I guess it must have been the old wolf head tie slide that I still have from when I was a cub scout that got me thinking about wood and carving. It’s odd that that little wolf head is one of my favorite keepsakes that my Dad made for me.

So when I was signing up for classes to take at the Boy Scout leader training event last Saturday, wood carving was one I was very excited to be attending. The class turned out to be a blast! I had so much fun and didn’t want to leave when the class was over.

The more I thought about how much fun it was, the more I wanted to make a tie slide for Maverick! So, knowing that my Dad would be giving me money for my Birthday, I bought the carving knife below from Cape Forge.

These knives are sharp, so sharp that you use a leather strop and compound to keep it razor sharp. I can’t wait to get started on some projects, with a new Nephew just born and Christmas coming there should be plenty of opportunities to make things, not to mention making a tie slide for Mav!

When you are the man of the house, certain expectation are implied when it comes to home improvements.  Men are by their very nature a diverse and complicated lot, ask any wife and she will confirm that we area prone to procrastination and are difficult to train.  Once trained, we are prone to relapse into our old bohemian habits of debauchery and general sloven nature.

This can be see quite evidently when the lady of the house goes away for a weekend.  Maybe its to a retreat, maybe its work.  Whatever the case, their maternal nature (God bless it) is to make sure we don’t kill ourselves when they are gone.

In most cases a diverse array of food items are bought to ensure the man has variety with the hope of peppering that variety with a dash of things like — healthy.. and — nutritious.  It’s a good plan that on paper should work.

What do we end up doing?  Reverting to pizza, beer and buffalo wings of course.  This infuriates the lady of the house whose efforts have been thwarted, and training schedule has been pushed back several months (setback increases with length of time away, as does general cleanliness of house, self, etc).

But despite all of this frustration and lack of trainability, the one unflappable duty that is expected by the wife, and acknowledged by the husband, is the role of handyman.

That’s my job, I know it, my wife knows it, and she puts me to work often with the likes of a list she affectionately calls her “Honey Do” list.   This list has been known to go by other names inside the inner sanctums of men around the world, but we won’t go into that at this time.

Now men have different level of home handiness.  You have your Norm Abram man, this type can fix anything, make an artificial heart out of teak wood (Very resistant to water!), you name it, he can fix it.  Very ofter our Fathers have advanced to this level, and are made use of whenever possible (Come see the Grandkids, and bring your drill.. Why? I’ll tell you when you get here!).

On the other end of the spectrum you have the Don Knotts Man.  He can talk a damn good show, but in the end, he is all thumbs and prone to disaster.  In between is ever level of competance that you can imagine.

Complicating matters is the fact that men’s handman skills and competency fluctuates based on the job at hand.  This is a closely guarded secret.  Very rarely will the man bring up his relatively competency level prior to the start of the job, to do so would diminish his machisimo.

Myself, I have my strengths and weaknesses.  In a roundabout kind of way, this post is about something I simply cannot do — Re-Plumb a door.  Its like some voodoo science that just escapes me.

Living in new construction, the house has begun to settle.  Doors begin to not latch any more, cats are able to get into my son’s room and wake him up at night, greatly irritating me.  Despite my misgivings, I gave it a shot tonight.  That door needed fixin, and I had a mighty urge to fix it.

I assembled my tools…

• Rubber Mallet
• 3.5″ Screws
• Circa 1950’s era Solid metal drill that dims the lights when used.
• Wooden train track (impromptu spacer block for hammering)

I began my evaluation and began banging away at the infernal door.  Looks like I need to hit here…  nope (door gets worsE).  I’ll just put this screw here… nope (door gets worse). General teeth gnashing and failed attempts continue to add to the problem.  The result…

A door that is worse off than when I started, has difficulty even closing now, and required the latch plate to be removed to get it to stay held in place.

“How did it go?” my wife asked with hope in her eyes.

“Horrible, we are calling a carpenter.” I responded, instantaneously losing just a little bit of my mojo.

Yes, I was plumb out of luck.  The door had defeated me, I was its bitch and it knew it.  I quickly tossed aside thoughts of a cool hanging bead door retro 1970’s door, Karin would never go for it and the cats would easily default its defenses.

I can only imagine what the carpenter will think whe he sees my hack repair effort.  The shame would be terrible, thank God I should be able to engineer his arrival while I am at work.

I am as it were, a born again Christian.  In my case the realization came following years and years of feeling that the Church was nothing more than a system of control.  I find it odd now on reflection that those thoughts paired so neatly with the years of my life that were “self” focused.

A rebellion of the spirit if you will, a driving force to go out and make a name — prove what I could do in the form of jobs, possessions and self approval.  In short, the years when I thought I knew everything.

At first when I made my way away from the Church, and I say Church because at the time I really did not have a personal relationship with Jesus.  Religion was the Church, and the Church was God.  The Bible was no more than a fictional teaching tool of the church.  Something not to be believed as real.

