Paintin' Place

This post is yet another to file in the "long overdue" category.  Although I am writing this during some down time on our vacation, I probably will not even post this one until I get back, by which time I'll have enough material for another post, which itself will probably come weeks after-the-fact.  Such is life.

Given that this is coming so far after the fact, I'll keep this (relatively) short and sweet.  The biggest workshop project the past few weeks as been painting parts for Junior.  In the past, I've been relegated to painting parts in the back yard, at the mercy of weather and wind conditions.  With the new house in the back yard further limiting the favorable wind directions for painting, I decided to experiment with a home-built paint booth.  long story-short, it worked great.  The paint booth was relatively inexpensive to build, fairly easy to set up and take down, and produced excellent results. While I had it set up, I also painted the exhaust manifolds for the Ten, and even painted some of the sun-faded green parts of L's little power wheels tractor.  Preparing for our vacation significantly limited my time to re-assemble Junior.  What time I did find, things went fairly well.  I still need to do some work on the engine before I put it back in.  I expect things to mostly be smooth sailing from there, although in saying that I am probably jinxing myself.

Speaking of power wheels, we have fired up few of the boys' rides for the season.  N still fits in the jeep.  His driving skills were a little rusty at first, but he quickly got back up to speed, literally.  L doesn't quite have the hang of a steering wheel, but does just fine on the Harley with its handle bars.  He is already asking me to turn the "fast" back on so he can keep up with N.  He also really likes riding along in the jeep while N drives, and N does a pretty good job of being careful with his little brother.  The kid-powered rides have been getting a work out as well.  N is getting really fast on his bike.  L doesn't have the pedalling down yet, but he can scoot on his tricycle pretty fast, especially down hill. 

All the spring weather has continued to motivate the wildlife around our house.  We have had one more serenade from the coyotes, and the owl roosted one evening on the neighbor's roof, treating us to who-who-whoing as we were watching TV.  While clearing some dead vegitation from the flower bed I found a pretty good sized toad.  L wasn't quite ready to touch  it, but it didn't bother N any.  We turned it loose down by the creek.

 
One major task on our to-do list before leaving was upgrading our phones.  2 years ago when we got our last phones we opted not to jump on the smart phone bandwagon just yet.  I still think that was the right decision then, but it isn't taking us long to fall in love with our new iPhones.  C loves the apps for helping her find food that fits her dietary needs, and I love having maps and weather at my finger tips.  We elected to hold off on buying any cases for our phones when we got them due to the mark ups at the phone store.  We ordered some from Amazon as soon as we got home, but that still left us treating our unprotected phones with kid gloves for a few days.  Fortunately, our "Otterbox" cases arrived just in time for us to take them on the trip.  Both of us have managed to drop our phones already since getting them, and in both instances, they have already earned their keep. 

Anchors Away

Spring has sprung! Although the time change still has me dragging a little bit, I have been enjoying the 60 and 70 degree weather we've had as of late. With warm weather comes even less motivation to stay inside and do blog updates, but I figured its been so long I better do one.

Prior to the weather turning warm, we had been keeping busy with indoor activities. N has shown a great interest in the Titanic lately, so we went to the library to get some books about it. Although it seems like a grown-up subject, there were considerably more books on it in the kids section than the adult section. Obviously it's not the most cheerful bedtime story, but N enjoys me reading them to him at bed time, and he will continue to read them after I put him to bed. The subject seems to have really brought out his artistic side, and he has drawn several very nice pictures of it.

Coinciding with N's newfound fascination with ships like the Titanic, he found some trucks with bass boats that I got out to sell on Ebay. Of course he wanted to play with them very badly, so we compromised by me agreeing to make him a boat. We started off with a simple dinghy, and quickly graduated to a Titanic and Pirate ship. Building them was a nice activity together, and reminded me of a long-since forgotten paper boat project I did when I was a kid.

Although I vowed in my last post that I was finished with Ebay projects for the season, I decided to make one last push to finish some of my long overdue projects, and while I was at it, clear out some more of my collection. It's sad that I've had some of the project trucks so long that the real ones are already on their second new body style since then, but that doesn't seem to be affecting their popularity too much. The part that has generated the most interest however is the tires I have been using. I've been flooded with "where did you get those?" questions on my Ebay account. Most were purchased around the same time as the trucks, in some cases ten years ago. Fortunately for me, my procrastination on these projects has resulted in products that no one else currently has. While most of the work on the trucks is fairly simple, and doesn't take much time individually, when you do 10 of them at once it adds up.

Thankfully, Ebay work hasn't quite consumed all of my shop time. I built some much needed storage for the boys toys in the garage. I also got the manifold for my Ten welded, and Junior disassembled and pressure washed. With the warm weather, I'm getting more antsy to finish working on the toys and get working on the real tractors.

