls. That made it much more challenging.

Tricia uses the force to install one of the sidewalls

Installing the Trusses and Roof
The next step was to install the trusses and roof. This was actually pretty straightforward by reading the directions. This building has a complex roof line, but all of the pieces went together with little trouble. The biggest issue was the carpal tunnel we got from screwing in hundreds of screws.

The trusses and roof installation signal the end is in sight

How Far Away From the House?
Once we got some of the roof on, I had an Aha! moment. I had planned the shed to butt up to the back of the house. I figured I’d save some yard space, and would not allow a haven for any critters to get behind it. When I saw my plan come to life though, I immediately realized the error of my ways. First, having it that close to the house left just enough of a gap to allow a mouse to make a comfy home. My second vision was that of ice and snow falling off the garage roof and piling up on top of the shed. Then it would probably dam up between the shed and the house causing my siding to buckle. Of course this could have been prevented if the directions would have advised against putting the structure too close to your house.

So, we stalled the project a little bit to add an additional 24″ of stone base in front of the shed. Then, we were able to pull it away from the house leaving an alleyway of stone between the house and the shed. This will allow a good amount of space for snow to go and actually give us a place to store some extra junk that will inevitably spill over from the shed.

An extra 2 feet of stone base allowed us to move the shed away from the house

Parking the Tractor
The rest of the shed construction was straightforward by following the directions. The trickiest part of the final stages is to get the doors installed and aligned. You end up using shims to raise and lower 2 corners of the shed to get the doors aligned. The latch that the doors comes with is not the best either. I had to grind off a little of the metal on the latch to get it to work without sticking. After all that, it was finally time for the moment of truth; the inaugural parking of the tractor…

She thinks my tractor’s sexy!

Pulling into the doghouse. Should I put a kegerator in here too?

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore
When my neighbor stopped over to look at our handiwork he decided to burst our bubble with a story. You see, back in the day, his old metal shed was lifted up and tossed across the neighborhood by a wind storm. He said he even had it anchored down, and suggested I do the same. The shed instructions do tell you to anchor the floor down. Think about it, though. If I put some anchors through the plastic floor into the ground, will that do anything more than having an 800 pound tractor sitting on it? In my opinion, nope. What I really needed to figure out was how to get the top of the building anchored to the ground. What I came up with was pretty simple, and I think (fingers crossed) going to do the trick in the heaviest of winds.

I bought ratchet straps at Harbor Freight.

I pulled the plug from 2 of the roof truss channels in the end walls of the shed, and hooked one end of the ratchet strap there. Then, I put a heavy hook into my landscape timber, and ratcheted the sidewalls down.

It makes me feel better to have the shed securely anchored to the ground

I cut the plugs a little bit to accommodate the ratchet strap hook, and then reinstalled them. I really didn’t want a hole in the side of the building.

A couple of cuts in the plastic plug allows the ratchet strap hook to fit underneath it

We are very pleased with the shed’s look and functionality so far. We’ll give it some time before we pass our final judgement.

It’s that time of year again. Just as the snow melts away in Rochester, NY I get the itch to get outside and start some yard-related project. Last year it was skirting my deck. This year I need to build a place for this to live:

Craftsman YS 4500 Yard Tractor, I bought to ‘manicure the grounds’

Knowing that I won’t be able to store it and my 2 cars in the garage, I decided to build a shed. I have been eyeballing the Lifetime LTM 60005 shed at my local BJ’s since last year. I liked that it was a center-entry shed that I could butt up against the back of my garage.

BJ’s carries these in stock right now for $999

Scoping out the Site
I wanted to make sure that this shed was going to suit my needs. It needed to fit my tractor, a snow blower, a push mower, all of their gas cans, as well as all of my yard tools. So, I did a quick scale drawing of my garage and the potential shed in Visio. I measured all of my lawn equipment and did scale representations of them as well. Then I could move around all of the pieces and move potential sheds in relation to my garage without breaking my back, or buying something that would ultimately be too small.

Visio drawing of shed in relationship to my garage (click for expanded view)

I did shop around a bit more just to be sure that this shed was ‘the right one’. Even through the mocking of my friend Andy who called my shed choice the “Tupperware Shed”, I just couldn’t pass it up. It’s sturdy, looks good with my house, and is a heck of a lot cheaper than the wood and shingle structures that professionals build on site. Be prepared if you do buy something like this at your local warehouse club, it weighs a ton! It took 3 grown men to shove the two 8′ boxes into the back of my SUV. And once I got it home it took 3 of us to remove it from the truck and put it in my garage.

Here’s the before photo of where the shed will go

Preparing a Level Surface
There are many ways to create a level surface to build a shed on. You can have a cement pad poured, but this would require me to call professionals or do a ton of back-breaking forming, mixing, and troweling. You can build a wooden platform, like building a deck on the ground. My issue with this approach is complexity, cost, and another potential haven for critters. I decided to choose the easiest DIY operation - stone. I started by going to my local Mr 2nd and buying ‘drainage stone’. It was $3.33 per bag and I needed about 45 bags for an 8′ x 10′ pad that’s about 4″ deep. Well, I poured it all on the ground and leveled it out only to find that the edges kept spilling outward. Yes, you need a barrier to stop the stone from going everywhere.

