Category: Things

The knives in our house were ridiculously dull, so I finally took took to the internet. YouTube did not fail*.

As with any varied collection of DIY videos, I was confronted with a conflicting advice that could have frozen me to inaction**. I could have been intimidated by my lack of good equipment. Fortunately, the knives were so dull I was forced to do something.

I grabbed our cheap stone*** and sharpened.

I started with 5 pounds of pressure**** on each side. Try putting that much pressure on a kitchen scale. No joke. Once a blade was back to mediocre, I ran descending passes (ten to one) on both sides of knife on both sides of the whetstone — 220 in total for this second phase.

Repeat that process for a house full of knives. My forearms were sore***** the next day.

But I had a meat cleaver that could cut paper******.

So over the top, but so satisfying******.

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*A basic search led to a beginner’s tutorial by Joshua Weissman, then warnings against beginner mistakes by Ethan Chlebowski, and finally in Burrfection’s extensive library.

**On the other hand, the algorithm fed me videos sharpening the silliest things, like a cardboard box. At least my knives were made of metal.

***Two years later and I’m still using our cheap whetstone. I should spend a $40 Japanese whetstone to see what I’m missing. But that would force me to buy at least one knife that cost as much as the stone…and that’s how the damn hedonic treadmill gets started.

****Burrfection recommends against putting so much weight on a knife while grinding. Pick your poison.

*****I now use my legs in an extremely shallow “bow and arrow stance” to shift my whole body back and forth, minimizing the effort in my arms. That’s about the extent of my martial arts now.

******After writing the initial draft, I chopped up a batch of bad apples for composting. Wow, the new knives were scary sharp. I didn’t notice the seeds as I sliced through the cores.

*******I sharpen the kitchen knives about every other month whenever my wife makes a big meat purchase from Costco. I don’t know how we lived years with such dull blades.

One thing my parents nailed was their Pareto Principle approach towards clothing. (If flashy isn’t the goal, 20% of the effort gets 80% of the results.)

As a man, it’s easy to be decent — button-down shirt, slacks, and dark non-sneaker shoes. That should work for anything outside of a wedding, job interview, funeral, or legislative hearing. (It’s also the most comfortable way to dress.)

I blend in by making sure I’m not the most underdressed guy in the room. If in doubt, I’ve got a cheap sports coat stashed in the trunk of my car, and I slap on a tie. (Yuck…Tuck in that darn shirt…Double Yuck.)

I wear the clothes until they wear out, and then I wear them around the house until they fall apart. Then I thank the rags and move on to the next Costco special or hand-me-down. (I recently got a haul from my retired uncle.)

It’s not minimalism. (It’s a lot easier.)

We’ve been a couple of weeks away from camping, for years.

Last year, we slept in the backyard to test the tent, the sleeping bags, and pads, and stayed properly indoors for the rest of summer.

The year before, we spent Memorial Day weekend testing the kampMATE firebox. It’s a simple contraption: five interlocking stainless steel plates that create a small wood cooktop.

On Friday, we learned that harnessing one of the four elements takes a learning curve! We’ve never cooked with fire before, so we wasted wood to boil water and scramble eggs.

My mother-in-law stepped in the next day. Unlike pampered Americans, she grew up cooking with coals. She danced between wood scraps and charcoal briquettes to build a proper fire. We stir-fried ground pork, added white beans, and stewed for an hour. We switched pots to cook rice. After the rice was cooked, we reheated the stew with cauliflower. It was a legitimate meal, but it took forever. We used 42 briquettes.

On Sunday, I started the fire using charcoal, paper, and dried leaves. We made a savory stew with stir-fried onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, and garbanzo beans. Surprisingly good; more surprising than good. The meal was supplemented with veggies and rice cooked in the house as the stew simmered for two hours. We used 20 briquettes.

We celebrated Memorial Day with an all-American chili. We filled the box with rocks to pushing the charcoal up to the pot. Unfortunately, the red beans were uncooperative and took hours to soften so it still took 20 briquettes.