All this may seem surprising giving my upbringing in Catholic grade and high school, the tragic flaw of the experience was that what could have been a spirit filling experience, turned out to be spirit draining.  And by the end of school, I had had enough of religion.

And at that moment, religion was locked away in my heart as nothing more than a bad experience.  Life would throw me a number of curve balls such as the death of my mother, and countless failed attempts to get pregnant with my wife.  All of which made the occasional thought of God even more bleak.

It would take a book of fiction, to bring me back to God.  Fiction.  My wife had picked up a copy of “Left Behind” at a community swap event.  She thought I might like it, so I started to read it.  The problem was, I could not put it down.

I read it, devoured it would be a better word.  It got me thinking about God again, little wisps of questions in my head, little flickers of thought that maybe I was wrong about God.  My subconscious quickly pushed these away.  So I started to read the second book.

And more thoughts surfaced.  I resisted.  I read the third book.  Still more thoughts, it was becoming harder to deny them.  I read the fourth book and… could not deny it, the calling resounded inside me, I tried to fight it but it was like a baby trying to fend off a prize fighter.  Finally I broke down and with tears in my eyes I asked for his (Christ’s) forgiveness and acknowledged his sacrifice.

At that moment, I was born again into Christ.  They say that being born again has different effects of different people.  Those who have never experienced religion or God are sometimes overwhelmed having never been filled in such a way before.  Others like myself, felt a comfort of having come home like a prodigal son.

I was filled with a sense of fear.  Fear of God, and fear of my friends and family.  I feared God because I for the first time had a realization of what Revelations foretells.  The Bible had taken on a whole new level of importance to me, and the dismissing thoughts of it being something other than divinely inspired were gone.  I had to get my life in order, I had to repent, and change the way I lived my life and looked at things.

And fear of what my friends and family would think of this conversion back to God.  I’ll make no bones about it, I made my lack of faith public over the years.  If you were to ask my friends if I was religious they would laugh at the thought.  My fear was that I would be seen as insincere, and would be mocked.

I gradually got over this feeling, and grew in my resolve to my faith.  But quickly found that this new-found understand brought with it new-found challenges and difficulties I had never before understood.  Sin had been a physical thing, you do something bad, you sin.

When taken into the context that sin begins in the heart, thoughts become sin outside of the physical realm.  Much harder to contain, much harder to avoid.  You would think that following this conversion that I would sin no more.  I tried, I really did.  But it failed as it was bound to from the beginning.

We cannot help sinning.  Its in our nature, we are flawed in this most important way.  I have committed sins, big and small, and have felt that forgiveness could not be had again.  To say I am ashamed of these failings is an understatement.  I would like to think that they served a purpose, that they helped me refine my faith through failure, if that makes any sense at all.

Where I find myself now is at a point where I have to consider the Church.  More importantly, which Church I belong to.  I was baptized a Catholic, raised and confirmed a Catholic.  Yet I belong to the Methodist Church.  But where does my heart reside?

For a long time I thought my days as a Catholic were over, that I was done being Catholic.  And yet in my heart I feel like I am still Catholic.  I became a Methodist largely because my wife wanted to be Methodist, her Mother is Methodist, and the Methodist orthodoxy is a bit more relaxed than that of the Roman Catholic Church.

I have never really felt like I understood what a Methodist is, I have not studied the doctrine.  I don’t have it ingrained in me yet.  I think what I need to do is study.  Study what it means to be a Methodist, study what it means to be a Catholic, even study what it means to be Episcopal (we have good friends who are Episcopal and have done a number of study courses).

Church is important, being part of a community is something that we need as Christians.  It provides a medium for learning and sharing of faith with the community.  Where will I end up?  Catholic? Methodist? Other?  I really can’t answer yet.  It will be something I will pray about that is for sure.

Autumn was always the season that I had a love/hate relationship with. Growing up I loved the cool crisp weather, it was always a welcome break from the humid hell of a summer we usually endured here in Illinois. But at the same time, I would dread it like a visit to the dentist when I knew I had a cavity.

As fortunate as I was to grow up where I did, and I do consider myself truly fortunate — the three fully grown, oak trees in my backyard were a force to be reckoned with in autumn. On a good day, one could clear the backyard in oh, maybe 25 bags.

So you can imagine why it was then that I avoided it like the plague, and how this potential for manual labor would contribute to my love hate relationship with autumn. It was then as you can imagine, highly humorous to my Father when my first home had in its backyard a fully grown sugar maple.

I think that tree only dropped about ten bags of leaves. Try as I might, I could not get my wife to rake them up no matter how many foot rubs that in all likelihood would never happen. Damn, she just would not take the bait.

