Summer morning before the heat
wipe the wood down
get rid of the sanding dust
leaving the Alder baby-bottom smooth.

Natural bristle brush leaves no streaks
drops no stray fibers into the oil.
Slather it on, then a bit more
where it's already sinking into the wood.

Pungent varnish smell brings back 
childhood memories with my dad
puts a wistful smile on my face.
Set the timer for thirty minutes and wait.

Watch the golden liquid seep in,
Creep inside the pores, deep inside
strengthening, protecting, glistening softly
hoping for a deep natural glow.

Hoping for not a fake-y plastic 
high-gloss glassy mirror-like finish, 
but just a gentle sheen bringing 
out the natural beauty of the wood.

And then a bump in the road.
Wipe it dry after thirty minutes,
uh-oh, very tacky, impossible to wipe
fibers from the cut-up t-shirt 
stick to the wood. Damn!

Good thing I started on the underside
of the bed frame, a piece of plywood.
Will let it dry for a while more and
then try and figure out what to do next.

Sometimes just backing off and letting
thoughts settle and experiences ripen
is all that's needed to set things straight.
Of course reading & rereading the instructions
helps a bit as well. A few days go by.

Then, paying very close attenction to the
details, I start on the inside of a side rail,
just in case I still have it wrong. This time,
slather it on, wait exactly thirty minutes,
slather again and wait for fifteen minutes.

Now wipe it off. Still not right, sticky enough
to grab some lint from the rag I'm using.
With sinking heart, I keep on rubbing, trying 
to get all the lint out of the finish.

And then the magic happens. Once the rag
is damp enough from the rubbed oil, suddenly
it's gliding over the wood like a waxed ski
over fresh snow. Hot Damn. Not Tacky! Not Tacky!

I'm enboldened to try another piece.
Even better. Then another. In my zone.
Over the next few days, I complete the
several pieces of my new solid-wood
Alder bed.

It's look awesome, and I'm feeling great.
Now to wait a few days to get the smell out
before I put the bed together and get
a good night's sleep on my new bed.

(It looks something like the bed in the picture.)

Summer morning before the heat
wipe the wood down
get rid of the sanding dust
leaving the alder baby-bottom smooth.

Natural bristle brush leaves no streaks
drops no stray fibers into the oil.
Slather it on, then a bit more
where it's already sinking into the wood.

Pungent varnish smell brings back
childhood memories with my dad
puts a wistful smile on my face.
Set the timer for thirty minutes and wait.

Watch the golden liquid seep in,
Creep inside the pores, deep inside
strengthening, protecting, glistening softly
hoping for a deep natural glow.

Hoping for not a fake-y plastic
high-gloss glassy mirror-like finish,
but just a gentle sheen bringing
out the natural beauty of the wood.

And then a bump in the road.
Wipe it dry after thirty minutes,
uh-oh, very tacky, impossible to wipe
fibers from the cut-up t-shirt
stick to the wood. Damn!

Good thing I started on the underside
of the bed frame, a piece of plywood.
Will let it dry for a while more and
then try and figure out what to do next.

-- To be continued --

     In reverse order:

Seth Godin - I've been receiving his blog posts in my email inbox for several months now, and have been learning a lot from this guy. Here is a link to his website, and to a Wikipedia article about him. He writes a few times a week, and generally nothing terribly profound or complex, but just enough to have something to take away more often than not. That is what I'd like to accomplish in my blog as well for my readers.

Success is on the roadmap again!

     About twenty years ago I started developing a game to help myself and others be more successful. Over the years it has had many iterations. First as a card game, then a board game, then an early smartphone app (on the Treo), then a web application.
     It has helped me in many ways to be more successful, and help my friends, strangers and co-workers to work together for mutual success in both private and corporate ventures.
     A few years ago, somehow it got lost. The web application - my favorite incarnation of the game got corrupted, I lost the website and the files that I had backed up.
     After last week, taking a whole week off from work, I started rooting around in old hard drives and backup files, and magico-presto, there they were.
     I am now in the early states of putting the web app back together, and am real excited to be doing so. There's a lot of work to do, and a lot of experience and new ideas to incorporate into the new incarnation of the game.
     But if you want to watch it as it grows, you can find it here. There will be a lot of broken pieces along the way for a while, but this will give you some idea of what it's about.

I subscribe to a daily art email, which delivers a piece of art into my email box each day (artfinder.com). Above is today's piece. It speaks to me in many ways. I once thought that abstract art was something that anyone could do by splashing paint on a canvas. So I tried it. Hmm. No one has called it great art. Good, or great abstract art somehow manages to capture and embody an experience, a feeling, that is more than the sum of it's parts. Something non-rational, something that our brain cannot make sense of, yet something that has an emotional impact.
     Obviously, abstract art doesn't speak to everyone, and individual pieces speak to some and not to others.
     What do you think of this one?