Current Mood:
Chillin
While most things seem to go my way, I’m not the handiest of guys. There’s a number of things that I really want to accomplish, but I get held back by my lack of rudimentary skills that seem to have been easily bestowed upon both my dad and father-in-law. It bugs me.
I suppose it probably has something to do with the fact that they were working on cars and building things during their formative youth. What did I do? I spent much of the time mucking around with computers; which has turned into a mildly comfortable career that affords the kinds of things that our parents generation were able to do for us with their skills in building and fixing things. Maybe I shouldn’t let it bug me so much.
On the hit parade is expanding this house of ours into the few unused spaces we have; something that will give us more room to spread out a bit. I’ve attempted some improvements. I bought a ceiling fan for the bedroom, but the electrical is such that installing poses a definite fire hazard. I have advice that will get this fixed, but it’s going to take going into territory that I’m not familiar with (always a challenge for the accidental handyman). We’ll get there, and if I’m not careful I might learn something.
I also have a motorcycle in my garage that I’d like to finish. I found a pretty neat website for some folks who build a lot of custom parts for my bike, so maybe I’ll get to that project soon-ish. I really like the idea that they are capable of doing most of the technical work. I think I can handle the pretty stuff. I’m going to try changing all the seals in the motor, but if it doesn’t work out for me, they have a service that will pretty much rebuild your motor with performance parts for $2500. Since I only have fifty bucks in the bike, I might not feel so bad about that.
It all sounds like loads of fun, but balancing it with work, social obligations, and family time is difficult. One thing that this is teaching me is why sometimes it took a very long time for “nice to have” projects to get finished when I was a kid. I think I have a new-found appreciation for the balancing act that my folks performed while I was coming up.











