First, let me…
First, let me get my sincere “Merry Christmas “wishes out of the way, I do wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas and may this and every day bring you the blessings you deserve.
Today marks a…
Today marks a milestone for me here on steemit as this Daily Dose makes the five hundredth (500) post I have made to be a part of the steem blockchain.
Does reaching this milestone of sorts make it where I can now call myself a “blogger”? If so, I have some family members that I need to point that out to, like every one of them.
This has been a joint effort (not that kind of “joint” in case you were wondering) by joint effort I mean I couldn’t have done it without the support of each and every one of you folks who have taken the time to read what I have written, and for that I am truly grateful.
Not one person…
Not one person in the family who knew I was starting this adventure of blogging had me making it past 30 days; some had me at as little as a few days. Together we proved them all wrong. If I tell them they are wrong, they are wrong; but when you (the readers of the Daily Dose) tell them they are wrong; that is proof they were wrong.
Today is Christmas…
Today is Christmas Day and I do have a present for ya’ll , it isn’t much but it is something I can at least give each of you. That would be a look at my latest art creation I made. I bombed out of the TeamUp poker tournament early on Sunday afternoon and I had some time on my hands and a bucket of scrap copper wire and electric motor parts. Unlike last year’s “art” creation I made out of an old engine starter from a small block Chevy engine, I knew what I was trying to do this time.
I had a pony…
The oldest boy hasn’t even seen it but I know he is busy chasing around some girl he met at the gym. Christmas Eve morning he was off to the gym for a workout, funny how no matter what time of day he is working out she always seems to be there.
He started out with the gym to lose weight and he did, well over a hundred pounds. Now it looks like he is trying to gain it back, but this 100 pounds has its own arms and legs, pretty well proportioned is what I have been told too. It’s really funny how things work in life.
Speaking of Christmas Eve…
Speaking of Christmas Eve, the youngest boy signed up for the 11:00 PM church service to work the media projection devices and as luck would have it, Lyle wasn’t singing Stille Nacht at that one. So the family, with the exception of Blondie, ended up going to the 2:00 PM service in order to hear the song that makes Christmas, “Christmas” for me.
I didn’t realize it but on Sunday evening the church had a German language service in honor of the church’s German heritage. Back when the church was founded in 1872 by my wife’s family and a few other German families in the area; all the services in the beginning were in German.
So, I did temporarily suspend my church boycott but I will be back at it come next Sunday and with even more reason to continue it. Yes, even more reason. (you read that correctly)
The 11:00 PM...
The 11:00 PM candlelight service our youngest son was supposed to work the media projection for that service. He signed up to work that service over a month in advance and was listed on the schedule to do so. The minister in charge of scheduling even sent him a reminder text at 9:15 AM on Monday telling him he was scheduled to work the media projection and to be at the church at 10:15 PM.
He showed up right on time as instructed but the minister hem hawed around on opening up the projection area as he was talking to some of the church elders. Finally at 10:35 PM he came over to my son and told him that they didn’t need him to work the media.
The stalling around was because the minister was waiting for another church elder to show up who wanted to teach his daughter how to do the media. That was a big blow to the boy and my wife and girls were really upset along with him. Blondie had even suspended her boycott to support her brother and see his work being done.
I wasn’t there…
I wasn’t there and that was probably a real good thing because the minister and those elders would have gotten an earful of what I would have had to say. The 2:00 service sermon was about the “joy” of Christmas and to spread the joy of Jesus Christ’s birth. There was the joy of being able to serve the church taken away from our son only because an elder decided recently that he wanted to have his daughter learn how do it.
They didn’t even give our son the courtesy of telling him in advance he was being replaced since they weren’t sure that the girl and her father were going to make it to the service. Only after those two showed up did they tell him.
I have said before that I have seen this church changing direction since it has hired this group of ministers it currently has from over in California and I didn’t like the direction it was heading. To me this is just one more example of that direction I’ve been seeing.
Needless to say…
Needless to say, the family didn’t stay for the service and were back home by 10:45 PM. I was surprised as hell when they came through the front door. When I was told the story of how Pastor Lee treated the boy (sadly) I wasn’t surprised. Evidently making a commitment of your time to help and serve at that church means nothing to Pastor Lee when it comes from a sixteen year old teenager. Not when Pastor Lee can put a feather in his cap by allowing a church elder to just push the boy aside so the elders daughter can do it “if” they decided to show up.
This is strike two by my count; one more strike and that church can kiss my ass good bye for good.
Other than that…
Other than that; pretty much Christmas Eve went as planned, we did our traditional Christmas Eve supper at our favorite little local Italian restaurant and it wasn’t crowded. Today we go with Mexican food as the wife will be making her delicious enchiladas’ both the beef and cheese varieties.
Our oldest boy is half Mexican so we do the Mexican food as a “cultural” thing for him. That is the excuse we use anyways; the fact is we all love Mexican food. But it sounds good; “cultural” makes it sound like we actually care about what his ethnicity is,(we don’t) he is just one of the family.
You know though, I might better stop that cultural crap now that I think about it. We discovered this year that the wife and kids are part Cherokee Indian. Our three little Indians might start demanding we do some food that is “cultural” for them. I don’t where I can buy buffalo meat around here and I would have to think it is more expensive the just regular old beef and beef isn’t cheap at our grocery stores.
Back to the art…
Let me give you the specifics of this 2018 art piece I made.
The base is made from the steel plates that the copper wire was wound around in the motor. That motor also supplied the copper wire, that part in the motor is called the stator.
All the rest of the art piece is copper wire. The reddish colored copper wire is from the winding of the stator. The thicker light colored copper wire came from the heavy cord that supplied electricity to the motor from the electric source.
The very fine bright copper wire at the top is from a small fan motor I had laying around from when I scrapped an old microwave oven.
Here are the numbers on this 2018 piece:
The hours to create it was about 9 hours.
The height from base to the tip top is 39”
The total weight is 18.3 pounds
The total out of pocket cost was $0.00
The actual value as art is unknown.
The actual value as scrap is around $ 0.92 USD the way it sits in the pictures, it would be worth more if the copper and steel were separated.
I plan on...
I plan on leaving it outside on the table on the patio, that way it can get some weathering on it. The base is bare steel so it will end up a rust colored brown since it will rust and the copper will and up turning an off green color know as “patina” after a while, at that point it will be just the way I pictured it before I got started.
Don't worry...
Don’t worry; I am not trying to become an artist. Just like I wasn’t trying to become a blogger there is a purpose with these two pieces of “art”; and each year as long as I can I will add one more to the collection. There isn’t any need to say what the purpose is, after all, this is my 500th post and you know what that was all about.
Merry Christmas ya’ll and I will be back tomorrow with #501 and a complete wrap up of Christmas day.
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