Pushing Daisies Pie Box Project

Hello all! So, I wanted to post something on here that I actually made a year ago (but wasn't blogging at that time). I just finished Season 2 (the last season) of Pushing Daisies TV show and I'm really hoping that the reports of a Pushing Daisies Musical/Film Project are in fact true.

For our Halloween party last year, I decided to make a replica of the pie boxes that the characters on the show deliver pies in. For those who don't know, the show centers around Lee Pace and Anna Friel as they solve crimes. He has the magical ability to touch a dead thing and bring it back to life. Touch it again, dead forever. He brings his childhood sweetheart back to life (Friel) and that starts a whole chain of unexpected events that takes a lot of unexpected turns. The show has a real Scooby Gang dynamic and the characters are very likeable. The show is punctuated by a lot of really witty, poetic dialog and bright, bold color. Lee Pace plays Ned the Piemaker, who runs his own pie shop, and that serves as the backdrop for many of the scenes in the show.

I just used basic craft wood from Lowe's, along w/ some small nails, glue, and I ran a recessed table saw cut through the sides to create that groove the box top slides into. Turned out great. The only thing i'd do differently is maybe make the box a tad shorter in height, and use a more stainable wood. That wood was intended to be used as cheap shelving and to be painted, I think. It has a sheen to it that doesn't want to sand off, and it just sort of repels most of the stain that I tried rubbing into it. It did slightly work, though. I think the stain I used was Colonial Maple (Minwax).

E-tablet stand

My fiance messaged me yesterday showing me a kitchen tablet holder (ipad, kindle, etc) that this lady had made from a cutting board, a Scrabble tray, and a wooden wedge. Here's the link. Mamie Jane's Blog. By doing this, she saved $32.50 over buying at Pottery Barn.

I had a blast looking around... but I have to admit, her projects tend to be much more feminine than anything I'd usually do. Candleholders and such. I got tired of looking after searching the first few pages.

Honestly with all the wood I have laying around, I could just trace out the shape of a cutting board and cut it out w/ a jigsaw. That'd be no $ at all - that's of course if I planned on painting the board, not staining it. It might be harder to create a realistic-looking cutting board out of one piece of wood if one could actually see the grain. A real cutting board is made from slats of wood, not one piece, obviously. See how she's distressed the paint job? Very nice. I really want to get into that. Especially using milk paint. She didn't, but it produces similar results. Very beautiful colors that lend themselves well to antiques.

The Scrabble tray that the tablet rests on could be something as simple as a length of funky moulding from Lowe's. The wedge that acts as a stand = another random piece of wood. And for this kind of project you really wouldn't need anothing more than a good wood glue. I trust Titebond III. And according to the manufacturer, it's FDA food-safe, in case you're gluing together a cutting board or any other food...ish surface.

Updates!

Expect some posts up here soon. I'm going to regularly post anything I do related to crafts on here, at the very least.

Black Shiny Bookcase

Okay, so here goes. I've been working on this bookcase now for about 2 weeks & I'm almost done. Here it is, sequentially. The top left and right will be books, the middle top will hold a lantern & candle, the middle are basket drawers, bottom left is books/camera stuff and bottom right is my printer. 

1. General idea taped on my wall

2. top left one (at Target)

3. adding some bracing (more added later)

4. stained & assembled for the first time

5. assembled, holes filled.

6. recessing those screws, filling w/ putty

7. baskets = drawers

8. Sanded wood putty, 2 coats paint, Satin Black. 

Now see the bottom of the bookcase on Steps 4 & 7, how it looks different? the back has openings to allow for slipping a power strip under there. Still to come, the bottom right area will have a drill hole for the printer power cable and mayyybe a hole on the bottom left compartment too. I'll add the last pictures below once I'm finished. I still need to purchase a candle lantern to put in the top middle compartment.

OVERHAULING THE BLOG

HOLD ONTO  YOUR LUGNUTS, IT'S TIME FOR AN OVERHAUL! - The Mask, Jim Carrey. 