We closed the long weekend buying a dutch oven from Home Depot. We planned one-pot meals by adding rice to the stews and watched outdoor bread baking videos.

The firebox spent the summer in the sun before moving permanently into the shed. (The dutch oven is a cast iron bread box on the kitchen island.)

Still, $25 was a cheap diversion for a long weekend.

I wonder when we’ll go camping, two weekends from whenever.

If brands are an emotional connection, this one grabbed me while laying buttery blacks on ED11A drawings during my freshman year at Berkeley.

A few months ago, my mom returned old pencils that I left with them after college. That night, my daughter was using this round burgundy pencil with a thick graphite core in the living room.

In spite of the two decade hiatus, a warm fuzzy feeling swept over me. I was surprised at the strength of the reaction.

It’s just a pencil.

What a fine pencil!

Unfortunately, Berol is no more.

What will be the nostalgia brands for our kids? 2056 is just around the corner.

䷇䷯

He’s got a crew neck; mine is a v-neck. Same difference.

The boy is wearing a white T this morning.

I like white T’s. It’s what I wear.

There’s nothing as cute as a little man dressed like 爸爸. Especially when you’re 爸爸.

(Actually, wrong. It was cuter when he was a baby in his sister’s pink onesies. Poor guy didn’t know any better while defying gender norms.)

He’s starting to get picky about his clothes. When he grows up, he’ll dress better than his daddy.

But for now, I’ll take him dressing like me.

The car moves when the steering bar is wiggled back and forth. This bar is connected to the front wheels and the ocillating rotation propels the car forward.

The boy didn’t grok the gimmick, but he enjoyed using his feet to scoot around the expansive tile open floor plan of my in-law’s house.

That was fun eough, but the car proved its value last summer.

Our daughter leapt off a dining chair and landed awkwardly.

Her foot swelled.

It didn’t warrant a doctor visit, but she had to stay off her feet.

We carried her around for a day before the epiphany hit us – we have is an arm powered locomotion device!

The kids loved this impromptu wheelchair. They would squeeze together to ride around the house. Sometimes she’d steer as he faced towards the back. Other times, he’d squeeze up in front to be the a taxi driver for his fare.

And that’s when he finally learned how to properly drive the plasma car.

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This was the last Offerup purchase we made before the world shut down in 2020. It was nice to get this toy on discount at offerup, but this would have been worth it at full price.

I wonder when we’ll start thrifting again.

I bought this pair on sale at the REI in Houston. I still have them now, so you can imagine how little use they got over the past ten years.

Last week, I started using them to walk around the neighborhood.

Then I realized I’d never gone off-road with these shoes. So I took a three-hour stroll in the hills behind my house.

The first thing I realized was that I was landing too hard on my heels instead of the ball of my foot. I had adjusted properly for the pavement, but the rocky texture of the trail needed an even lighter touch.

Over the past two years, we’ve spent most of my time at home barefoot. I’ve never been a fan of shoes and I always took them off when I could. In Berkeley, I would walk around town barefoot (youthful craziness), but it’s been a long time since I’ve walked around without padding.

The coolest thing about not having padding in my toe shoe was that it pushed me to go off-trail to look for softer ground. That lead to some interesting landscapes and a sketchy moment when I suddenly realized the top of the ridge was a sheer drop at the other side – while a bee was chasing me along!

But it all worked out OK. I have a slight bit of soreness under my feet but otherwise enjoyed the experience.

These shoes are a keeper. I’m not sure I’d pay full retail to purchase another pair, but after my current pair of Crocs wears out, these toe shoes will become my regular going-out slipper. In other words, they aren’t going to make it to twenty years.

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The Sunday after writing that draft, I went on a walk around the neighborhood. It was a busy day so I only planned a quick jaunt around the subdivision. However, my feet had an itch wanting to go off-road. So I obliged, spending a couple of hours off-trail, going up and then down a couple of arroyos. It was glorious.

It was fun to have an object on my body demand that it be used the way it was intended to be used (as a sword thirsty for blood). We make our tools, and sometimes they make us.