My mom used to always tell me, “things don’t make you happy.” I’m almost 50-years-old and guess what? Mom was right.
I heard about this minimalist snowball thing somewhere recently and thought I’d give it a whirl. I’d guess that this concept would be better suited for someone who wants to get rid of a lot of things. The concept is simple. On day 1, get rid of 1 thing. On day 2 get rid of 2 things. On day 3 get rid of 3 things, and so on. I’d imagine that when I get into the double digits is when things’ll get tough. For now I’m just going to concentrate on just trying to get rid of something every day during the month of June.
DAY 1 – June 1
I’ve had these stencils in the garage for years and they just get in the way whenever I’m digging around for whatever it is that I’m looking for in the garage. I bought these stencils 10+ years ago when I made a deal with Maly. She really wanted a pet turtle, complete with an aquarium and all of the accoutrements that come with a pet turtle. I told her if she created the money to buy the things needed for a turtle, then she could have a turtle. We decided on a lemonade stand. I helped her with a marketing spin. Somewhere locally there were a lot of tornados that caused a lot of damage. I told Maly that we’d do a lemonade stand and anything she made beyond what she needed for a turtle aquarium, we’d donate to the American Red Cross for Texas tornado relief efforts. She wound up getting her turtle, aquarium, and I think I donated $400 to the American Red Cross.
And we made a pretty neat lemonade stand and called it Tornados and Turtles.
DAY 2 – June 2
Today I moved my cell phone number from AT&T to US Mobile. I always knew the day would come, and now here I am. I have 4 people in my family who all have iPhones and an AT&T bill that’s pretty much $300 per month. And looking at my AT&T bill just leaves me shaking my head between service fees, convenience fees, just because fees, and whatever balance I owe on any number of phones that I guess I’m leasing. I started paying attention to the “budget” wireless carriers (Mint, Cricket, Visible, US Mobile, etc.) commercials and started doing my own research. They all use the big companies’ (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) networks at a fraction of the price. After a little research I settled on US Mobile and I moved my number to them today.
According to my math we’ll be saving $170 per month once I’m satisfied with the service on my phone and get the girls’ phones ported over.
DAY 8
Well, I already missed the train for the downhill snowball. Or something. I missed jumping into the snowball. I was pretty confident it wasn’t going to happen. That would mean that today I’d need to get rid of 8 things. I think I’ve gotten rid of some stuff this week — I just can’t remember what it was. And I know it wasn’t many things. Anyway, I guess the whole point of this being a minimalist snowball month is so I’ll conciously get rid of stuff. Like today I remembered that I’m supposed to be getting rid of stuff. It was a facepalm moment.
Today I got rid of the DVD player that’s been sitting on the dresser in the window nook of our bedroom for more years than I can remember. And there was a little kiddie compound bow that I picked up for Mara when we took up archery five years ago. I took them both to Goodwill. It was hard getting rid of the bow. It reminded me of spending a lot of time with Mara; out back or in the front yard, just shooting arrows. And that was during COVID, so we had a lot of isolated family time. I can’t remember, but I’ll bet that DVD player spun a lot of kids movies and TV shows. I think that was a the DVD player we had in our bedroom, which rarely got used. I think we had a DVD player in the living room, or maybe it was a gaming console.
They served their purpose. Now hopefully someone else will be able to use them, and maybe make memories.
DAY 19
Haven’t done much snowballing at all, but I got rid of these hokey beard products. As a bearded man who has used beard products, I can tell you that those products (that I’ve used) are placebo. Doesn’t make the beard smoother, softer, fuller, or cleaner. These were taking up space in my bathroom vanity, and taking up space in my head. Less inventory equals less mental inventory.
It doesn’t seem long ago, but long gone are the days that I’d travel these aisles with the girls. For some reason, neither Maly or Mara really spent much time in the toy aisles. They always seemed to get along just fine with whatever they had. But we still spent our time in these aisles. I remember many a time that it was me that was dragging the girls down the toy aisles.
Today it just kind of hit me. Maybe I’m feeling empathy because I know there are a lot of parents who are facing a bird fleeing the coop soon. I was also just being nostalgic. I miss having young kids who play with toys. But that doesn’t stop me from perusing the toy aisles.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was walking these aisles and picking out toys with my daughter. Today I walked down these aisles after picking up auto parts for my daughter’s car that she’s taking back with her to college in the fall.