Of course it's not all about shop projects. L continues to like to be the little helper. He did a very good job manning the hose while we washed my truck. N and I also had a good time at my nephew's birthday party. I continue to be amazed with how well N does on car trips. He read for about half the trip on the way down, and didn't once get out the video games. He also surprised me with how enamored he was with the cowboy hat he got at the party. He wore it the whole party and most of the way home. It was only has he was trying to get comfortable to take a nap that he took it off, and he put it right back on again after we got home.

3 Little Monkeys Jumpin' on the (Truck) Bed

This weekend was another one of those where we fit quite a bit of stuff in.  In this case though, it didn't feel too jam packed.  Saturday morning we finally worked in a trip to Grandpa's work to get the boys rides in the loader and "Big A".  They really liked the rides, but leave it to them to find fun in something so simple; they just loved dancing and jumping in the back of the pickup and making it bounce.  They even got grandpa to join in the act.  Priceless.

The boys got their activity in during the morning, but Mommy and Daddy's came at night.  C and I took in the 2nd half of our Valentines Day date by going to dueling pianos.  The performers were really good, and we both had a good time.  It was a nice change from our typical dinner and a movie kind of dates. 

We've had some strange wildlife in the neighborhood lately. A few weeks ago we found a strange snow-caterpillar crawling across the back yard.  It wasn't crawling very fast, and seemed to stop moving as we were watching it.  Still, it was strange to see on a day where it was only in the upper 30's, and there was a couple inches of snow on the ground.  

We've also had an owl hanging around the past week.  This weekend we saw it perched on the neighbor's front porch.  It appeared to be basking in the sun on a side of the house that was blocked from the wind.  We weren't sure if it was alive or dead,  but when we checked back after that part of the porch was in the shade, the owl was gone.  We also got serenaded one night this past week by some coyotes in the back yard, but thankfully that was just a one night performance.  

Last week I finished up what will possibly be my last Ebay project this winter.  I bought some Hot wheels trucks thinking I would use them for some retro monster trucks, but since that ship seems to have sailed, I tried to find something else to do with them. I decided to turn to the TV/Movie cars market and do some Fall Guy pickups.  To make sure I got the details right, I fired up on of my Fall Guy DVD's.  Much like the Dukes of Hazzard, the show isn't quite as impressive now as when I was growing up.  It did cause me to notice a few things though.  I was trying to remember how old I was when I watched Fall Guy as a kid.  I recalled building a model of the truck from the show and taking it to show and tell at school.  I'm thinking I took it for kindergarten.  I did let N watch a little of one of the episodes, and he was much less impressed than I was at his age.  I hesitated to let him watch because of the violence.  I think it was a requirement in each episode for at least one bar fight, and there to be some gun play.  So while the violence made me question letting N watch, I did notice that there was not a single swear word.  We have been struggling with that as of late because we can't even listen to the radio without him hearing a few words he isn't supposed to say.  How times have changed.

 

The Fall Guy trucks may be my last Ebay project because I am starting to get back into tractor project mode.  I've been working on Junior here and there, starting to take it apart to do some repainting on it.  This weekend though, my attention was focused on the Ten.  One of my goals for this winter was to get a broken flange on the exhaust manifold welded up.  The manifold actually came off easier than I had expected, with only one twisted-off stud.  Although the manifold came off, I'm still working on trying to disassemble it a little more before I take it in, and I think that is going to take lots of soaking with penetrating oil.  I'm glad I got started now, instead of last year where I waited all winter and then starting working on it only a couple weeks before the first show. 

Gateway

To most people, the first weekend in February is synonymous with the Super Bowl.  In our household, the weekend is shared with the an annual trip to St. Louis for the Gateway Toy Show.  Traditionally, this has been a Dad's-day-out kind of thing, but this year I decided N was finally ready to make the trip with me.  To make it more attractive to him, and break things up a bit, I combined the trip with a stop off at my brother's, and a stop at the Bigfoot shop. 

The day turned out pretty much as well as well as I could have hoped.  N was a real trooper riding in the car, and did a great job keeping himself entertained.  He played well with his cousin's, which allowed the adults to have a nice visit.  I think for him the real hit of the day was the Bigfoot shop.  He was excited to see the trucks on display outside, and inside they had some displays you could sit in. 

By the time we got to the toy show, N felt he already had enough fun for the day and was talking about going home.  Still, I managed to coax almost two hours at the toy show out of him.  Significantly less than I would have normally spent, but enough to feel like it was worth the trip.  He did better than I expected about not wanting everything he saw, but what I didn't count on was once he bought a tractor, he was ready to go play with it rather than keep looking.  He did like the displays, especially one that had several moving parts to it. 

