Why I Oughta...

Just a few days ago, I posted about the progress being made in the construction of my #newoldworkshop down in the basement.  I shared a photo of the wall being framed in here .  Today, you can see the door installed and the sheetrock attached to the outside of the framing.  If you look closely, you'll also see the dust vent up near the top of the framing.  The door on the right is the door to our "Christmas Closet" and was already built by our builder's team.  As I mentioned in the post outlining all the 'to do's' for my shop , I used an exterior door with weather seal to keep the dust contained.  I'm also planning on painting the walls in the shop to brighten up the space and lay down some of that epoxy garage floor coating to spif the place up.  And, I've been reading up on dust collection systems including this one from GeekBea t.  I like his ducting/routing/termination system.  But, I'm thinking of going a different route in terms of

We have had a few new visitors to our feeders recently and they're all colored gold.  Or yellow.  They're American Goldfinches and you can see one of them in the photo above.  We have both - what I think are - males and females.  Males with a much more striking gold and the females with their winter plumage.  I snapped the photo above out of kitchen windows one morning recently.  And we knew what it was immediately.  But we went to the Field Guide anyway.  Here's the listing for the American Goldfinch below: The one you see above is at our squirrel-proof feeder that I've filled with thistle seed.  Let's call this one the fifth species that we've documented as part of our [ backyard bird visitor's log ] here on the blog. The other four from this Winter/Spring: Red-bellied woodpecker House Sparrow Male and Female Cardinals White-breasted Nuthatch

Today marks the beginning of my 40th trip around the Sun and as such, it seems like an appropriate time to ponder the state of the blog.  Yeah...I'm a blogger.  And have been so for more than 14 years.  I have the archives to prove it !  I started with the JoinCross Blog and then RhodesSchool and have been settled in here at "Why I oughta" on my personal domain for more than a decade.  And now with more than 3,000 individual posts, I've left behind quite a bit of digital and personal brick-a-brack over the years - especially with a handful of recent one-post-per-day-every-day years.  I'm on track to keep up the one-post-per-day for 2018, too. Like a lot of you guys, I've read a bunch of the 'is blogging dead' pieces like this one, but a few have stuck out and I feel are worth sharing to talk about the place of a personal blog in the face of publishing platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram what-have-you.  Now...I'm on Facebook a

After months of planning and thinking and posting about my eventual workshop, we finally have progress:  the wall that divides the rest of our basement with my shop is getting installed.  In the photo above, you can see the wall being framed and the steel door - an exterior door - installed.  On the right side of the photo - through the framing - you can see the existing stairs and banister coming down from the first floor.  In the middle of the room, you can see an existing door/wall that built out by our builder to contain the mechanical room.  They used a steel, exterior door on the mechanical room, so we replicated that with the door for my shop.  They're going to be so close, so it was important for them to match. Right after the wall framing is done, drywall is going on the outside, but I'm going to leave the inside unfinished.  I'm still planning on cutting in a spot for a vent ( see here for inspiration ) and stuffing the joist cavities with insulation so we ca

Back in Mid-March, I posted about some dahlia tubers and Elephant Ear bulbs that I picked up at Menards.  Along with the kids, I ended up planting some of them in this big terracotta pot and got it started early in our dining room (which gets the most southern exposure).  In the photo above, you can see the early shoots emerging from the soil.  This is two Firebird semi-cactus dahlias and one Elephant ear bulb that make up the three plants you see.  As I've said before here on the blog, I've had very little luck with dahlias, so these are hopeful signs for this gardener.  Once we get past the freeze/frost date this Spring, I'll move this pot outside to the back patio so it can get full sunlight.  I'll also add some 'spill' to the pot once the garden centers start to have their annuals to fill out the pot.

That title is full of a bunch of jargon - when it comes to collecting action figures.  The "MOC" means "Mint on Card" and that's the way I'd describe this WWF Wrestling Superstar Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake.  But, why am I posting this?  Welp, it is because that Brutus, along with a more than dozen of his brethren are down in my basement.  All in boxes and still mint in their packaging/on their cards - unlike the set of wrestlers that I played with like this Nikoli Volkoff that I posted a few years back . There are stories about kids in the early 80's going hog wild on their Star Wars figures from Kenner.  I mean...there's even that documentary series on Netflix all about the toys.  But, I was born in 1978, so I was too young for the early Star Wars stuff.  But, I wasn't too young for the 80's-version of GI Joes.  And I loved them.  But, they aren't my 'toy touchstone' when it comes to my youth.  Nope.  It was thes

I've posted a few times about our plan to add some European Hornbeams to the side yard alongside of our screened porch to provide some privacy from our neighbor's house.  In the photo above, you see the run of fence that will soon be lined with some 2.5" caliper trees.  You can go back to this post to see the drawing of where they are located , but they're going to cling to the fenceline and, I hope, peek over the top of the fence.  In the photo above, you can also see the grade difference with the porch on the left being a good four or five feet above where the bottom of the fence is located.  Once these trees mature a bit, they'll end up growing into a hedge of sorts ( like this ) and we'll be able to enjoy the screened porch without looking at our neighbors smoking cigarettes on their back stoop.  With April here, I'm just waiting word from the landscaper as to when these trees can be dug up and planted in our yard.  I took this photo a few week