DIY Garage Storage Project: Proslat Slatwall

Ever since we moved into our house two plus years ago, I have wanted to improve the look and utility of our garage.  My garage is a little unique because I have garage doors in the front and back  which means I lose a wall and ceiling worth of storage space.  So I needed a solution that would maximize the wall space I do have.

I decided to install some Proslat Slatwall  across the barren south wall that is on the opposite side of my work area. Slatwall comes in a variety of kit packages.  The wall I want to cover is  approximately 21 x 8 ft  so in order to do that, I needed:

• (4) 8×4 panel kits
• (2) 4×4 panel kits

Luckily, Woot.com had a sale in which they were selling  2 sets of 8′ x 4′ wall panels with 20-piece hook kit and 5-piece shelf & basket kit for  $278.99, which comes to $139.50 per panel kit.   (Disclosure: neither Proslat, Woot or Overstock have paid me or provided me anything to write this review.)

It’s a little hard to do an apples-to-apples price comparison because other places sell these bundles with different amount of hooks & baskets, but as an example for illustrative purposes, Home Depot sell just the one 8×4 panel kit for $149 .  The 20 piece combo kit is $199, so you pretty much know this is already a deal, relatively speaking.

Ordering two sets (4 panel kits) from Woot gets me 4/5 of the wall.  On Overstock.com 2 Proslat Charcoal 16 square foot Heavy Duty Slatwall Organizer costs $158.98 after $15 discount on Overstock and I believe I got free shipping because the order was over a certain dollar amount.

Costs
Woot

(2) 8×4 sets    $557.98
Shipping             $5.00
Tax                   $35.19
$598.17

Overstock

(2) 4×4 sets      158.98
total                 757.15

so total cost of the wall is $757.15 (and some craft beer and gourmet burgers from Leadbelly )

 

  There are cheaper options out there and when everything arrived I did have a moment of buyer’s remorse, especially after the credit card bill.  But once we got the panels up, it looked pretty cool so I’m okay with my birthday present to myself.  Take a look.

[placegallery]

It took a friend and me all afternoon to put them up.  The learning curve on these things is high and the directions lack a lot of instructions.  That’s probably because there are many different ways you could implement these panels.

You always know how you should have done it after it is done and if I had to do this again, I would have insisted that we get  both cars out of the garage and lay all the piece down flat parallel to the wall they were going up.  Alas, what’s done is done and it is just a garage after all.

(Disclosure: neither Proslat, Woot or Overstock have paid me or provided me anything to write this review.)

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I feel naked without my wedding ring

I’m so pissed off right now.  My wedding ring has been missing since May 13 and it’s totally my fault. When I get home, the first thing I usually do is change out of my work clothes, and place my wedding ring on the wing of this Archangel Michael statue I was given as an RCIA present 15 years ago.

However, this particular Wednesday I decided to continue working on something in the garage.  I figured Nightingale would be home any minute so I might as well wait for her and help unload Moose & Squirrel from the car.  Let me emphasize that.  The chaos that is our life today thanks to having two 8 month old kids who require constant attention and holding caused me to make the evaluation that I couldn’t spare 5 precious minutes to change out of my work clothes and put away my wedding band like I usually do.  Yes, I love my kids.  They are gifts from heaven though I’m fairly certain Hell handled the shipping & handling.

It feels so weird not having the ring on my finger.  Yes I often take it off when I’m working out or doing some chores around the house that require using power tools.  Or if there is a chance I could lose the ring say during garden work, then I take it off.  And I usually take it off in the evening because it seems like my hands swell a little at the end of the day.  But I always put it on that statue.

I have a vague memory of removing my ring and putting it in my pocket because I was working with a drill.  However, that memory – of putting it in my pocket — could just be a vestigial remnant of  some other memory since I do that all the time.  Yes I know that vestigial and remnant are synonyms and thus redundant.  That’s just how pissed off I am: I’m breaking grammar rules!