The workshop has been reasonably quiet the past couple weeks.  As I said last time, my big project was cleaning my office and organizing my storage closet.  As a result of that, I found several toys I had bought for future projects that I now realize I will most likely never get around to.  Last week was a fairly big Ebay week getting those sold and shipped.  One truck I found in with the project candidates was one from my childhood, but it was still in remarkably good shape. I got to thinking more about the truck and realized it came from a toy show I went to with my Dad.  I don't know if it was my first toy show, but certainly the first one I can remember.  I remembered buying it because the rubber tires on it made it more detailed than any of the other trucks I had.  I also recalled leaving it in the box for a while so it would be worth more some day, and then finally giving in and getting it out to play with.  After taking that little trip down memory lane, I decided to hold on to it a little longer.

While we did miss having a Super Bowl party to go to a little bit, it was nice to just stay home and watch the game.  We got some fun snacks and ordered pizza so it felt like a little party of our own.  L and I watched the first part of the game in the garage while we worked on tractors a little bit.  I think the boys were more impressed with the commercials than the game.  Thanks to DVR we could watch their favorite commercials several times each and still catch back up to the game.  How did we ever live without DVR?

Signs of Winter

This January brought one of the warmest birthdays I can remember, but the warm weather did finally succumb to more normal temps, and, of course, some snow.  The snow finally gave me a chance to try out Johnny with the snow blade.  It wasn't the most ideal situation for a first trial.  There was about a 1/2" of slush under the snow, and the timing of the snowfall was such that C and I both drove on it before I had a chance to blade it off.  These combined to create a scenario where the blade skidded on top of the packed tracks, plowing the snow but leaving the slush to quickly freeze into ice.  Needless to say, the result wasn't quite what I had hoped for.  By the end though, I think I figured when to use the shovel and when to use the tractor.  Of course, the shovel can't pull the boys around on a sled. 

I've had a few projects going in the workshop the past couple weeks.  The first was getting some signs put up for decoration.  I've been meaning to put up some of my grandpa's signs for a while, and got a couple more for Christmas.  I think they add a nice touch to the garage.

I posted a picture a while back of a model prototype for the antique Cat club.  I got another set of samples a couple weeks ago to review.  We are now very nearly ready to start into production, with model delivery due in April.  To coincide with delivery, I put together an article for the club newsletter on the real machines based on the research I did for the model.  Those are always nice because most of the research is already done, and it's a good way to document everything I learned.

I also continued to work on using up some of the monster truck supplies I had left from last year.  I still have some parts left, but finally got to the point where I would need to buy some additional supplies to do any more. I think that's a good stopping point until I sell out of the stock I have. For the most part I used designs I made last year, but did add a couple new ones just to keep it interesting.  I'm looking forward to moving on to something new though.  Before I dig too far into any new projects however, I'm long overdue to clean my office and storage room, and need to clear out some other surplus toy inventory before selling season ends.

Of course the past few weeks haven't been all about work.  I got to spread my birthday out over several weeks.  We got to have a nice little celebration on the actual day.  The bigger party with the rest of the family got pushed back a couple weeks to give everybody a little more of a break from the holidays.  I got to start off the party weekend on Friday morning with "Donuts with Dad" and N's school.  It was fun to take N to school.  I could tell he was excited to have me there, and for the donut.  Not everybody could make it for the party on Saturday, but it still was a good time.  It's always alot of work to host a party, but it is nice to be home where the boys have all their stuff to entertain themselves more, which allows us to spend less time playing defense, and gives us more time to visit with everybody and enjoy it.

Christmas Break

Happy New Year!  It's pretty shameful that I had a week and a half off of work and didn't find the time to update my blog.  We stayed pretty busy with house guests and family gatherings over the break.  It was nice to have some quality family time, but of course it also was nice to fit in a little project time as well. 

I think the boys and C enjoyed me being off of work as much as I did.  With N in school, he is used to having alot of structure in his day and always having something to do.  Obviously over break he didn't have that, so it took a little while for all of us to adjust.  The first half of break C and I spent alot of time getting ready for or cleaning up from various family events.  This always frustrates the boys because they don't understand why we can't just play all the time.  They also quickly got used to getting a bunch of presents every couple of days, so that was a big let down when that stopped.  After about a week, I think we found a pretty good routine, but of course by then break was almost over.  The routine included going to the gym as a family.  While C and I got our workouts in, L stayed in daycare and N played in the open gym.  From the weight area I could look down and watch N play.  It is always interesting to be a fly on the wall and see how he plays with the other kids.  While waiting for C's class to get over, I was walking around the track and decided to go get N and L and we could all walk together.  They really liked it, and I think getting to run around was good for them. 