Keeping this in mind you would wonder why I was walking through an a grove of Maple trees at the Morton Arboretum with my wife and son today. As crazy as this may sound given my previous epic tale of man vs. leaves, I really miss having trees.

Our current home, a cookie cutter track house not without its own charms, has a backyard that is a barren wasteland, grass dominates its landscape and nary a single tree claims it as its home — welcome to suburbia.

So we decided to go see the trees at the Arboretum with hopes of finding some that we would “fall” in love with. The great thing about the Arboretum is that the trees and plants all are tagged with both the common and scientific name. This really makes it easy to get the exact same tree you see.

I had to laugh as we started out expedition, I had forgotten the pen and paper and told Karin that we had to go back to the car to get it. She got this sort of bemused look on her face and said…

“Why don’t we just take a picture of the tag?”

Well duh, sometimes I can be a bit slow in the head. My wife did get a good laugh out of it, and to be honest I found it funny as well. As we left the Arboretum, pictures in hand and visions of the color explosions we would one day see in our backyard, I had a momentary flashback to raking leaves.

But this time I pushed it away, they would no longer bother me — this time “I” was the one with a son, and unlike my Father, I will get him to rake… I wonder if my Dad thought the same thing about me?

I guess it’s because I have so few Dad & Son only memories that I try to make it a point to have special time with my son where it is just the two of us. Now don’t get me wrong, my Dad is great father, and I know we did have those special times, but my memories are such that I can only really remember a few of them.

Chances are Maverick won’t remember a lot of the things we did together, but at least this way one of those times will be documented should he ever forget, or want to put me in a crappy nursing home God forbid!

It was a morning either destined to be spent doing something fun, or doing work outside. I opted for the second for obvious reasons on the day of rest.

My wife had a business function so I decided to take Maverick to the Morton Arboretum. The crisp cool air and brightly shining sun were a perfect combination for hiking.

After quickly loading the car we were on our way, windows down, sunglasses on. Little did I know the negotiation was about to begin.

“Dad, can we go to the children’s garden first?” Maverick asked from the back seat.

“Well I really didn’t want you to get your feet wet before the hike” I replied with unfailing logic.

[Insert Pause]

“Dad, how about this — We go to the hand water area of the children’s garden, then go for a hike and after go to the feet water area of the children’s garden.”

Curses. His logic was sound, I had been out foxed by a six year old. I agreed to his plan, and we both felt satisfied.

Sitting down to watch Maverick at the hand water park, I started to plot out the hike I wanted to take. I had earlier talked to our friend Mary from marytree.blogspot.com and she suggested we go to “big rock”.

Having never been it sounded like a great idea. That is until I saw it was the furthest point from the visitor center. Easily three miles away.

Crap, would he be up for it? I worried about his shoes. He had worn ones more appropriate for the water. I decided to just take the hike slow and turn around when he wanted to.

It was time for a move to another play area that had sand. Again Maverick joined the multitude of kids playing in it and I brought the tunnel vision online and locked onto my target (my son).

When it was time to head out for the hike I made a fatal mistake. He had buried his feet in the sand and wanted to rinse them off. The smart thing to do would have been to go to the water jump.

What did I do? Let him go to the foot water area. As I watched him run around on the rocks, I saw a girl who was soaked from head to toe and got a bad feeling about this decision.

Sure enough he slipped and sat in the water. The back of his shorts were soaked through. What can you do in a situation like that but sigh, smile and shake your head at how great it is to watch him just being a boy.

So we started on our hike, I was sure it would be over in no time with his wet shorts. But between the Sun and the breeze they quickly dried.

Walking through the trails I loved our conversations on his favorite subjects (Star Wars), about the forest, about his friends, and about some of the things I knew had been bugging him. It was a nice non-threatening time and I think it was good for both of us.

When we were about halfway to the “big rock” the mosquitos hit us in full force. Now for some reason I have an immunity to whatever it is in the mosquito that causes those itching bumps from happening. I still get bit, but that is the extent of my affliction.

Maverick however is like his Mom, a mosquito magnet who is affected by their bite. I felt like such a dumb ass for forgetting the spray! But onward we went.

As we approached our destination a shortcut was offered to us, and we gladly took it. Big rock it would turn out, was just that. A big rock.

I don’t know why I had visions of a 40 foot tall rock, the reality was much, much less. Take a look at my flickr to the right and you can see it. Heading back I carried him on my shoulders for a while to give him a break much to his enjoyment.

We stopped for a strawberry fruit pop and some yogurt afterwards. Time had flown by, the children’s garden was now closed, but that didn’t stop Maverick. There was still a hill and kids rolling down it. That was enough for him.

It was a good day.

The other night I went out for a run. The day had been as humid as any we have ever had, but the oncoming night had quelled it into quiet submission, a mere shadow of what it had been earlier.