Because we are currently so sleep deprived, it is getting harder to function.  That means some things just don’t get written to hi memory in our brain.  Nightingale will ask “what time did we feed Moose & Squirrel last night” and I honestly cannot remember.  It might have been 2 am.  Or that could have been two days ago.

So it is quite plausible that the memory of putting my ring in my pocket is days or weeks old.  Just an old memory file that was accessed when I asked my brain to search on “where is my ring’.

Update:  the ring has been found!  This morning I selected the pants I wore two weeks ago and it fell out of it.  Now I not only checked these pants pockets a hundred times, but all the pants pockets of all my clothes.  That the ring didn’t fall out in the last two weeks leads me to come to the only logical conclusions it could be:  either ghosts or time travel is involved.  Or perhaps writing about the ring (this post was sitting in my draft folder awaiting the final edits) cause the cosmic tumblers of the universe to shift.  Imma gonna hedge my bets and say ghosts are still involved somehow.

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Are you running the Soldier Field 10? Some potential race strategy and situations to consider

Julia at Lipsticks, Lollipops & Life wrote a post the other day that got me thinking about a situation a lot of runners find themselves in when they run a race with a friend.  What do you do if, during the race, one of you is having a rough time?  Do you stay together or leave them in the dust?

Two good looking old geezers

Say you and your friend are running a marathon and at Mile 20 she is struggling but you have a legitimate shot at a BQ, or at least a new PR then you absolutely must abandon her for the greater good: your ego.

Now that same scenario with a little twist.  You are doing okay but you’re out of shot for a BQ, a new PR is even questionable and you really would just like to finish strong.  In that case, it’s probably better to slow down and stay with  your friend.

If your friend is genuinely hurt as opposed to just sucking wind, then all bets are off.  Leaving someone behind at a closed course large race like the Chicago Marathon is certainly different than the Martina Marathon in Whereverville, Idaho.  And doing it at a shorter distance like a 5K is vastly different than abandoning someone in the first half of  a half marathon.

This is something you absolutely should try to work out before the race started.

There are a myriad of different combinations, permutations and degrees for the above scenarios and no one size fits all rule. This is something you absolutely should try to work out before the race started.

It isn’t always an easy thing to bring up.  Maybe you signed up together or during your marathon training you discovered you are both running the same 10K that weekend. You’re thinking that it will be cool to have someone to chat with during the race just like your Long Runs and maybe grab brunch afterwards.  You’re not thinking negative thoughts of bad race performance or burn out.

There’s a time to be a Selfish Runner and there is a time to be a Selfless Runner.  It boils down to what is the significance of the race and what are you trying to accomplish with it?  It is not necessary a bad thing to want to finish a race strong and not be held back by your friend.  Especially if they wouldn’t do the same if the running shoes were on the other foot.

You may be further along in your running career than your friend and you really want to beat last year’s time for that course.  But then you have to ask yourself, Does beating last year’s time by three seconds mean more than catching up with your buddy during some dumb turkey trot 5K?

2012 Soldier Field 10

Race Strategy for the SF10

using a 1:20 finish time as an example here are three examples of how you could run the Soldier Field 10 if you are an 8 minute per mile pace runner.  Adjust your time accordingly.

Option1:  a steady 8MM pace for 10 miles

Option2:  start out slower, say 8:30 mm for 5 miles than bump up to 7:30 mm for the last 5 (or 8:15/7:45)

Option3:  start out faster, run 7:30 mm for 5 miles than drop back to 8:30 for the last 5 miles

In theory all three get you to the same place.  But I can tell you that the first two will have you feeling much better at the finish line than the last one.  If you think it sucks to fade out during the last mile of a race, think how much more it would suck to run 5 miles slower than your first.

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Birthdays that compete with holidays can sometimes suck

Last week was my birthday! That’s right, forty-something years ago the world received a bundle of sarcasm and cynicism, thus improving it exponentially. If you haven’t booked your cotton candy and fog machines in commemoration, there’s still time! [Or just help me get more likes on Facebook].

