Building things

Today was Father's Day. After Sebastian and Mel gave me some lovely gifts and cards we spent the day at home - apart from our morning walk with the dogs that is. I spent some time on the phone talking with my parents including wishing my Dad a Happy Father's Day. Mel, Sebastian and I read books, played with toys and watched an episode of Play School. Sebastian named animals and colours in books and on flashcards. We also built a random construction out of blocks: he added pieces and I reinforced it when it got wobbly. He's a clever little guy and I'm very proud of him.

After Sebastian went to bed I spent an hour out in the garage building a keyboard drawer to mount under the desk in the studio. It isn't mounted yet but so far, so good... I think it might just work. "What?" I hear you say! "Who are you and what have you done with Martin? He can't hammer a nail and is so clumsy that he's (mostly) banned from using power tools." Well, I still have all my limbs and the garage doesn't look like a war zone.

While sawing, hammering and screwing I reminisced a bit about my Dad and the things he used to build: beds, wardrobes, "bed cupboards", puppet stages, breakfast bars, BBQs, concrete slabs, ... I'm not at that level but I'm actually turning out to be reasonably practical and useful. I'm a bit proud of myself...

I also spent a few minutes either side of my garage time running a simple test to see why a new computer might be crashing. I disabled the wireless network driver and got the machine to play an album of music. I came back an hour later and it hadn't crashed - that's much better than other recent efforts. So, although one test doesn't provide any certainty, this supports my hunch that the wireless card/driver is the culprit.

My Dad turns 80 later this year. Not too many years ago computers weren't his thing at all. These day he sits at his computer once or twice a day and hops online. He does email and surfs the web. A couple of years ago he was having USB problems. I sent him a USB PCI card and pointed him at an instructional video on YouTube. He installed the card and it still works fine. I'm proud of him.

These days life seems to move incredibly fast. I'm not sure where life is taking us but it definitely seems to be a good place. Wherever we're going, we're going there as a family. I'll always be there for Sebastian, particularly to provide that little better of reinforcement if things get a bit wobbly. I'm proud of him and I hope that one day he'll be proud of me too.