I had take about a week off from running after pulling something in my hip. A pretty good wake p call for me to actually start listening to my body. I had been running, at a better clip than normal and with more bounce in my stride, feeling good, when my right out hip started to hurt.

Suck it up, I thought to myself. Running is as much about mental toughness as it is about cardio and muscle. So I pushed on. Pain started getting worse. Still I pushed on. POP. Whatever was being strained, finally reached its breaking point. And then the pain really started.

So I took some time off. Fast forward to the night O’ humidity. I started out and the hip felt good, great actually. But I kept it easy and didn’t try anything fancy. In no time I had reached the normal point where I would turn around (1.57 miles) and walk back.

It happens to be at the start of a shopping mall. This time I decided to keep going, that I would run behind the mall in the service area over to the other side and back home. No problems, it went well and by the time I hit the other side the hip was starting to hurt so I stopped and started to walk the rest of the way back.

Only then did I notice the oncoming black clouds from the south and north-west. Even more forboding was the flashes of lightning that seemed to be coming with more and more frequency. I kept a wary eye on them as I continued to walk home.

About five minutes later it was clear to me that I was not going to make it home before both storms hit if I kept on walking. Shit. There was only one thing to do — keep running, or risk death. These were some of the wickedest looking storms I have ever seen, so I had cause for concern.

Its funny what adrenaline can do for pain, sorta makes it melt away. I ran, and ran hard home. I ran with purpose. My breathing was easy, my legs pumping like pistons, my focus tunneled on my destination. It was — Great! I felt like I was 18 again. The next day of course I felt like I was 80.

Looking back that is one run I will always remember.

Every year our friends Megan & Matt host a series of Friday night movies in their backyard. It’s a chance for the adults to relax and enjoy a cocktail or two while the kids run around like banshees and play on the playset.

Matt has a great setup for the movies — a sweet computer projector that makes a nice ten plus foot screen. As the night heads toward twilight the kids and adults have had their fill of any number of treats that have been brought for the festivities.

As the sun slowly sets the screen on the side of their house slowly starts to become more and more apparent and the kids know movie time has finally come. We hosted a movie night once at our house to give Matt & Megan a break and while we all had a great time, it just didn’t have that touch of magic that exists in their backyard.

That’s not to say that our yard won’t ever have that magic, but right now its a barren wasteland of grass. Megan & Matt’s yard by comparison has well thought our flower gardens that hold surprises one might not normally expect to see in a typical garden. Its just a fun place to be, centrally located between two other of our friends. A win-win situation really.

So to Megan & Matt if you are reading this — A hearty thank you from us to you! This summer’s movie night was a smashing success, we are looking forward to next year already!

We had a vendor in to introduce us to her new manager and touch base on business needs last night and today. When we returned from lunch we found a nice corporate branded leather bound journal waiting at each of our desks.

You have to appreciate the soft pebbly feel of leather on you’re fingertips, or the way leather smells. As I thumbed through the waiting untouched vanilla colored pages I couldn’t help thinking about how digital blogging. Does anyone actually write in journals these days?

Back in the early nineties when I was in the National Guard our unit did a three week stint in Honduras. Being in a tent my only option was to write, so I took some time at the end of each day to write about my experiences.

Looking back in it today is painful. Not because of the memories, its the handwriting that is without question brutal to read. And I came from a generation where penmanship was graded. I look at my father’s handwriting and it is amazing to look at and read.

I like to blame it on the fact that I am a lefty, in truth I think as the world has become more digital, the need to write in a visually pleasing way has gradually been declining. It will be interesting to see how my son’s handwriting develops in this even more saturated digital realm we call Earth.

Well today I joined the ranks of millions who have finished J.K. Rowling’s epic tale of the boy who lived. Up until recently my Harry Potter experience had been limited mainly to the movies.

I was never overly impressed, to be honest they slightly annoyed me with Potter’s lackluster magical abilities. Keep in mind I didn’t expect him to be Gandalf, but I was always left wishing he wasn’t such a punk. Like I said, the movies were my only exposure and I quickly found myself with an anti-Potter aura.

I can’t recall when, but I started to read a few of the actual books. While I still felt like he stunk as a wizard, more prone to blind luck or his friends abilities than his own talent, I couldn’t help enjoying the author’s storytelling abilities.

After reading the Order of the Phoenix I found myself looking forward to the last book. Would he live? Would he die? What about Snape? Ya da, da, duh. I began to sound a bit like a fanboy. Was it possible?

Nope. I still think he was a punk. Sorry. But I will read the books which I have overlooked, there is no denying that she spun an engaging tale worthy of at least one reading.

Four Person Jedi Starfighter, originally uploaded by Eleven 22.

Submitted by my son Maverick for review by George Lucas. George if you are reading, my son is available to help you with design ideas for any future Star Wars projects. Thanks.