joshkelahan.com

Charging, Indy, Nieces, & the Project

Charging

Last weekend I took my first real road trip in the Tesla. I am defining a real road trip as one where you have to stop and charge at least one time. It was really nice. We have all seen those YouTube videos of people with non-tesla-ev’s and all the problems they have charging, so I was naturally a bit worried. But I didn’t need to be. I spent a lot of time leading up to the trip planning out where the best chargers were and where I should stop before coming home. My only stop on the way to Indy was in Terre Haute, IN (5600 New Margaret Drive, Terre Haute, IN 47803). There is a nice 250kwh charger there. I pulled in, plugged the car in, and walked over to the Culvers that was next door. Between the walking, the bathrooming, and then cleaning my windshield my car was mostly charged when I was done. I ended up watching a 10-minute YouTube video and then it was fully charged.

This guy pulled into the supercharger just to get a pic of his truck.

On the way back, there was a charger about 5 minutes from the hotel. I stopped there. I didn’t go into the grocery store it was by. The charger there was a slower charger. I cleaned the windshield and the headlights again. Then I was about to enter where I assumed my next charging stop would be, but instead, I just told it to route me home. It automatically chose the same charger in Terre Haute. It said I had enough charge, to get there, but I chose to let it charge up to 80% before I left. So I watched some cartoons on Netflix for maybe 20 minutes before heading out.

The only issue I had coming back was all that driving in 2 days led to my but being numb and my back hurting. I keep telling myself I need to get back into keto and I need to get back on the treadmill and lose some poundage so that these random pains go away. Considering it’s a week later and my back/left shoulder still hurts, it might be a good incentive.

Indy

Indy was great. I stayed at the Staybridge Inn & Suites in Carmel, IN. I had never stayed in this particular hotel chain before. It’s lumped in with all the Holiday Inn hotels, so I get points or something from it. It had a kitchenette in the room.

My hotel room.

It was really nice to be able to pull the leftover pizza out of my cooler and eat it on a real plate and have a nice relaxed dinner instead of having to eat it cold or on a paper towel. The room also had a nice couch, it was kind of hard, but still, a couch is always a nice addition. The bed was also ridiculously firm, much more firm than what I prefer. Nonetheless, I slept like a rock.

The reason I was in Indy was that my Aunt and Uncle were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. It was at a fairly nice vineyard that is near where they used to live. Despite driving over 4 hours to get there, I was the first guest to arrive. It was nice to see them, I hadn’t seen them in two years. A couple of my cousins were there and my brother and his family were there too.

Nieces

Last winter, my brother had invited me to come this summer on a neat trip. We were going to be starting in Grand Haven, MI, and then traveling up the West Coast of Michigan. It was only going to be a couple of days, but I had been planning on continuing up to Traverse City and spending a few days there too. Unfortunately, one of my cousins lost her job and the whole trip just fell through.

It was sad because I thought it would be a good opportunity to spend some time with my 3 nieces whom I hadn’t seen since pre-pandemic. The youngest of which, I hadn’t seen since she was baptized. I was worried that when they got to the anniversary party last weekend they wouldn’t recognize me and worse they would just ignore or be afraid of me.

The youngest was shy for maybe 20 minutes and then after that, she seemed to not be bothered by me at all. I think that might have a lot to do with her two older sisters being immediately comfortable around me. We hung out all day, colored pictures, played games, had some cookies, and had an all-around good time.

The Project

After the anniversary party, I followed my brother over to the hotel they were staying at. Once we were up in their room, I brought out the project I had been working on for the last 6 weeks or so, 3 little leather bags I put together for my nieces.

3 bags I made for the girls. Water bottle for scale.

The original plan was to make all 3 of them identical. After I did the first one, the one with the fur flap, I decided I just didn’t have the time to do all three of them with the hair on. It added a bunch of extra steps that were very time-consuming. First I had to cut out the fur piece, but it’s too flimsy, so I had to cut out another piece and glue it to that. The glue took at least a day and sometimes longer around the edge. That first bag took two weeks to do and if you zoom in, the hair around the rivets doesn’t look as nice.

The other two, I did in the Italian Badalassi Carlo I used on the bottom of all three of the bags. That leather is really nice, I hope to use that again on some future projects. I need to get a strap cutter. I ended up just buying a 1″ piece of veg tan harness strap. It’s by comparison much stiffer and much heavier than the rest of the bags. I left them natural, but I did hit them with some mink oil. I told my brother that the straps should darken and soften over time, which they probably will.

The girls really liked the bags, they were super excited when they got them and checked them out for a good two minutes until they figured out that inside the bags there were candy and toys. That is when all chaos broke out. For this past week, I think I earned best uncle. My brother was also really impressed with the craftsmanship of the bags. He asked me lots of questions about it.

The next project…

When I showed my sister the little bags, she told me a few days later that she was feeling kind of jealous of my nieces because they were getting something and she wasn’t. I had her pick something out, and I guess that will be the next project. I printed it out. It’s 22 pages long. That’s gonna be a lot of cutting.

First Sewing Project

Over the course of the pandemic, and really working from home, I assume that we have all had to find new and interesting ways to spend our time. I would hope that everyone went out and learned something new, but who knows? I decided to learn about something that has held a bit of interest of me for a little while: leatherworking. Okay, that maybe sounds nuts, but as a single person with no one to spend my time with, I realized that I need to do something other than just sit in front of the computer or sit in front of the tv. I have to do something that gets me away from my screens.