It's been way too long. I'm redoing this blog. I had the idea to change from topics that attract online trolls quoting strange cultic Catholic extremist dogma on my page (yeah, scary stuff!) to where yeah, I'm still talking out my faith but also sharing things I love in life, centering around my passion for woodworking and making things that people ooh and ahh at. Even if they didn't do that, I'd love it for what it is. I can take pieces of trees and turn them into quaint, cool-looking furniture that brings a room to life. And I get new ideas all the time. If anyone has one, shoot it at me. I'll build for you if you pay me :)

Why 'fearing God' is misunderstood

It occurred to me that the reason people are uncomfortable talking about "fearing God" is because we demonize emotions. We talk about anger as if it's all evil, but Jesus "whipped" the merchants at the Temple a new one, and he's without sin. I don't believe he was happy with them when he did that. It's what you do with anger that damages or accomplishes anything. Take fear - I fear the sun and black holes. Neither would I want to get anywhere close to. Are those things inherently evil? No... not any more than a walnut. So why is it wrong to fear God? Why is it wrong to recognize him for who and what he is? If you have fear and loathing, that's wrong. If you have fear and admiration, you've got it.

Ancient Gladiator Chews Ref Out from Grave

Here's the link to the original article. I found this buried in my email from forever ago, thought I'd share it:

http://news.discovery.com/history/gladiator-tombstone-epitaph-110621.html


So apparently Diodorus with the two swords downed Demetrius, but the ref didn't declare it a submission, so Demetrius was allowed to get back up, at which point he killed Diodorus. Gotta make those calls right, refs!

Leathercraft: Playing card pouch

 
So, I was on a leather-stitching kick from having made a leather laptop bag for my future Macbook (pictures to come). Now, my playing cards came in a rather crude plastic tray with a lid that won't stay on, so I decided to opt for something a little more classy - and unique. Here's the result. 

Brother Ross

If you don't like Brother Ross, fine. Neither do I. But I wish I'd hear more Christians PRAYING for the man instead of criticizing him. We're sitting around with the very Spirit of God woven within us, and we gossip like poison-minded simpletons. God's not changing that man's mind because no one believes or wants the Bro to change! 2 Timothy 2:25 - "Gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts, and they will learn the truth." Why don't you sit down and ask God to do it? Maybe if God sees enough people seriously caring about this guy, he'll reward our faith in Him by giving us our brother back. Be real people. God loved you while you were still stank nasty. Do the same for this guy. That's what he meant when he said "be perfect as your Father is perfect." He said make your love complete - love everyone, not only those who love you.

The Mary Poppins Show

If you've seen The Hunger Games and you like Mary Poppins... voila.

Why I have a bad back

Check this link out. It explains in a few sentences what's going on. http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=10387 

So this is the mystery question I've been trying to answer for years and years: why do I have back pain? How did it get crooked? Basically what's going on is I have a compressed disc in my neck and in the very bottom of my lower back. I also have sacroiliac joint instability (the joint that joins your tailbone to your hip bone). In other words, my lower back pops around and out of joint somewhat easily (or at least until I started phys therapy 2 weeks ago). As a result of that instability, sometimes I have sciatica (nerve pain radiating from your lower back down into your toes) in my right leg.

I think it started with my uneven leg length... my right is a quarter inch shorter than my left. For that reason, every day I have a .25" thick piece of cork in my right shoe... which is why I don't often wear sandals. The uneven leg length starts destabilizing the hips when there's uneven amounts of force being applied on each side. It's like somebody took a Jenga block out of my right leg. 

So I corrected the leg length issue... now what?

I have, in my thoracic region (upper/mid back), a bend in my spine where, if you start at the bottom, it curves to the left, and comes back to the right as you near the top. As a result, my left shoulder is often higher than my right, resulting in my top left rib being elevated, which pinches nerves and makes for a tight left upper back. ALSO, that same region that's bent is also ROTATED, so it looks like scoliosis at first glance. So whenever I look down, I can see my left ribs sticking out more forward than my right ones, and it freaks me out. My PT says it looks like the pattern of damage you see happen after a fall or a high velocity injury of some sort. One word: skateboarding. Glad I stopped when I did.


Now there's two types of "scoliosis"... real scoliosis and what they call 'functional' scoliosis. Functional scoliosis seems to be what I have, because it's actually responding to treatment, which I'll get to in a sec. Functional scoliosis is where it looks like scoliosis but it's just where you had an old injury misaligning your vertabrae and your muscles started pulling on it until you got a distorted spine that instead of straight up, looks more like a bendy straw. 