Yesterday we closed the shop 30 minutes early. Saul and I were on a job site most of the day and I had some desk work I needed to catch up on. Fifteen minutes after I found myself all alone athe shop, a customer called me and asked if he could get one piece of roof trim before the weekend. I told him my shop manager and fabricator had already left for the weekend, but that I’d always wanted to learn to work the Autobrake from start to finish. He said he had faith in me.
What this video doesn’t show is the hour-plus it took me to figure out how to get everything to work. I was able to use an existing bend profile on the brake’s computer and modify it, but then I had a hell of time getting the computer to talk to the brake, and even more of a hell of a time figuring out how get past the “pedal deactivated” warning. There is a pedal system that’s used to operate the brake, which is what actually bends the metal.
There was a lot of computer time, geometry, profanity, research, mistakes, headscratching, and more profanity, but I finally figured it out, and I’m damn pround of having fabricated my first piece of metal trim.
This is my waist versus Jared’s thigh. I weigh 140. He weighs 340. He’s an offensive lineman. I’m an okay distance runner. He can sprint faster than me.
Today started by me having to be up at the shop at 6:00 a.m. to meet a customer who’d borrowed tooling from our roll forming machine for a job at a solar farm up in northeast Texas. So John and I put our roll former back together to have it ready to haul out to a job today.
Saul got to work a little after 7:30 and he and I headed out to Jonestown to roll metal panels at a new construction job site.
Unfortunately our timeline was thwarted by a bad accident on 1431. I was trying to find out what had happened by way of social media and when I came up empty, I texted my friend Mike who is a firefighter and he informed me that it was a bad motorcycle accident and the rider wasn’t wearing a helmet.
An hour and a half later, 1431 was reopened and Saul and I headed out the last few miles to get to the site. The site was on the side of a cliff out in the hills between Lago Vista and Jonestone, so navigating the narrow gravel road to get there was a bit of a white-knuckler.
We were 3 hours later than our intended time to start working, but we made fairly quick work of it. We rolled 3,000 linear feet of 24 gauge standing seam roof panels. Just Saul and me. We lugged panels ranging from 11 feet to 17 feet from the back of the roll former to the house’s garage. We both lugged upwards of 3,000 pounds each between the panels and custom trim we fabricated for this customer.
It’s hard work, but it’s good, honest work. It’s not back-breaking labor, but it’s labor. It’s fun work. I get my fair share of desk work, but just the right amount of being on the road and being on site to roll custom-cut standing seam panels that are going on a structure’s roof.
I really, really enjoy this job.
It took Saul and me an hour and a half to run 3,000 feet of steel coil out in the high hills of Central Texas.
Saul and I have our respective language barriers, but we figure it out and we have fun. We talk a lot. His English is a lot better than my Spanish, but I’m really trying. I’m always asking him how to say things, and if I need to convey something technical or in-depth, I use Google Translate on my phone and I don’t show him my phone; I try to say the sentences that I want to tell him in my gringo Spanish.
We pulled out of the job site at around 2:00 p.m. I was starving because I’d already been at work since 6:00 a.m., and I don’t know how many calories I burned hauling metal panels and trim. So I had Saul stop at La Chaparitta (which I now know means “short woman”) so I could buy us lunch. No one spoke English. And maybe it was because I was experiencing a significant caloric deficit, but those were the best damn tacos I’ve ever had.
I learned that Saul is from Chignahuapan, which is a town in the state of Puebla in southeast Mexico. There are mountains and natural hot springs in Chignahuapan. My friend is the oldest of six children. Two sisters, then a brother, then two other sisters. He has three daughters, ages 5, 13, and 21.
Many years ago my friend Michele turned me on to the concept of “making a fair pitcher of lemonade.” I’ve always thought of that of upholding integrity in hard work. That’s what I do now. Today I did more work, had more fun, learned more, laughed more, delivered value, and made more money than I can remember doing in a really long time.
Saul and I went to work this morning to load up for a Monday morning PBR panel delivery to a customer’s home for a new metal roof installation.