So I started watching youtube videos on leatherwork and found them all very interesting. I found a facebook group called, “Chuck Dorsett Fan Club” that had a monthly leather challenge. I tried a couple of the challenges. They were all tooling challenges. Tooling leather is when you carve/hammer designs into the leather. If you watch a lot of videos, there are some very talented people out there. I am not one of them.

I have been collecting some leather patterns over the last couple of years. I have just been saving them to my computer. Sometimes I would print them out, but ultimately, I wouldn’t do anything with them. I was being anxious about trying to sew leather. With Halloween approaching, I just said screw it, and started working on this leather skull project. But two or three days into it, at work, they decided to do this “carved pumpkin” challenge and I thought, I am pretty sure I have a jack-o-lantern pattern. So I proceeded to carve my pumpkin out of leather.

Here it is, the Creative Awl Jack-o-lantern pattern. It looks like a happy thing. The first thing I did was print out the pattern onto A4 paper. A4 is different than the letter size paper we use here in the US. Letter size paper is 8.5″ X 11″. A4 is 8.25″ X 11.75″. Luckily it still fits in the printer. It seems like all the leather pattern shops use this size. Maybe it is a European thing? I don’t know. Anyway, I printed it out and taped it to the leather and then started punching out all the holes. That is what they do in the youtube videos. The order of operations is:

Print it out
Tape it to the leather
Punch all the holes
Cut out the design
Stitch it back together

Then of course came the part I was dreading. I have watched so many videos on how to do the proper saddle stitch. Of course, not everyone does it the same way, which really doesn’t help when you are a beginner, lol.

Turns out, I was worried over nothing. It’s not too difficult.

In this picture above, it looks super complicated. The pattern had all these lines on it and called out the holes on the top and the bottom. So I sharpied them on. They weren’t necessary at all. I don’t remember what these little brass-looking things are called, but they help hold the leather together when you are sewing it. Very helpful.

He turned out kind of creepy and not at all happy like in the pattern picture. I still need to dye him to protect the leather. It has been sitting on my desk for the last week and it is super dried out right now. Overall, I really enjoyed this pattern. When I shared it with coworkers some suggested that I should make a big one. Maybe I will…next year. If you decide you want to do this pattern yourself, you can get it here: https://creativeawl.com/shop/halloween-pumpkin-pdf-pattern/

Now that this is done, it’s back to the skull project. Hopefully, I can get it done before Halloween. I will try and remember to post back here if I win the pumpkin carving contest. Cheers! -Josh

May the 4th be with you

Today is May 4th, 2021. This morning I was working on a little blurb for speaking at my weekly toastmasters meeting and needed to upload a file to this old website so that I could share it with the group. While it was uploading, I decided to hit the blog and see how long it had actually been… The first thing I realized is the web host updated something, and the blog didn’t work. Tap tap tap, fixed. It’s a bit funny because now there are all these tools for working with WordPress, all this backend fluff. None of it could fix the issue on the blog, so I just reset the db password, updated the config file, and done. It took like 40 minutes (while I was in a meeting) messing with the new tools, and 5 minutes in a text editor to just do it myself. Whaever.

So wow, 2019. I was a whole different person in 2019. In some respects, I wish I could go back to then. A lot, like really a lot has happened since then. On the off chance, you are from a different planet, or if this gets recorded somewhere and some future reader sees this, the last year has been a hell year for humanity. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s true. In late 2019 in Asia, a pandemic started. They called it Novel Coronavirus 2019, or simply covid 19. In early 2020, they started closing Europe. Yes, the entire continent. It still seemed like it was a world away. In March, as cases were starting to pop up around the US, I went to the grocery store for what was the last time. The experts were all saying that the pandemic would likely last 2 weeks, so everyone was running out to buy everything they needed for 2 weeks. Look up toilet paper shortage 2020 if you get bored. It’s an interesting read. I put together a plan and a list and went to the grocery store. It was an absolute zoo. I got what I needed for 3 weeks. That was March 15th, 2020. On March 17th, that was the last day that I worked in the office in 2020. The head of our department said we would work from home for the next couple of weeks. Today is May 4th, 2021. We are still working from home. They are saying that we might be back in the office maybe this fall, but it will only be 1 day a week. No one knows. Last month I got my 2nd covid shot. I am super hopeful to get to a new normal. I don’t think it will ever be what it was.

For years, I have said, when people asked if I would ever consider working from home full time, that I wouldn’t. It was just so foreign to me. I have always enjoyed the social aspect of being at work, even if I didn’t always enjoy the people that I worked with. My perspective has definitely changed. I always thought of myself as that old hermit guy that would end up in a cabin in the woods living alone. I can tell you, I don’t really think I could actually do that. I need human interaction. I am lucky that my parents live close and I can go over there whenever. Virtual meetings help, but it’s not the same as being in the same room as other people.

I know I’ve said it before, but I am going to try and make it a point to update this blog more often. I am putting it on my to-do list now, as a weekly thing. Update blog. I need to make some lunch. I have a ToastMasters meeting in 20 minutes. I have been nominated to become “VP of Public Relations.” I figure I should have a legit blog if I am going to do that. See you next week.