The solution for me was to buy some 4×4 pressure treated lumber and make a simple frame on the ground to contain the stone. I squared up the timbers, then used 6″ galvanized spikes to tie them together. After I leveled the frame by packing dirt underneath the low spots, I then drove 18″ long by 1/2″ diameter steel rebar through the timbers into the ground to anchor them.

Drill holes for the rebar with 5/8″ spade drill bit

Pound in the rebar with a maul. It goes in quite easily

After providing a good frame for my stone, I then took a 12 ‘ 4×4 with my trusty assistant and screeded the stone until it was level. This is done by laying the long board onto the wooden frame at either end and shifting the board back and forth to move the stone underneath it. After this was complete, I tested the plastic floor on the new platform. Everything felt pretty solid, although there’s a little bit of squish underfoot. I’m going to go buy a few bags of pea gravel to put on top of my coarse drainage stone. When I work in the pea gravel, it should make the surface just a little more solid.

With the site prepared, we will move on to building the shed. We have already spent about 6 hours putting together many of the pieces that will be used in the shed’s construction, like the trusses, gables, door hardware, and skylights. When we do start building the walls and roof, this pre-work should make the actual building go much faster. I’ll be sure to take some pictures and tell you how it goes.

They say that the finishing touches on any DIY project take the longest. Doing the trim on our basement workout room was no different. I started the top trim over the Christmas holiday (I had already done the baseboard) and I finished a full month and a half later. As with everything else in this project, I did wing it a bit. A smart DIY’er should curl up with a good resource on how to install trim, I just dove right in.

Buying and Prepping the Trim
My goal for the trim was to purchase molding that matched the rest of the house without breaking the bank (if possible). It is a basement after all. I also wanted trim that was easy to paint and transport home. This dictated that my maximum length should be 12′ long to fit in my SUV and be pre-primed fiber-wood material for ease of paint coverage. I ended up with the following from Lowes:

• Wood Composite Base 3 1/2″ x 12′ x 1/2″
• EverTrue Primed Wood Composite 442 Casing 2 1/4″ x 10′ x 5/8″

Because of my lack of finished ceiling and unconventional wall approach, I also had all kinds of weird rough edges to come up with solutions for, not the least of which was how to finish the windows. My answer came to me after a lot of meditation. a 1×10 pine board painted in white was the perfect width to cover over the cement block and make a nice finished look for the window. So, I measured the room and windows carefully leaving a little extra for practice pieces, then bought all of my trim. Next, I painted all of it in semi-gloss white paint. It is much easier to get a good base coat on the trim BEFORE it is installed. I like to touch up lafter installing the trim.

Installing the Trim
Using casing for my ceiling molding was WAY easier to install than my crown molding project. There’s no coping necessary. You just use your handy chop saw and cut all sorts of 45 degree angles. The best part is that the casing provides a very finished look to the drywall where it meets my super cheap painted ceiling. You do need to cut various slots and other creative workarounds for pipes and beams.

One of the more tricky areas to figure out the ceiling molding

As for the windows, all I needed to do was provide a nailing surface for the 1×10 to be installed onto. This was simple on the side and bottom of the window frame because I had installed furring strips all around the window opening to hold up the insulation. The top of the window frame was only a little more tricky. I used 2×2’s to add to the floor joists up above to provide a surface that would have the top of the window frame just right above the window opening. The end result of the windows after finishing was this…

The window frame allows the windows to open, while providing a finished look

After installing molding with a finishing nailer hooked up to an air compressor (DO NOT do this project without it) I went around with painter’s caulk and spakling paste filling in the gaps in the corners, and all of the finishing nail holes. I then touched up the paint.

Presenting the Training With Tricia Fitness Studio
The grand opening of the workout room (fitness studio sounds much more impressive) was yesterday as Tricia noted in her blog entry. The photos speak to any other details that I my not have explained.

The mirrored closet has pegboard to the right to hold equipment and act as a vent for the de-humidifier stashed inside

A curtain separates the fitness studio from the rest of the basement. A TV is mounted to the ceiling near the treadmill

At the base of the basement stairs is a doorway I installed (pre-hung doors are pretty easy to do) that leads to a future basement bathroom.

I’m glad that the project is now complete. It’s a nice place for me to workout in too. I especially like to flip on the pink Christmas lights Tricia installed on the ceiling and go for a long run. They just make me feel liberated

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DIY Basement Workout Room: Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 | Step 4 | Step 5

Friday, January 23, 2009 was the first Pinewood Derby for Mason and me. After a few weeks of work, learning about saws, sandpaper, a little physics, tungsten weights, graphite lube, hobby paint, and many more things that no 7 year old EVER wanted to learn, we put Anakin’s Speeder to the test. Here were the results.

Mason with his Star Wars Attack of the Clones, ‘Anakin’s Speeder’ Pinewood Derby Car

This was a fun project to do together, and an exciting race. This is what scouts is all about. Hopefully next year, Mason can do a little more of the car, while Daddy learns a bit more about Pinewood Physics. We have way too many smart parents in our Pack, we’ll not be beaten for lack of preparation. See you next year!