How do you find out if it's real scoliosis or not? In my case, by treatment. I just started going to a physical therapist and he's really nice, he's paid a lot of attention to me and my back. He's been able to actually get my joints and back to move a little more back into alignment than they were, which is incredible. He's given me a lot of core exercises and a specialized plan with how many to do of each one, so that I'm not floundering in the dark like I was with my chiropractor. I love my chiropractor but they let me go three years without telling me that I could do core exercises that would let my adjustments actually have an effect lasting longer than two days. In other words... that's a lot of money that could have been better spent. 


So what I'm doing now is this. I have misalignments in my spine. Those are influenced by "muscular imbalances", where you have one side much stronger than the other. If one side of your hips has great stability and is really strong, but the other is weak, you're going to have a lot of inexplicable lower back pain. So the key is to strengthen the weak side. That's exactly what I've been doing the past two weeks and I can tell you I have had ZERO lower back pain during that time... which is extraordinary for me. 


The upper back has its own imbalance as well. For those of you who know about rhomboids, I've been strengthening those so that my shoulders come backwards and away from my chest. That's stabilizing my back and taking the pressure off the compressed disc in my neck. Any time you have shoulders and head that sag forward, you aggravate your neck discs and muscles, creating knots in the muscles called "trigger points". So I've been correcting the underlying cause of those knots, thereby allowing them to release and relax.

The main order of business is now to see if we can get this rotation in the upper/mid back reversed. My PT used a "muscle energy technique" that fatigued one side of my back and strengthened the other by having me rotate and apply force in a certain direction... thereby pulling my spine back to the right. That actually, according to him, straightened it to a degree. This is HUGE. This is the fastest bit of progress I've ever had in such a short period of time. If this continues, I might, (not guaranteed), but might someday have a straight spine and a strong core holding it all in place so it doesn't go out of alignment again. So we know it's functional scoliosis and not real scoliosis because it actually seems to be responding to muscular training. At least, from everything I can tell. 


I'll let you know how my therapy goes. I just want to find a solution so I can start using my money toward savings and not medical costs. So I can one day support a family without having to dedicate so much energy and time and money to just managing the very structure of my back. It's just been absurd. But I have learned patience through this and I'm thankful for it inciting me to rely on my God.

Verdict? I think we're making progress.

The Downsides of Time Travel

 

Reasons NOT to travel through time: 

• Colonial people will think you're weird and kill you

• Natives will worship you as a god, which is awkward

• Your clothing will be terribly out of style

• Your new iPhone will be useless

• ... and, suddenly your breath will be thousands of years old.

Hey guys I'm back

Hi! Since God has been so good in 2011, I'm more interested in bonding with my brothers and moving onward instead of looking back. I'm grateful for my peers, who show their appreciation and love despite not knowing how to help me. I just want to put a quick post up to give the notice I'll be posting soon about things I've learned and things that are happening now, things that will build us up. This blog is hopefully going to reflect something different. I still have some things holding me back, but I won't be giving that the spotlight.

Stupid Facebook

Made this cause this keeps happening to me. Ever since Facebook chat was invented, there have been nothing but glitches for me. Disappointing ones.  

God's invincible help

After having forsaken God earlier this afternoon in one of the many ways in which I do, I woke from my nap a few minutes ago, sat up and realized that God is laughing at me. God is laughing that I would ever think I can shake him or do something so bad that it would discourage him from his loving mission for me. What I felt was that he was smiling at me and he told me I have every hope in the world because my righteousness was never actually mine... it was his. And that nothing I do could lessen his hold on me, and that it's really quite a joke I think I have any power to change that. My loved and privileged status in his eyes is only because of his selfless nature to put up with such ignorant fools as myself. But anyway, what it felt like was God's boisterous laughing amusement that if I am now any less sure of his love for me, then I've lost my brain.

I then got to thinking about this whole Protector thing that's going on. He laughed at me for thinking I could shake him, lose him with my sin. It really seems quite plain right now, to be honest with you... and may God humble me severely if there is any pride in my words. I do tend to love the thrill of sounding smart, after all.

