the Life of Zim

Balck Walnut

So we’re building a coffee table. We’ve been needing a coffee table for some time now. We’ve talked about building one for a while but haven’t really looked too much into it because of costs. Instead we’ve been keeping our eyes open at garage sales and antique stores with no luck… until this weekend. We stopped into a small antique-type furniture store while scouring the city for garage sales and found this amazing wood coffee table that was damn near exactly what we’ve been looking for. Only problem? Too expensive. So in true Dan and Laura fashion this spawned a whole new quest for the day without really discussing or giving much thought to the idea: let’s build a table. Not like it’s a bad idea, but before we knew it we were searching around for lumber yards all over town and trying to get the wood of our coffee table dreams within a reasonable price.

The Inspiration

We have a basic design in mind and have a pretty damn good idea of how we’re going to build the table, but finding the correct lumber turned out to be more difficult than we’d anticipated. We called a few friends and did some searching around online and found a few places that looked like promising candidates for lumber. The first place was The Rebuilding Center, a truly awesome and true to Portland form warehouse with tons and tons of old used lumber. Mostly doors and window frames, but also a hole lot of 2x4s and spare lumber everywhere. This is where we got our legs. We had a pretty good idea of what we were looking for, which were some thick 6×6 pieces of hardwood to make the legs from. Luckily we were able to find some more moderately priced pieces that will work quite well. I’m not exactly sure what kind of wood it is, but we’re thinking Cedar. The important part is that they’ll make great big heavy legs for our table.

(bottom-left) 4' and 3' 6x6 Legs
(top-right) 2x14 slabs for the top of the table

Today was the real big treat though. Laura found this place online that’s just outside of the city in the burbs. This guy built his own wood kiln and has been collecting lumber from all around Portland and selling it out of his house. He’ll find someone (on Craig’s List for instance) trying to get rid of an old tree somewhere around town, send his guys to collect the wood and then mill it, air dry it in his back yard, and finally “cook” it in his kiln for three months to fully dry out the wood and then prepare and sell it off to folks like us. He had a ton of really gorgeous wood there. Probably more impressive that there were so many more natural cuts of wood there. Most of it was like a cross section of the tree. Really neat guy.

We told him what were were doing and around the sizes we were looking for and he found three pieces that were really perfect for us. The wood had a bit of a twist in it so he planed them for us as well as he could — there’s a slight twist in the boards yet; hopefully we’ll be able to get away with not having to correct them. He also gave us a bunch of tips and ideas for finishes. And the pieces of wood he gave us are really spectacular. I really think it’s going to add that extra piece of character that’ll turn this project from something fun and something we like, to something we truly love. I’ve still have to make a trip to the hardware store to get some tools and hardware to put the thing together, but the important stuff is in our hands, which feels great. The table’s going to be a real beast when were done with it. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if all the wood weighed 80-100 lbs. As a reference, the leg with the red paint in the picture is about 48″ tall. It’s really going to be a beautiful project and we’re pretty damn excited to get working on it.

Well I’ve been fighting this cold for a good week and a half now. I have no idea what this thing is, but it’s merciless. It started out as a sore throat. Then developed into this respiratory hacking, then a cough, and now I have no idea what it is. I’m coughing a third of the time, stuffed up a quarter of the time and exhausted half the time. It just doesn’t make any damn sense. It’s the most inconsistent cold I’ve ever had. And worst of all, Tony’s been sick with something similar for nearly 6 weeks now. So assuming I’ve got the same thing, it still might be a while until I’m over it. For the most part I’ve felt okay during the daytime, but nights and mornings I start coughing and I’ve been waking up with the worst sore throat ever. It’s like a nasal infection, but then goes away after I’ve been up for an hour. Just plain odd.

We’ll that’s about as exciting as my weeks gotten so far. Really just blogging about being sick because I haven’t got anything else. However, I did get N64 off ebay this week. I still haven’t gotten it yet, and I’m sure I’ll be writing more when I do. Pretty pumped for it. I’m not exactly sure if it’s more the nastalgia factor or the fact the N64 is one the greatest systems, but I’m really excited for Mario Kart, Zelda and Golden Eye plus a few other’s I’ve got coming in the mail.

Anyway, that’s about as exciting as my weeks gotten so far. Weather has cooled off since the weekend which is too bad, but hopefully it’ll be back soon. Although its a lot nicer sleeping in 60 degree weather compared to 80 degree weather.

This past week we’ve had my mom here for a visit, and it’s really been quite a trip. The weather has been phenomenal. Yesterday it was 82 all day, which is really even hot for Portland. And there I pretty much haven’t seen in cloud in about 4 days. Only downfall is that I’ve been pretty damn sick most of the time. Nothing that I haven’t been able to survive, but I’ve had this nasty head cold that just won’t seem to go away. Feel like my head is going to cave in in the morning and evening, but during the day it’s been clearing up (pretty well, at least). Mostly just low energy. Anyway, enough whining.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend. Probably the best pictures we’ve had since we’ve been out here simply due to how clear the weather has been.

The weekend started out with Laura and I driving up to Seattle to pick up my mom from Tony’s place. We really only had time to spend the night in Seattle, which was really too bad, but we want to be sure to have a chance to show Mom around Portland a bit.

West Coast brothers with a West Coast Mom?

On Saturday began making our way down the Washington/Oregon coast – Canon Beach and Manzanita were the main attractions.