 "Real" winter seems to mostly absent so far, which turned out to be a good thing for an unexpected reason.  One afternoon to help entertain L, I decided to take him for a ride on Johnny.  While riding I noticed a squeal coming from one of the front wheels.  I quickly pulled it into the garage to check it out, and found one of the wheel bearings was shot.  I was glad to find it now rather than while I was trying to plow snow.  Fortunately the local Deere dealer had the bearings in stock and they were fairly inexpensive, so I replaced them all. 

Mother nature hasn't totally been resting on her laurels though.  We did have a few days of colder weather and rediculously high winds.  With the winds came another bout of our furnace going out.  With some intervention, I was able to keep it going most of the first day.  I tried going the extra step of building a wind break around the flue outlet, which seemed like it would help, but in the end did not seem to make much of a difference.  The wind picked back up later in the evening, and my efforts to keep the furnace running had minimal success.  Much like the last time, I finally had to throw in the towel by the end of the evening and break out some extra blankets.  By morning it was only 59 degrees in the house.  In the morning I was able to get the the furnace running long enough to get the house warmed up, and called the HVAC guys to come back yet again.  Long story short, they suspected some changes I made to the flue piping when I finished the basement was causing too much backpressure.  Fortunately, it was in a location that was still exposed, so they redid it with fewer bends.  It seemed to help the furnace stay on, but of course by that point the winds had also died down a little.  It remains to be seen if it was enough of an improvement to make it through the next windstorm.  In the meantime, I'm leaving the wind break up just in case. 

In spite of that, I did find some time for some projects not related to combating the elements.  A couple weeks ago, I thought it would be a neat idea to make a Christmas ornament that represents my major project for the year.  I set out to make a Power Wheels Bigfoot to represent 2009, a Caterpillar Ten for 2010 and a John Deere 110 for 2011.  I got the Bigfoot and 110 done, but am still working on the Ten.  I also did a few more Monster Jam trucks.  I still haven't sold all the ones I have been putting up since October, but since I already had the materials I thought I would use them up by doing some new trucks.  The first one from the new batch is already on Ebay, and has a bid, so maybe I just needed to freshen up my offerings to spark some interest. 

Last Minute Shopping/Shipping

The Christmas/Year-End rush is certainly in full swing.  It seems everyone is trying to finish up their Christmas shopping, wrap up projects for the year, and get ready for time with family.  Today is supposed to be the busiest shipping day for the Post Office.  I think last Saturday has to be a close second.  I have never seen the line so long at the Post Office.  It didn't help that several people just brought their items loose and were purchasing boxes and packing them right at the counter.  Thank goodness for Click-and-Ship.  One of my best investments ever was a postal scale.  By having accurate weights, I can print my own postage (which is actually cheaper than paying it at the post office) and just drop the boxes off without waiting in line. 

Of course the reason for being at the post office was my Ebaying.  A couple weeks ago I thought the Smokey and the Bandit semi gravy train was coming to an end.  Several other sellers started to get into the act, and prices started to come down.  Then, surprisingly, the competition faded away just as quickly as it arrived.  Demand continues to be strong, so I bought the last four trucks I could find and made one last batch.  The last few days I have entered a new phase, the people that just have to have one for their son and can't wait for the auction to end or they won't get it in time for Christmas.  I always prefer setting some minimum price and letting the bidders decide what something is worth.  Setting a selling price for something someone's kid "just has to have" is never easy. 

When it appeared the Bandit semi sales were going to taper off, I tried to think of a new, unique way to tap into that market.  The Trans-Am has been mass-produced several times, the custom truck market is getting a little too crowded, so what is left?  Why the police cars of course.  One toy project that has been simmering on a far back burner for a while was to complete my "set" with police cars from the different scenes in the movie.  Yes, I am that big of a geek.  In the past year or so, someone has finally made a toy of the correct, late-70's dodge sedan that played such a big role in the Dukes and Bandit police forces.  So, I decided to finally complete that project, and while I am at it, make a couple extra sets to sell.  Much like the last time I took on a big, multi-car project, this one did get a little laborious, but I was happy with the results. The first set I sold easily covered my expenses, but didn't attract the bidding attention I had hoped it would.  Well, they can't all be the home runs that the semis are.

 

Of course it's important not to get too wrapped up in all the rush,  so we've been trying to take time with the boys to make some good holiday memories too. We got rained out of our annual Festival of Lights Parade tradition, but started a new one by taking to the boys to see Santa at Bass Pro.  L still isn't so sure about Santa, but N sat on his lap like a big boy.  L was more intrigued by climbing up on the boats  and checking them out.  We also enjoyed the big fish tanks and trying the shooting range with Grandpa N.  No got to see Santa again when we took him to the Polar Express experience at Wildlife Prairie Park.  We got a sitter for L, so C got to go with N and I this year.  I think N really enjoyed it this year, not just for the Polar Express stuff, but also because he got mommy and daddy all to himself for a night.