The specific Protection I'm referring to, that cannot be lost, that exists beyond my choice, is nothing more than the Holy Spirit. It's not strange, it's not spooky, it's not some stupid ghost based in physical matter like the orbs and shadowy shapes they claim to show you on TV. But there is Something quite beyond me that is amused I think I could ever shake myself out of his arms.

The Bible says we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit. A lot of people hear "indwelt" and immediately fit it with the schemas of what they know: exorcisms, demons, unwholesome things inhabiting, indwelling people. That there's a sort of a powerful and dark connotation here, with a sense that it is very strange and unwelcome.

But the application of the Holy Spirit to our souls is not weird; it is nothing more than something Real unwaveringly protecting and transforming something irreparably fake. Something so fake, it doesn't even know it is. Humanity continues in its course not understanding just how futile it is without God's loving help. And we could never know what is actually real until it became visible for us.

It's an eye-opening moment. And it's probably not something I can "cause" anyone to have by reading this. It's just that the longer I've known God, the more I think that to sweat my past mistakes is silly... he's already past it. I confess why it was wrong to my Friend and I move on. Do I always have the sense to do that? No. But sometimes God helps me see that. 

Love is limited only by choice... not time.

Love is a choice... there's the feeling, but you also have to deliberately choose to make it that person and that person only that you chase. You have to want her, not just it. If you want the feeling, just keep chasing the wind, but don't delude yourself. Do we really know anyone else, who they really are? Or do we just love the thought of them? One of the most satisfying things in life is to know exactly who someone is and love them for it. That's my thinking anyway.

It's a deep pursuit, a profound choice. It's no secret life is scary and complex. How naive to expect love to be any different! If you want to get to know somebody, you're going to need to have lots of love, patience, and deliberately know why you're doing it. Don't do it if your only motive is it's fun. Do it if you see a glimpse of who she is, who he is, and you feel drawn to them.

Perhaps we've let that one line in Song of Solomon take over our Christian understanding of love to an unhealthy degree: "I implore you, women of Jerusalem, not to awake love before its time." We've made love a time bomb. A watched pot never boils. We assume it's all about right timing and clockwork. We've put math to the mystery. It doesn't work that way. If you want to fall in love with somebody in a sensible, godly way, I know for me that what I said in the first two paragraphs is a good start. It's what I've learned. It's not always ONLY about patience and timing and waiting and waiting and waiting. It's about a deliberate choice in whatever you do. If you're single, then for God's sake, KNOW WHY you're single and BE single. If you're falling for someone, then ask yourself WHY do I feel drawn to them; do you love the person you know, or the person you think they are? Has the girl "let you in" yet? If not, why do you think she's the one for you? Has the guy demonstrated the character of which he is actually willing to deny his own desires out of humility in favor of pleasing God and respecting you?

You see, the second we use the words "patience" and "waiting" we immediately use something I'd call "time metaphor". Love was never about time. Love exists outside of time, Scripture says it lasts past that. So why would we use time metaphors to try to teach people about how to fall in love, how not to fall in love? God has patience, he can endure a million years no problem. You and I? We're creatures of flesh and pain. We can't handle it because we weren't meant to. All we can do with our limited time here is make DELIBERATE DECISIONS to love others. It's about practical actions, intentional efforts. It's about knowing why you're doing something... not how long it takes to get there. Don't contextualize with time. Don't worry about how long it's been or going to be before you find that person who will love you like crazy. Think only about the people in your life now and make deliberate decisions in light of who they are... and what you can give them. 

If they need Jesus, give them Him. If you know who a person really is underneath and you love him, then please be honest with yourself and just love him. And if you get a glimpse of a young woman who loves Jesus so much she sacrifices other areas of life to be closer to him, by all means, chase that girl to the other end of the world. Please. The world needs you to do that. We need you to do that. We all need everybody else to come alive and know why we're doing what we're doing, and then act on it. -George

Hello again!

Hi! I haven't blogged since February and I see that others are getting back into it; I thought I would just get on here and say some quick things. I have been enjoying my job at Overton's and have become more responsible thanks to that hefty commitment. I haven't picked up painting this summer like I wanted to... and haven't done anything with photography. I mostly work and play music. My cousin Drew, Allen, and I want to start making some alternative music and play downtown, maybe at that new coffee shop The Scullery. It has to be hands down my favorite coffee shop in town. I'm trying not to freak out that I don't have any school lined up for this fall and that I don't know what to do with myself. I'm thinking of throwing myself into a business degree but that could be a really stupid idea, but maybe not. 