I’m always a bit hesitant to plan something for my birthday because it never quite lives up to my hyped up expectations. Then the day comes along and I wish I or someone had planned something. Schizophrenic, much?

Historically, my birthday usually collides with Mother’s Day. For the most part, I take it in stride when a friend will not cannot join for a birthday drink or dinner because of Mother’s Day.  Every seven years or so Mother’s Day is on the opposite weekend but apparently, it’s still a conflict for some.  I’m used to it because in college my birthday usually fell during midterms or finals — depending on which university I was at —  so finding anyone willing to go out and do anything was tricky.

The mother of all Birthday-Holiday Collisions: a late December birthday has been ruined for the last 2000 years because of that Christ Kid.

When I was a much younger bundle of raw nerves, it use to bother me that my friends wouldn’t figure out a way to celebrate my birthday without sacrificing their family obligations.  Especially when my friends whose birthdays fall on the other eleven months of the year expect me to be available for them  (what do you mean you’re having emergency triple by-pass surgery, it’s my 5th anniversary of turning 35!)

It isn’t just May of course. June has Father’s Day, which doesn’t have as good of a PR effort as Mother’s Day.

October has Halloween, February has Valentine’s Day and the mother of all collisions: a late December birthday has been ruined for the last 2000 years because of that Christ Kid.

I’m pretty sure no one has any big Arbor Day plans though and Flag Day celebrations are a morning thing mostly.  But essentially, there is some holiday almost every month of the calendar year and chances are you or one of your friends goes through this unasked for competition between the date of their birth and some holiday,  Hallmark or otherwise.

I’ve gotten over it for the most part. This year we didn’t do anything special because we have seven-month-old twin bundles of joy that make getting a sitter tricky and costly. I’m not saying you should tell mom or dad to go take a hike.  I’m just suggested that you can still acknowledge it in some way instead of making them feel like an asshole for having the audacity to be born on the same weekend as Thanksgiving. (Those raw nerves still flare up from time to time).

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Getting It Off Your Chest: Not being a Good Friend Indeed

Recently, some friends have reached out to me about a Life Achievement they were about to unlock.  Let’s just say I was less than supportive.  I mean I did answer thier questions and gave the token “if it were me, this is what I would do” responses.  But I just could not garner any excitement or connection in their unlocking this important life event.

The reason:  because when I was unlocking this very same Life Achievement, they not only didn’t muster any support or empathy for me, but were about as interested in it as Dan Savage is interested in a vagina.

Let me provide some context.  The Life Achievementt in question, while awesome once it is completed, can be a grueling order when you are on the front end of it.  It’s usually not until you complete that you can breathe happily.

So when I was going through it, I didn’t expect my friends to have any sage advice on how to handle a situation they had never experienced before.  But I did expect to have full access to there listening muscles so that I could vent about the frustrating roadblocks or rant about the archaic processes and draconian rules that the industry involved insist upon.

One of the things I bring to the table is I’m a very good listener. I seldom interrupt when someone is telling a story — unless I’ve heard if for the 586th time  — but this does not come free. If I’m going to listen to your drivel and BS, I expect you to return the favor.

(Image courtesy of Bill Underwood)

Same Train Line, Different Station

While you are unique, everybody goes through a lot of the same things in life.  It’s often just a question of when we get there. That’s why it’s important to pay attention when our friends are going through a particular patch or life milestone.  Maybe they are getting married and you ….   Maybe they are buying their first home and you are still a renter.  You may think that you will never buy a house yourself but  I can assure you that if you don’t listen to them now, if you change your mind and decide

So the point of this post is to get it off my chest but also apologize to my friends for not being there for them in their moment of need even though it didn’t seem like they were available for me when the shoe was on the other foot.

 

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Crowdsourcing Fail: Help or get the Fuck out of the way

Sometimes in my Facebook Feed, I see someone asking their friends a question or a plea for help and all the helpful responses touch me.  I’m also saddened that I don’t seem to have normal healthy well-adjusted friends like that.

