Life Blog #1

   Today wasn't the most eventful, but the Crestron job we had been working on finally came to a close.  I wanted to do a Vlog of what was happening, but since they are a technology company and it was at their southeast headquarters, I wasn't about to film anything in there, so I opted to take a few pictures of what has been done.  They had these ugly, commercial-grade cabinets in their break room that were an ugly brushed silver color:

    After a few days of inhaling copious amounts of aerosol glue at the shop and cutting my fingers on sharp laminate edges, everything came to completion today:

    But, that is not all, because they needed some storage units custom-built into an existing cut-out in the wall, so we built them from scratch.  Here is my rendering from when we bid the job:

    After all was said and done, the final product ended up looking like this:

    I would argue that as fairly close, no?  They keep their programmers nice and sugared-up at Crestron with any soft drink you can imagine.  I try to drink mostly water and milk with an occasional diet or zero calorie soda in the mix, but I grabbed one of these because I had not seen one in so long:

That first taste threw me so far back in time, and I am not saying that to sound more interesting, because it really did.  When I was a teenager, I worked at a Hallmark store after school and would always have about fifteen minutes to kill before my shift started.  I would park my car and walk down to the Kroger before work and buy a bottle of Vanilla Coke.  For some reason I loved those things back then and tasting it again brought me right back to that sidewalk and the walk I took on it so many times.  It also took me back to the summer days when my friend Daniel and I would leave in my Jeep Wrangler right after church with the top down and doors off.  We would just drive around the back roads of Alpharetta, Roswell, and Crabapple for hours, enjoying the sun and not really caring about much at all. Just blast the music and go.  We did this so often that I didn't even have to shift the transmission.  He knew when I was going to change gear and would just reach over and bump it where it needed to go.  Even though my tastes have changed considerably and I am not a fan of sugary drinks anymore, this one really took a toll on my memory the very second it hit my tongue.  Lost time that I would do anything to live once again.

    Moving on and out of all things squishy, I wanted a new push mower because I had been sort of partnered in using my neighbor's for the past two years ever since my riding lawnmower took a turn for the worse.  My uncle Cecil has things like this laying around (he's an old school southern guy, of course he does) and unknown to me, my dad asked him if he had one for me.  I would rather push-mow anyways because of the health factor, so it made me oddly happy.  Cecil and my other uncle Jerry spent some time tinkering with it a few days ago and I finally brought it home today:

Check out that beast in all of it's vintage glory!  The funny thing about me (if you do not actually know me personally) is that I like mechanically vintage things.  I really do not want to own another modern, fuel injected car, nor one with an automatic transmission.  The reason is my mechanical nature and my love of working on and maintaining things that lived before the age of computers.  This is a White brand mower that we dated to sometime in the early 1970's and I am not going to leave it alone.  Before the grass at home gets too tall, I fully intend to restore this thing.  Knock off the patina, give it a new paint job, do a little more tinkering on the engine, etc.  I love projects, so I am happy to have this little guy in my garage at the moment.  I also like being a little different in the way I do things, and I am pretty sure anyone driving by who sees me using it will take a second look because they do not exist in large numbers anymore.  This should be something fun to do over the next few nights because it does not really need much to make it shine again.  Since I do not have a truck of my own yet, and this thing would not ever fit in my car, I borrowed this beast from my dad:

    This works out in two ways, because I am actually trading Cecil a turf trailer my grandpa had for that mower and I can just bring it back with me when I go over there tomorrow.  I am also taking my riding mower so he and Jerry can play with it and figure out if there was something I did not think about when I was making a mess of my mind trying to fix it myself.  I am going back so I can paint the roof of Jerry's garage for him, because I think that is the sort of thing you are supposed to do for your family.  He offered to pay me, but I would do it for him without that, of course.  But I know doing so would make him feel better about it.  I will try to Vlog some of that tomorrow and post it on here, but we will see how I feel about holding a camera while walking around on a roof.  

    I will leave you with a mini-Vlog of Tiffany and I playing fetch with me while dad and I have a conversation.  Hope to see you here again!  -Drew

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