It was tricky because we had a stack of panels that were 25′ long and our flatbed trailer is 25′ long, so we had to get creative in loading the tele so it wouldn’t damage the metal roof panels as Saul was backing it onto the trailer. Saul used the telescope and fork to lift the front of the machine and push it back onto the trailer while simultanously backing the tele up. It took a few shots, but we got it.
I think tomorrow we’ll have to move the tele to the front of the trailer and the trim and shorter panels to the back of the trailer because physics. Thankfully we don’t have far to go to drop this load off.
Rotted joistsNew joistSistering joistsThe arduous task of fastening boards.
Early in the Fall we kind of decided we’d rip out the deck and have a concrete patio poured. We’d wait until the weather cooled off and we’d slowly start disassembling the deck. Late Fall came. Winter came. Steve and Joanne came down for Christmas and we’d recruited them to help take apart the deck.
Taking apart the deck never happened. And we had quite a few rotted and broken boards. We left the deck in ill repair for a lot of months. We had coolers and pots strategically placed about the deck to cover the holes and bad boards to prevent anyone from having a brush with gravity.
It’s starting to get hot and realistically we’re not going to take down the deck this time of year. So I decided we’d invest a little in some new 2×6’s and we’d fix the deck.
Quick and easy.
A few boards turned into 10 boards. Removing those 10 boards exposed joists that were rotted, so I removed a lot more boards than planned and replaced the rotted joists.
What started out as a quick Friday evening and Saturday morning chore turned into an all weekend job. Elise helped me pull old boards and remove rusted screws (Deckmate screws are horrible. They’re cheap alloy steel with a painted coating that easily scratches, exposes the metal, and causes rust and corrosion. This time I went with 2.5″ GRK multipurpose screws). She also fastened most of the boards on section we repaired and, while I went to lunch with some old high school friends, she took everything off of the deck and pressure washed it.
With the deck now all spacious, safe, and clean, we all hung out on it last night while I grilled chicken and we had a long-overdue dinner outside.
I’ve been at my job for almost 90 days. There have been two times where it would’ve been convenient to instant message my boss to ask a question. One of those times I got up, walked to his office, and asked my question. The second time, today, I found the answer myself.
I don’t miss Slack, Teams, Google Chat (and ICQ, Skype, HipChat, and which other instant messenger tools I’ve used in the past) one iota. I get it though. Instant messengers are pretty much required, especially in remote office environments. I’ve used them for the past 20 years. Maybe that’s why I don’t miss them.
Somewhere in my first week on the job I asked my boss if we used Teams in the office. He said, “F*ck no! And if you try to get me to use Teams I’ll kick your ass.”
Yesterday the leadership team of an “AI-powered engineering intelligence platform” concerned themselves with preparations for laying off the majority of its staff. My good friend was part of that layoff today.
Yesterday I sent 12 tons of steel coil to my customer down the highway. Then I went back to my office and sold $10,000 worth of metal roofing supplies. Then I got on the telehandler and loaded 1600 pounds of flat sheet metal on a customer’s truck.
I was more productive and profitable yesterday than I can remember being at any recent tech job.
I don’t know how to articulate any kind of theme I’m shooting for here. I know I’ve pigeonholed myself into roles where technology, software, and money were the priority.
It’s a shift in personal priorities. That’s the easy part. Finding something that aligns with your priorities and harnesses your skills and interests can be the tricky part. What I’ve learned about myself in recent times that technology and software aren’t as exciting or important to me as they once were. I thought it was the role I was in software sales. I still enjoy sales and customer service, but I enjoy it more in metal than I do in SaaS.
We left the house at 3:00 a.m. last Saturday flew into Cleveland Ohio to get there in time to rent a car, drive 30 miles out to Painesville for lunch at Brennen’s Fish House, and then to Lake Erie College. We were finally able to see one of UC women’s lacrosse games in person. It was a bit chilly and very windy, but really exciting to be able to watch a game live. The Golden Eagles won 18-3.
Maly rode with us the four hours back to Charleston. Maly had a late lunch provided by the team, and Elise, Mara and I were still okay from our big lunch. We got to Charleston late and hung out in Maly and Mackenzie’s dorm room for a bit before we needed to head out to find a hotel. Mara then decided that she was hungry, so went to Sheetz where I’m sure we got her something fortified with all kinds of essential vitamins and nutrients. We also witnessed a homeless guy shoplift about a dozen Red Bulls.