Canon Beach

Outlook over Manzanita

On the drive down 101

Another view of Manzanita

Watching the Sunset in Manzanita

In Portland, probably the most exciting thing we did was seeing the Japanese Garden and Rose Garden in Washington Park. No roses in bloom yet, but still beautiful.

View over Portland with Mt Hood

Portland in Bloom

Such a photogenic city.

Simply beautiful.

In the Japanese Garden of Portland

Rock Garden

And on top of all of this yesterday was Laura’s birthday. She was pretty well blissed with a trip to Multnomah Falls and an afternoon massage.

At Multnomah Falls

The Bridge at Multnomah Falls

And of course, Multnomah Falls.

We ended the day with salmon and cake.

Salmon and Taters

28!?!

Well this past weekend was damn near perfect, which has been very well deserved by Laura and I as we’ve been putting in some pretty excessive hours over the past few weeks. This was the first weekend in a while that we didn’t have to work and all, and the weather gods must have had us in their favor. The weekend was filled with blue skies and temps high 60s, low 70s. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right.

So what did we do with our free weekend? Biked. Here’s the route.
I had a few errands I’d wanted to run around town and so we hoped on our bikes and started the journey. We decided o start out with some fuel and went to the Little Red Bicycle which is this amazing neighborhood cafe about a mile from our house. They’re only only until 2pm and closed on Mondays, which I constantly want to scold them about, but they make some of the best damn sandwiches on the planet. Fried egg with caramelized onions on ciabatta? Hells yeah. So we got some deats and headed out for the long haul. I’d wanted to get to this bike shop in South Portland to get a new rear wheel so I could gear one of my bikes; Portland has a lot more hills than Minneapolis. We decided to go the route of Willamette which is always an awesome view and winded down Greeley Ave, past Adidas (which is a really ugly building) proceeded by a HUGE hill that was quite a bit of fun to ride down.

This part of the ride I think really sums up what I love about Portland. The roads we were on were really quite large roads, with on ramps to the highway (which we had to cross over) and times really almost felt like we were riding on the shoulder of a four lane highway. The whole time we were in our bike lane and felt no danger from traffic what-so-ever. I think it’s truly commendable how much the city pays attention to bicyclists and makes them feel safe throughout the city. In Minneapolis it’s a lot easier to feel like a nuance to drivers that are obviously more important than god. Long story short, you can bike damn near ANYWHERE in Portland and you’re welcomed. Cars stop and let you pass before they make a right hand turn. People are just more considerate.

Steel Bridge from the floating dock

From our massive hill and highway we came across the riverfront and road along this floating dock on the opposite side of downtown Portland from the Willamette. The eeriest part was that we hadn’t realized we were floating at all until we were about halfway down the dock. It’s basically this boardwalk that runs along the river about 40ft from the coast. It was pretty damn beautiful.

And on we went to City Bikes. There are actually two “City Bikes”, one with the sub-name of Annex. I was looking for a used bike parts story and wasn’t quite sure which one was which, so we stopped at both. I’m pretty sure it’s the same shop with two locations. I think City Bikes Annex is the spoiled little sister, and City Bikes is the ugly older brother. We were looking of for the ugly brother.

New Wheel from City Bikes

The Annex was nice though. They had a cool upstairs with a bunch of used bikes. Saw an old tandem that was about the same as the one I have from home that needs rebuilding. Thinking about buying the one they had for the parts or see if I can make a deal for the parts I need. It’s a really crappy tandem either way, but pretty sure they only wanted $200 for it. Anyway… made it to the right shop and scored a new rear wheel and cassette. The cassette was really nice, but super dirty. Just caked with mud and grime, but about an hour on Sunday later and it was spit shined to perfection. And away we went.

Our next stop was at this great park that Laura knew of in the area, Laurelhurst Park. Apparently it was designed by the same guy that designed Central Park and Golden Gate Park. It was pretty sweet. We walked through the part with it’s lines of furs and lake and plopped down for rest and so I had a change to return a phone call to my mom.

Continuing on we stopped on our way to Mississippi Ave at this super awesome little bar on Failing and Williams called the 5th Quadrant. Played some Connect Four, which Laura totally kicked my ass at, had a couple drinks and some food, and continued on our way. Most of the rest of the trip was just our ride home. All in all, we started biking around 1pm and didn’t get back home until about 7pm. In my mind a damn near perfect day. That evening we biked to a friends house for a bond fire and had pretty relaxed day on Sunday that started out with home made pancakes. It was an awesome weekend.

*** WARNING:***
Some people my find the following content and links thereof offensive. If so, grow up.

So it may or may not be common knowledge that I absolutely HATE Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Having the profession of creating websites, I have the unique opportunity (relatively speaking) to see how jacked up IE really is. For people that don’t know, Microsoft basically insists on using its own standard in terms of reading web content, and refusing to use every other standard adopted by every other web browser out there. They don’t do it because they feel their standards are the best, they do it to bully the market and drive programmers insane. Anyone who endorses IE is simply a jackass and I hate them. So, now that we all know where I stand on Internet Explorer…

Today my buddy Conor sent me this link. And being an avid hater of IE I absolutely loved it. My boss and I were actually joking this past week about how we should redirect people with IE6 & IE7 to a “Go F*** Yourself and Your Internet Explorer” page for the site we’re currently working on. Why? Because to get things to show up correctly in IE is like teaching an infant to juggle. It’s a very delicate and frustratingly annoying process. Why do it when you could just as easily tell someone to piss off? So here’s a small taste of the link, but I high suggest checking them all out if you despise Internet Explorer or just crapped your pants.