Author Archives: Cam

Bonding with Transformers

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My son, Mike, is obsessed with Transformers. Sometimes he calls me at work to ask me Transformer questions. “Hi Daddy. Hey, can Fortress Maximus beat up Optimus Prime?” We’ve been pulling out my collection and playing with them a few nights each week and Mike is amassing a little collection of his own. He’s watched the movies (both the cartoon and live action offerings) more times than me. All of this delights me.

Recently I decided it was time to start drawing with him. Now, I’m not some kind of super artist or anything, but I think a person should have some basic art skills. I bought us some markers (I recommend Prismacolor  markers- excellent in every way) and we decided to draw some Transformers. Mike picked Bumblebee for our first effort. I tried to teach him about seeing basic shapes in objects. I showed him how to pencil the design, ink and then color. I was thrilled that his little bumble bee drawing had shapes with volume and weren’t just little sticks! I helped him with the outline of his car, but he did all his wheels and windows and his own inking and coloring. We still have a ways to go, but I’m going to do this with him a couple of times a month and save everything in a book for him. I’m sure he’ll get better than me pretty quick.

Shedding the Clutter

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This little shed is exciting to me for three reasons.

First: We can finally move the yard and garden equipment out of the garage. It was getting really cluttered and we didn’t have room for the important stuff like manly car tools and testosterone powered wood cutting machines. I’ve had my eye on some nice metal cabinets I want to put in the garage on “my” side that can hold my tools… that I plan to buy… when the cabinets go in… cabinets for the tools…  It’s a cyclical thing. Anyway, less stuff in the garage means more room… to put in more stuff… huh.

Second: We bought this shed at Costco last year. It sat unassembled on the side of our house for about 6 months. It’s really neat to have it sitting by the side of our house in an assembled state. Yep. All done.  Now it’s not a chore looming at some unforeseen point in the future “when I have time.” Moving on.

Third: I came home one afternoon and found Fran putting it together. I rolled up my shelves and took it apart. Then I put it back together the right way. Fran likes it when I do “husband stuff.” Plus I love to do these kinds of things for her when I get the chance to show off my mad skills (I can be hard to mobilize, I confess).

Anyway- now we’ve got a little space to stick our unsightly yard equipment. One day we might get a real shed (I like Andrew’s), but this will do for now. Plus it was only a two hour venture.

Work, Unwork and Rework

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The new store has been an emotional journey in some ways. I spent a good part of the last night pulling out the shelves from the old storefront… the same shelves I spend over 3 months working on. I keep telling myself that they served their purpose and it’s time to move on. I still find the whole ordeal of undoing what took so long to initially do very depressing. Kudos to Steve for a good design though- it’s impressive to see the amount of work that went into the initial design and build as I disassemble things. Hopefully I’ll get the removal done in the next couple of days. We’ll use the room as a receiving area for our shipments and a photo studio and posting area for our pictures.

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I take some comfort in the fact that the new store is coming along pretty well. Most of the wall shelving is finished and the BladeHQ stock is almost all moved over with plenty of room to spare. At least our space crunch has been alleviated. Now, if only there was a way to stop time.  We still need to finish all the counters (you can see a cute little mock-up in the picture on the right), but we’re still undecided about how to proceed. We removed $7,000 worth of glass from the old store and we’d like to find some way to use it.

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And the silver lining of the expansion was that I finally got an office (it’s in the back of the new store).  It’s just right for me and Fran- I put in two corner desks, a shelf, a filing cabinet and a huge fake tree I found at Costco (the fake plants stay the urge to blow up my store).  Very cozy. Sadly Fran is only putting in about 6 hours a week right now so I don’t see as much of hr as I’d like. But I do get the office mostly to myself!

Retail Store Chore, Lore and More

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Here’s a bit more on the retail front. I’ve posted a project status page on my retail website- you  can see it if you click HERE.  It’s a bit behind though- we’re well into the shelving stage now and have moved over most of our inventory. I’ll get some exclusive (wow!) pictures up in the next couple days. I just don’t have any free time right now.

What on Earth?

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I found this on my computer. I don’t know why I did this. I have very little recollection of doing it. I can only assume it was some kind of late night experiment to test the limits of a photograph red eye reduction program (that’s what I used to make it). Huh…   I’ll have to scan in some of my other cartoons soon. They are so bizarre.  One of these days I’ll be famous for something bad like this.

And in other news we awoke to find about two inches of snow outside. Part of our driveway is being redone so we’ve  had to park all of our cars outside for the last three days.  Winter’s last desperate attempt to ruin my life.