On Sunday the girls (including Mackenzie) went to mass. While they were at church, I went for what I was thinking would be a nice, peaceful, and relaxed 5 mile run. I planned a route that would take me down Virginia Street to the capitol, and then I’d hook back up Quarrier to our hotel. As I was heading out, I couldn’t help but notice the black sky in the west above the mountains. I figured I could beat whatever was coming if it came. What I really figured was that whatever was above those mountains would blow north of Charleston.
I made it to the north lawn of the capitol and started heading back west. I was met with a 20 degree drop in temperature and a 40 mile per hour headwind that rocketed dust and leaves straight at me, to the point where I had to turn around in place and duck down. I still managed to get a lot of dust in my eyes and contact lenses. After the coast cleared a bit, I chuckled and trudged on, knowing that my remaining two and a half miles might become interesting. And that’s when the rain started. I’m no stranger to running in the rain. I actually enjoy it. It was a little colder and windier than I’d’ve liked, but I survived the 2018 Boston Marathon, so I welcomed whatever Mother Nature had in store. Well, she heard me, and she deployed a monsoon of pea-sized hail. That was interesting. Thankfully I was in town and was able to duck under the Dollar General’s awning to wait out the short-lived hail storm.
I got back in time to shower and then the girls picked me up and we all went out for lunch at First Watch. After lunch Maly and Mackenzie went back to UC, and Elise, Mara and I made the long and windy haul out to Snowshoe. I’ve decided that while Charleston is great, it’s not until you venture out, even if it’s just on main highways, where you start seeing the beauty that is West Virginia. The thick trees, the rolling and sometimes towering Allegheny Mountains, the hollers, the Monongahela forest, the rivers, the land, the history, and the homesteads.
Something I’ve learned to appreciate is that most everything slows down in Appalachia. Especially the driving. 150 miles might take you a couple hours in a car in Texas. In Appalachia 150 miles can take twice as long, if not more, depending on a myriad of things, but most notably the winding roads. You’re driving through the mountains and our experiences have always been met with what I consider is a beautiful part of the country. I love it out there. It’s the mountains and flowing rivers and creeks and branches that do it for me. I want to have a place out there somewhere. I just don’t know where that somewhere is. We haven’t seen most of West Virginia yet. Some of it is very scary, and that’s part of the appeal. It’s scary because there is so much out there that has never, and probably never will be seen with human eyes. There’s so much unknown out there. As the state’s license plates read: Wild Wonderful.
We made it to Snowshoe at around 7:00 p.m. We’d stopped at an IGA in Marlinton to pick up some random sundries and ingredients for pepperoni rolls. Fun fact: the pepperoni roll was invented in West Virginia. We settled into our condo. I made pepperoni rolls. Mara found the Life on Earth docuseries on Netflix that is narrated by Morgan Freeman and we got pretty hooked on that for our evening entertainment for our late season ski trip.
We woke up and headed to the Snowshoe resort early on Monday. We paid for our lift tickets and ski rentals. We were too late to book lessons, so we were on our own. We started our little ski adventure just outside the ski rental shop where we somehow managed to teach Mara to stay upright on skis. After a couple hours of us all figuring out how to ski, we decided to try to head down Skidder and Log Run to the base. It was late in the season, so there wasn’t enough snow to blanked a wide enough swath for Mara and I to make the turns to keep us at a comfortable speed in order to get down the mountain on skis. I wasn’t having any faith in myself so I decided to call it and just walk down the run in ski boots. Mara decided to do the same. Walking down a moutain in ski boots is not fun.
We rode the lift back up and had to give Mara a crash course in getting off of a lift. She and I both ate it. Elise takes to skiing like riding a bike. Me, not so much. I don’t know if I’d say I have PTSD, but snow skiing makes me nervous. I broke my ankle the first time I snow skied. I wasn’t afraid to give it another go, but I think my subconcious is getting a little conservative on me in my older years. And we currently don’t have health insurance.
We had a late lunch at Foxfire Grille. I’ll spare the food review. Thankfully our meals were affordable by ski resort standards.
At that point we were already tired and beat-up (more so Mara and me from humping it down a steep frozen hill in ski boots) so we called it a day.