I used to feel more philosophical, deep, in-the-know. After I stopped blogging I have started to realize that most of what I talked about was mostly to establish some sort of hip self-image. Truth is, what I say really doesn't amount to anything. I could die tomorrow and nothing about me would matter 10 years from now. So I don't want to have the kind of "Christianity" that rears its head in the fashion of an intellectual hipster blogging and being wrapped up in himself. I'd rather have the kind now that comes from being in pain, seeing that I owe God my loyalty, and seeing what he has for me. It's a decision made out of devotion rather than "this is gonna be cool." I have learned more about myself this year than ever... as in, how selfish I am. Issues I thought were dead, are really things that I still fight with mightily. Let's take my dependence on women. God is slowly making me realize that no woman can be counted on the way I can count on him. I love girls, I really do. But I just can't do this anymore. God won't let me have anything I want. At least not until I learn to love him like a freaking magnet, the way I am with any girl I'm head over heels for. And I have no idea if that's possible, they say it is, but I haven't gotten there myself. We will see. 

In any case I asked God last year to make 2011 a year that I grow. That, of course, was actually the best way to invite discipline and a certain measure of "ruin" into my life so that God could do that very "growing" in me. And I knew that... but I still knew I couldn't keep from growing up. I just want to get where God wants me so I can get my heart right, understand how to enjoy my Dad in Heaven right here right now, etc etc. I've been ignoring him for days. He keeps wanting to spend time with me and I keep saying I'll read the Word but I don't. My prayers are weak and distracted. I keep reminding myself that it's not about what I do for him but what he does for me that matters... that makes any difference at all. 

And when it comes to women...

I hope that one day I can be the kind of young man who has a heart worth saying yes to.

 

bad language

So I know around Valentine's Day I think I put up one of those FML statements (**** my life). It's a cultural trend, mostly among teenagers and younger people, to say negative statements about their life and end it with FML. I was doing it as a joke, as a sort of dark humor. But a friend showed me it was wrong, and I agree. I think doing things as a joke can be funny, but there are other ways to be funny besides using obscenities. And because FML and the words it stands for are the same thing, I shouldn't say them. Nor do I really want to anyway... it's really negative and doesn't get me anywhere. I guess that's another change I'm making this year. As it is, I hardly ever cuss, but that could be even better. I'd be a lot happier with myself if I wasn't saying things that my family would hate if they were here. And since I say I believe that God is more my Father than my earthly father is, then I ought to behave like my Dad is around all the time. Because He is.

Women are different... right?

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  • In response to Chiao's post saying "After cru talk i thought, man... Women is another organism!"

    
    
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    George W. Davis IV

  We should talk about that sometime man. I think it's noble for ministry leaders to discuss it, but I think that sometimes it can be a little destructive. For instance, setting boundaries without actually doing anything else beneath the surface is pointless. You must have a different attitude regarding women to keep yourself from making bad decisions. Making external rules does nothing but make us frustrated. That make sense? Sometimes all the purity talk does is make us very tired, frustrated, uptight people who don't trust each other when it comes to sex.
  
  Openly talking about it is good. Thinking to yourself about appropriate boundaries is good too. But as for manufacturing a set of "this is what women and men should and shouldn't do" and enforcing it on many people robs those people of their ability to think for themselves. We all need to ask ourselves if we really want to guard our hearts or not, and then go with whatever we decide, without fooling ourselves.

  3 minutes ago · 
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  George W. Davis IV I think the whole "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" idea is really sexist towards both genders and is also very outdated. We have a lot of differences, duh, but I think that in reality it's not that hard to understand most of a woman's mind if you really try and listen to them.

Is the Golden Rule really a rule?

In a sense, yes. It is a required ingredient in becoming more like Christ.

But the great thing about the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12) is that it's really more than a rule. It's a way of life, something your heart loves to do. No rule by itself could really be so life-giving as this. That's another reason why in giving us the "Law of Love", God has actually set us free from the law. Because it's not just a rule, a boundary. It's loving loyalty.

And that's really more than any rule could ever produce.