Crowdsourcing, for those who don’t know, is when you are saying “Dear World, I know that I could research this myself.  But I’m wagering more than one of you already has and if I could simply learn from your effort we’d both benefit: I’d save me time and you’d get that attaboy feeling of Flourishing Returns.”

In fact, I’m pretty sure Crowdsourcing is derived from some ancient dead language term that means help or gets the fuck out of the way.

From time to time I post a Crowdsourcing Question (CSQ) on Facebook and find that the majority of the responses are my friends practicing their stand-up routines.  Usually, there are some helpful nuggets in between the snarky comments and it makes for a fun afternoon.

The other day I posted a CSQ and I didn’t expect much help because it was a very narrow request that only a small number of people could help me with.  But the instructions were very simple.

I asked if anyone could help, please DM me.  I didn’t want to discuss all the morbid juicy detail on my public feed.  The implication being that If you cannot help me, feel free to skip to the next status update about cute kitten videos or what someone had for lunch at Trendy Resto of the Week.

Luckily I did have one friend who not only followed the simple instructions but was able to help me find what I needed.  and for that I’m thankful.  Yet the responses I got fell into the following categories:

• Clarification questions posted on my status.  Okay, I can allow those since it is easier to type where you see than to make the effort to bang out a DM. because life is hard for people who can afford $600 smartphones.
• A request for me to DM the other person because Chicks just cannot message a guy even in a non-romantic scenario.
• The classic doofus who wants credit for helping out without actually lifting a finger to do anything.

This last animal is the one that really gets my goat.  Some people really enjoy the rush of helping someone out.  Some people merely enjoy the appearance of being the person who helps out everyone without actually providing any tangible help.  Sometimes it’s because they chose the one type of help that doesn’t require them to get off the sofa.

Other times it is because some people want to get the credit for helping out without doing any of the actual work.  Even when the level of effort to help out is far less than the effort of looking like you’re helping out.

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Ashes of Baltimore: A conversation we need to have

The following is a Guest Post from Bill Underwood, a good friend, high school classmate, and fellow marathoner. Bill posted this on his Facebook status hours after the media reported protesting turned to rioting in Baltimore. I asked his permission to post it here as well.

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Last night when Baltimore erupted into looting and violence, I wasn’t angry anymore, it was just sad.

More fallout from Ferguson, Mo. Another dead Black man, and no answers. Cops doing the same procedures for generations, and now they have to answer to them. A group of African Americans at the brink and ready to destroy what they worked for in Baltimore.

What I was watching a tragedy.  An American Tragedy. A disaster many, many years in the making.  And with disasters of all types, there has to be a lot of working parts in order for them to build them into the horror they become. A lack of warning. Not taking it seriously, downplaying the danger, a lack of preparation.

And what you get a riot in an American City, a massive failure of all sides of society, the police, of the leaders of the city the mayor, the lack of understanding between poor and rich, black and white, a lack of perspective and history. A feeling of humiliation, a lack of education. Of understanding. Of Compassion. And a spark. The death of Freddy Gray.

And in these situations, everyone is right, and everyone is completely wrong. .

There were things that should have been said. Answers given, and promises to be kept were forgotten or ignored. Progress lost, people lost and forgotten. Mayors and leadership come and go. People exploited for votes for change that never comes or fear that never subsides.

And here we are. And an American city is burning itself to the ground. The National Guard has arrived. There are no quick answers and so many questions. So many we don’t know how we got here. We don’t know even where to start.

There has to be a point in time where we are going to look at each other as Americans and never be afraid not to ask the questions we need to ask. And we will feel glad we did. And we’ll know our neighbors and friends. And there will be no fear, but understanding. I hope this will happen soon. I hope every day.

I hope that will come out of the ashes of Baltimore.

Bill and me at the 2013 Polar Dash

 

Bill was recently interviewed for NPR’s story Fear Of Black Men: How Society Sees Black Men And How They See Themselves

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