We got a late(r) start on Tuesday. We wanted to get our money’s worth. Tuesday was a prettier day. It was in the 50’s and sunny all day. Elise went on a bunch of runs. We found the lift for Skidder, so Mara spend 4 hours going up and down her little run with the other novices and ski school kiddos. She had a blast, and I had a grin on my face the whole time watching her gain confidence in snow skiing. I was really happy that the girls got to go skiing. And Mara had a great time and was totally content making her loops. And I was content watching her and hanging out in the sun.
The girls closed the mountain and wrapped up on two day skiing adventure at Snowshoe. Since our lunch at Foxfire Grille the day before was horrible, I found a restaurant within walking distance that looked promising. Unfortunately it and its two sister restaurants were closed for a staff event, so we drove down the mountain to a little IGA mini mart convenience store where I thought we could procure some dinner ingredients. Mara said she wasn’t very hungry, so Elise and bought a big can of Campbell’s Chunky Clam Chowder.
We came home, made our soup, and tried to wrap up our game of Monopoly while we watched more episodes of Life on Earth.
We taught Mara how to ski and play Monopoly. I’d say that makes for a Spring Break vacation parenting win.
We had to check out and head out early on Wednesday to make our way up to Philippi for UC’s first MEC conference game against Davis and Elkins. But first we had to make a couple stops. The first was at the Green Bank Observatory. I had no idea this place existed. Talk about weird and very cool. A two and half acre radio telescope nestled in the Allegheny range. A radio telescope nestled in the National Radio Silent Zone. A radio telescope that listens to things millions of light years away. I would’ve loved to take a tour and learn more, but we were pressed for time and had another stop to make. I really wanted to learn about the weird stuff the telescope has “heard.”
Our next stop was at Seneca Rocks. Again I wish we could’ve stayed longer and hiked to the summit, but instead we hung out at the edge of the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac River. The weather was amazing. The river was beatiful. But we had to get gettin’.
We made it to Philippi 8 minutes into the first quarter of the girls’ game against Davis & Elkins at the former campus of Alderson Broaddus. This was our first Mountain East Conference game and the girls put their flag in the ground with an 18-5 win. I don’t know about Elise, but it was a proud parent moment to watch your child take the field in an NCAA conference game. And it was a warm and beatiful day, which made for an awesome day to be outside watching our child play lacrosse.
After the game we scooped up Maly and the four of us drove the 3 hours back to Charleston. We swung by Maly’s dorm and decided to head back out the South Charleston for Vietnamese food. We spend the rest of the evening between Kroger and Walmart to stock Maly and Mackenzie’s dorm, and we hung out with Maly and a dormroom full of friends before we called it a night.
We didn’t realize that there was a high school basketball tournament in town, so we had to drive out to Cross Lanes and stayed at a Wyndham that provided us with about four gallons of hot water and no shower curtain.
On Thursday morning Elise, Mara and I got breakfast at the hotel, went out and shopped storage units, took a quick tour of the capitol building, did some shopping at the UC bookstore, and then picked Maly up after lift to take her to her last physical therapy appointment with Hugh (and to pay her bill), and then had to get Maly back to campus for practice. Elise, Mara and I drove back out to Dunbar to just drive around, and then to the famous Spring Hill Pastry Shop in South Charleston.
We went back to our hotel and Mara and I conked out (probably a sugar crash). The evening was upon us and we headed out to the South Hills of Charleston to meet Maly and Mackenzie for dinner at 1010 Bridge. The restaurant is charming. Our waiter was great. The food was good.
But it was getting late. Maly had to get back and study for her accounting test on Friday morning, and Elise, Mara and I had to hit the road early to drive up to Cincinnati to catch our flight home. We had to say our goodbyes in a restaurant parking lot in South Hills. It’s not what I’d’ve wanted, but it’s probably better that way. Maly had things she needed to do, and we needed to get up early and hit the road.
I silently drove us back to our hotel but didn’t let on that my eyes were sweaty. When we got back to the hotel I immediately commandeered the bathroom so I could “take my contacts out,” but really I went in there to have my moment of already missing my daughter dearly. I know, in my heart of hearts, I would’ve been worse off, but my daughter that I miss dearly taught me to don’t make it sad. She’s doing just fine and I’m proud of how she’s doing it.
There were parts during the trip where I was anxious to get back home. But looking back, I cherish the spring break and the time with the girls.
