Go ahead and laugh Home Depot man

I know, you all thought I was going to wuss out and buy a ready made agility table. This would have been the wiser choice from both a time and money perspective. The possibility of losing one's fingers to the power saw certainly makes the DIY approach a false economy. But I kept looking at the photo of the table I was going to buy and thinking 'this is stupid, I can make that, it looks so easy, it'll be over $200 probably by the time I pay tax and delivery, I can so make this myself'. And I did! I'm not handy at all and I had no idea what I was doing but I did it and emerged with all my digits and limbs intact though my already rather small DIY ego took a beating from a sarcastic salemsman at Home Depot who had the nerve to laugh at me right to my face. I knew it would take longer than I guessed it would take but it ended up taking even longer than that, mostly because I had to practice with the saw and figure out what I was doing and how many trips to Home Depot did I make? But I really wanted to do it, more for my own sense of satisfaction than to save money which is a good thing because if you add up the cost of tools, materials and most significantly my time this is one helluva an expensive table. Cost of finally Doing It Myself-Priceless. I guess.

Here are some things I learned for future reference or for anyone else silly enough to undertake these shenanigans:

1. Protective eyewear and ear plugs people!

2. Clamps are your friend, but not too tight. Best to put a piece of scrap wood between the clamp and your 'work'. That's what the handy people call the thing you're cutting-'work'. See, I've got the jargon down already.

3. An mp3 player comes in handy for drowning out the screaming noisy rich brats in the swimming pool next door. Otherwise they will distract you and give you a headache and maybe you'll measure something wrong.

4. Keep a cell phone and a cooler handy just in case you have to call 911 and transport a severed digit.

5. Both hands on the saw at the same time. The Home Depot guy can sneer at you all he wants.

6. Getting laughed at by a Home Depot salesman is super fun.

7. It doesn't have to be perfect, we're talking toys for dogs here.

8. How is your math? See if you can figure out ways to minimize the amount of PVC pipe you waste using algebra and the quadratic formula. Calculus may be overdoing it, there's no need to show off. Bonus points if you can do all the calculations by hand because you're such a genuis and left all your calculators at work.

9. Your Border Collie may be smart but he makes a terrible assistant. Lock him in the house where he will stare out the window at you for hours in a most unsettling manner. Even more fun if you have 3 staring at once. You can pretend you're putting on a seminar.

10. PVC shavings make one helluva mess. Not sure how I'm going to get them out of my ski bindings. I had no idea there would be such a mess and by the time I did it was too late.

11. It will take 20 times longer than you think it will.

Now if only I can muster up some more DIY princess energy to paint over the horrible minty green walls in my living room that have been barfing me out for the past 10 years.

Spare Us The Cutter, Part 2

I saw my knee doctor about a month ago and he went over the MRI results. The bads news is that I have several small meniscus tears as well as some built up fluid/bursitis as well as some damaged cartilage as well as a whole bunch of other minor crap. At one image the doc said, 'It looks like you've crushed something there'. How I've accumulated all these tears & things including a crushing injury since the last MRI 2 years ago is an utter mystery considering how little I've been doing. The good news is that he thinks the meniscus tears are small enough that he doesn't recommend surgery. The bad news is that the tears won't heal on their own no matter what I do so if they get worse I will at some point need surgery. In the end he prescribed physical therapy to build up the strength in my leg that I lost due to foot surgery. My activities have once again been restricted, no running or hiking at all and only an hour on the bike on the flattest terrain I can find (flat terrain is a challenge here in Boulder). Agility activities have been restricted but I usually give the older dogs the month of July off anyway because it's so hot. Unfortunately despite a month's worth of stupid stretching and mind numbing strength exercises my knee still hurts and I'm beyond frustrated. The only thing that makes the pain go away is rest and the P.T. said resting is no good either. Anyway, yet another summer goes down the tubes to injury. I miss the hiking most of all but I'm also finally starting to miss the running too.

The other bad part about this is that I suddenly have a bit of spare time for 'projects'. I need a table for working on Cody & Lola's table issues but also for propping up my board for running contact practice. Normally I would just buy one because yeah, I've got time to build one myself but this weekend I suddenly found myself with time for it. I've got the design part all worked out, no problemo, the problem is the execution. It turns out I can't saw a measly little 1x4 in half by hand, at least not with the saw I have. Then I thought about all the millions of pieces of 2" diameter PVC I'd have to saw and did a quick calculation on what are the odds I'll lose at least one finger in the process and decided hmmm, maybe this particular venture into the world of DIY is a false economy. If only I had a power saw. Oh, you mean like this? How cool would it be if I had my own power saw??!! Then I started thinking of all the cool things I could build or rather I realized hey I don't need to build anything other than this table so maybe this is a waste of money. Then I remembered the chickens.

I've been wanting to get chickens for a while now. Or rather, I've been wanting to get farm fresh eggs for a while now. To be honest, I have no interest in chickens for chicken's sake. I had a good source for home raised chicken eggs but she changed her work location and now it's not convenient to get eggs from her. I was getting them from a farm on my way home from work but they weren't as good. Once you've had good eggs there's no going back to the grocery store kind, even the 'organic' ones. So I've been entertaining the idea of my own chickens and one of the many hurdles has been the chicken coop. They need a coop for sure, even in summer, since my neighborhood is rife with racoons, foxes and all other manner of predators including my idiot neighbor's wolf hybrid who's already gotten another neighbor's chickens.

The other big hurdle to all of this is Jonny. He's not at all down with the chicken idea. In fact I believe his exact reaction to the mere mention of chickens was to roll his eyes, throw his head in his hands and yell, 'For fuck's sake!' As far as he's concerned there are already more than enough animals leaving presents in our small little yard. He thinks the organic grocery store eggs are plenty delicious thank you very much.

Where were we? Oh yes, the table saw and my agility table project. I sent Jonny the link to the table saw and his reply was, 'I feared this day would come'. It's no wonder I'm not handy what with all the complete lack of support I get. On the other hand he's seen me trying to cut a bagel in half so maybe he has a point. Maybe I should just order the darn table from someone who knows what they're doing and leave the chickens and finger slicing for another day.