Rose’s Birthday
As you all know, last week was Rose’s birthday. So I came to visit her, and brought her main present with me: a 27″x51″ 1/4″ thick piece of glass so that we could finally build our display coffee table to put our awesome beads in. More on that later.
So I work a gig before I leave. In the first band, the drummer tells me his name is Pete. I tell him mine is Jeff. He says, oh, my middle name is Jeffrey. I say wow, my last name is Peters. !! The main, I guess, technical contact for the other band was named Chuck, which was my grandpa’s name. Then when the show’s over, I go home, pack the car, and leave. Now, there are some interesting thoughts you have as you drive at 3/4/5* in the morning after getting not-enough sleep the day before, and only having an hour nap. (* I noticed that I kind of went through 3 time zones while driving. Central Standard Time changed to Central Daylight Time, which then changed to Eastern Daylight Time, so I really time traveled that night.) As I was listening to “It’s All Been Done” by Barenaked Ladies, I started thinking, what if it HAS all been done? Jeff Peters? Pete Jeffrey? Chuck? Now, let me say here, I’ve, at different points in my life for different reasons, been called “Chuck” because of some similarity to my grandpa. Let me also say that Chuck’s wife’s name was, what else, Rose. And finally in this Lost-esque backstory, without going into too much detail, for those of you who don’t know, I’ll tell you that, before they died, they were both in the hospital, my grandma about to be released, my grandpa, who had been there like 2 months, maybe not so much. He passed, then within a matter of minutes, she did as well. It’s like he went upstairs to get her, we always said. So what if “Chuck” and Rose is some kind of continuance of Chuck and Rose? I know. Crazy, right?
And then another thought. There’s this guy, Randy, who was in this band, Zama Para, who recently passed (lots of death in this blog apparently). Read about him here. I wonder if all these “good die young” instances are because they’re actually angels on furlough, or something like that? I’ve actually considered something along those lines ever since The UnNatural episode of The X-Files. Angels, aliens, maybe the same thing? Hm.
Ok, good. Godaddy’s hosting control panel is finally back up, so I can upload these pictures of THE TABLE!!!
Yeah, on to happier things!
We’ve been wanting to build this table for a while now, but a) we had a lot of other house projects to work on, b) rose would be the main one building it and when would she have time, and c) we wanted to use glass instead of an acrylic sheet like the instructions called for, and that’s not exactly cheap, and has to be ordered, so we just kept putting it off. But with 95% of those projects done, and some time to work on it, and it being her birthday and all, I decided to finally get it.
So I gave her the glass when I showed up Sunday, cuz I didn’t wanna drive around with it in my car until Tuesday. Then Saturday we went and bought all the wood and stuff we needed. We actually lucked out because we found some wood for the frame around the glass that was already like we wanted it, and we didn’t need to use the router we borrowed. (Yeah I kept thinking about the internet thing every time she said router.) We borrowed another drill because there was a lot of drilling going on, and to buy another battery for my drill was just as much as buying a new drill, so between mine and the one we borrowed (that came with an extra battery and charger), we got what we needed done without having to waste a lot of time waiting for my drill to recharge.
I give Rose most of the credit for building this. I mean, I drilled some holes and screwed in some screws, and held it in place when necessary, but she did all the sawing and designing, etc, probably using all her surgery skills. And it came out pretty darn awesome.
So enough of my blabbing. Here it is already!
First, here’s how the dogs felt when we were “ignoring” them to build the table:
Making the “apron” of the table (I’m still waiting for it to cook us something):
Design notes and some tools:
Some wood, the legs, and some misc stuff not used in the project (unless you consider me blowing all the dirt and sawdust out of the garage with the blower the day after):
Math in action! (to cut the angles for the frame):
Making the frame for the glass:
A more complete “apron,” some tools, and Scrabble (also not a part of this project, but almost was when we thought we were gonna need to kill some time before the other drill showed up):
Jump ahead a little bit: base of table built, now being stained:
More staining:
And finally, the finished product!
The Endymion guy is happily celebrating with his Jameson (totally unintentional the way those landed, or so Rose says):
Yup, give 99% of the credit to Rose. Yeah, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’d never be able to pull this off. But I can make computers come back from the dead, and make a band on stage sound good, so I’m perfectly content with that. 🙂
