Activesteve.com is Born…

Wow, it’s hard to believe, but it’s been almost a year since I became an uncle (and subsequently Godfather) to the cute Helena Murielle Meyer! On Friday, April 13th, she’ll be one year old! So how exactly has all this changed me, you might wonder? Well, on the global scheme, I’d have to say that it hasn’t really changed me too much, but it has certainly added a bit of extra joy in my life! Of course, the group of you who have already jumped into parenthood are no doubt fully aware of this concept of new joy, but for a guy like me, well it’s a new experience. Anywho, to learn more about my thoughts and experiences one year into this gig, read on.

When Helena first arrived, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I suppose I thought that right away, I’d have a little niece to play with and be entertained by. Well, that really isn’t the case for the first few months. Each time I would go and visit Helena, invariably, it would basically just be a visit with Andrea and Patrick while Helena slept. The nice part about that was that Helena wasn’t too noisy or fussy. She was quite content to sleep away the time. She also wasn’t exactly growing at a very rapid pace. For quite a while, she stayed tiny, which had her mom and dad a little concerned. They had her on a rigourous diet, having her eat all the time pretty much. She started putting on a little weight, but was still at the bottom of the charts as far as size was concerned. But really, does that surprise anyone? Have a look at both parents, and tell me what you think?!

Thought I’d pop in another post on the progress being made on the bar front. Things have been going so slowly that I ended up actually taking a day off work to get some work done on this project! Actually, I had a ‘personal day’ that was going to expire if I didn’t use it by the end of the month so I figured it would give me a chance to get a little extra work done on the bar, not to mention get laundry and my taxes done! Pictured to the left here is my attempt at capturing what the oak pieces look like after two coats of stain and three coats of varnish. Shiny, isn’t it? What you see is the product of almost 2 weeks of effort. Every step takes me an evening, because you have to let the stain / varnish dry thoroughly before either sanding it or re-coating it. Plus, most of these pieces had to have both sides done, doubling the time! The good news is that I have about 2 other ‘groups’ of pieces that I have to work on, and most of these are simpler pieces with a lot of 1-sided finish coming up. After those are all done, it’ll be the true building time. Can’t wait for that stage! I have to question the people who submitted testimonials on the website where I got the design saying it took them 3 weeks to build the bar! Okay, maybe they truly meant ‘build’ and not prepare. In my opinion, there’s no way on God’s green earth someone could possibly do all the cutting, routing, sanding, staining, varnishing, dry fitting, and putting together this whole bar! NO WAY!! Maybe if they worked full time on it. Naw. Granted, I had to learn a lot of things along the way (namely how to properly use a table saw and router), but just these last few steps of finishing take so long…

Since I’ve got your attention on these matters, I think I’ll also share another source of inspiration that I’ve unearthed. I was going to tack this onto the end of my last post, but decided that it was important enough to get it’s very own post. This inspiration comes from an unlikely source. Well, maybe not unlikely, but undiscovered by me until just today. It came in the form of a news article shared to me today by Larry, an old co-worker of Jody’s from her CREA days. This article was about a fellow by the name of Randy Pausch, who just died today from pancreatic cancer. He was a university prof with a very distinguished pedigree in the world of virtual reality. So just what is the source of inspiration from him? Well that would be his 1hr and 16min lecture that he delivered in September 2007, which was his ‘Last Lecture’. Basically, profs at Carnegie Mellon are given the chance to reflect on their lives and give a lecture based on what they would say if it would be the last lecture they would ever be giving before dying. Well, in an odd twist, Randy was actually doing just that. He had already been handed his death sentence resulting from the cancer diagnosis, and had to come to grips with it.