And in yet more news I am now 30. There’s nothing else to say about that.

Spring is Finally Here!

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Today is the first day of spring. Now that’s excitement (only happens once a year!).  Yesterday’s weather was fabulous. I took an evening drive to relax and it was a wonderful 58 degrees so my windows were down. For some reason this was a particularly rough winter and I’m glad it’s (mostly) over. We may get a few more snow spritzes here and there, but spring is officially here and nice weather is right around the corner.

I’m thrilled about my upcoming spring cleaning. I’ve got big plans for my garage- I want to get my wood shop set up again and put in some new cabinets to replace our shelves (it will be better organized).  And I’ve got bigger plans for work (I’ll be posting the remodeling progress in the next day or so).  It’s so much easier to feel cheerful with the sun shining and a cool breeze wisping around you. Welcome spring!

The Road Ahead

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I’ve said it before and I’m sure everyone will hear me say it again. It’s seems impossible for me to to find time for everything. Work, family, friends, health, religion, education, hobbies, chores, blogging… Some people manage to balance everything and I can’t figure out how they do it. On a good day I perform a passable juggling act. I’m about to turn 30 (less than a week) and I’ve got to give careful consideration to my time (it’s running out!)

These days I cram in more and more work.  Jim operates Blaze Commerce and I just signed on as a part owner and we have plans to overtake the local ecommerce market.  Over here at BladeHQ we’re getting ready to open our “real” retail shop and there’s a huge amount of prep work to do before the remodeling. We’ve also got plans to fire up a slew of new websites so we can keep costs covered. If I was a single guy and sacrificed every aspect of my personal life then there’d be plenty of time.

But I’m not- I’m married, I have three kids.  It’s sad to miss pieces of their childhood. It only happens one time and you’re either there, or you’re not. Don’t get me wrong- I come home from work every evening to see my family but it’s not enough for me. In the the grand scheme of things I keep hoping that I can get work “out of the way” and then go play. So far so good, but it really takes it toll. And part of me wonders if it’s really worth it. It’s been physically destructive… I can say that much.

For my birthday I ordered a sole treadmill. It should be here next week. I have plans to hop on the thing every day for about 30 mins. Where will that time come from? I don’t have television, I have’ read a book in months and I only sleep 6 hours as it is (with the exception of Saturday, when my wonderful wife lets me sleep in). Another 30 minutes a day is going to be tough! But given that my body weight has increased by 129% in the last four years I figure an intervention is necessary- even if it comes from me.

I’m sure I’ll find a way to throw one more ball into my chaotic juggling regime. I always do. Focus is a real key to success. I’m often amazed at how much time I can waste surfing the Internet, browsing catalogs in the bathroom, or sometimes just staring into space. If I can harness some of that I’m sure I can scrape together 30 minutes of time to treadmill it up. I can stare into space while I run (well… walk… I’m sure I’ll be walking at first).

And so… that’s why I haven’t been a consistent blogger. Blogging is lower down on my list of priorities and often gets pushed to the side. “I need to blog… but I haven’t slept in 13 days… I must sleep.” I don’t anticipate any change, but if I can think of something to jettison I will blog more. Any ideas?

Park City Corvette Caravan

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A scenic drive to Park City, fine dining at Park City’s premier Italian restaurant, and the companionship of eight other Corvettes screaming along beside you the whole way. Who could ask for more? What about the company of your beautiful wife? That’s right… the perfect evening. Almost.

On Saturday a group of us met up in Pleasant Grove and drove to Park City for Dinner.  It was a blast to cruise along with eight other Corvettes and I think it was the first time my wife got a glimpse of my other social circle.

We ate at Ghidottis. It’s expanse is formidable, its food delicious and its service somewhat lacking. The menu was over-sized (I wish I had a picture- I’m not kidding, it was huge) and difficult to decipher. I ended up getting plain old Fettucini Alfredo. It was probably the best tasting pasta I can recall eating but for the $21.00 price tag the portion was undersized (“just right” my wife pointed out).  At the end of dinner the waitress refused to put the meals on separate checks. She forced us to try and calculate how much we individually owed and offered to run our cards for that amount.  After numerous unsuccessful attempts and nearly 45 minutes after finishing our meal we were able to leave the restaurant. Geez.

The picture above is where we met up. The guy in the picture is Shayne, who coordinated the dinner effort (thanks Shayne). I’m the third car from the left (black). It gets harder and harder to find time to do something fun so I’m glad we were able to take a break and and go for a cruise.