[craigwbryant]

So, its Friday afternoon, I was supposed to be running research sessions both Saturday and Sunday, but we just got word that the truck simulator we use is having some technical difficulties and we may have to cancel this weekend's sessions. My wife had to go home to her parents house this weekend for a family gathering. This Sunday is Father's Day (my first actually). Is it messed up that when we got word that the sim was down my first thought was "oohh...the wife and baby won't be here, so I'll get an entire weekend in the shop to myself!" instead of "well, I guess after work today I could drive to the in-laws and spend the weekend with the wife and baby"?!?

 

[cabinetman]

Cherish the family.:yes:

.

 

[BernieL]

Always family first. Now that our 4 sons are all grown up and we have 5 grand daughters, it's still family first. It's so nice when they visit because they remember all the things we did as they were growing up. And the wife, now that we have an empty nest? We're still best friends.

Now that I'm retired, I get lots of shop time with no guilt feelings.

 

[Seenya]

There are several things in this life that are one time opportunities. Your first Father's Day is one of them. To me, it's my most cherished one. Time with my son is not good time, it's the best time.

 

[Wood4Brains]

Father's Days with the family are a very nice thing. Also spending time with the family and in-laws on Father's Day MIGHT give you some more leverage to get some tools out of it...

 

[Crusader]

I'll play devils advocate! Having the weekend just to yourself, what to do..what to do Now you have to ask yourself, is this shop time beneficial to your family? Meaning, is this an opportunity to complete some chore or task that otherwise might be difficult to do with the family around? Could you possibly pull off the most amazing task, that your wife will be so happy that you stayed at home to finish?
If the answer is yes, then I vote for some quality stay at home time.

Now on the other hand, if your desires to stay firmly planted in the shop and make sawdust is for purely selfish reasons, than that would squarely rest on your shoulders. We all need our time to ourselves granted, but I wouldn't want to be within arms reach of my wife if I told her, that's why I stayed back at the ranch.

Good luck!

 

[craigwbryant]

Well, the afternoon unfolded rather strangely...

We managed to identify the problem with the simulator, bad power supply. Fortunately there is a shop in town we were able to get the part we needed to fix the problem.

Now that we've got the simulator back up and running I made my confirmation calls to participants. The participant scheduled for Saturday unfortunately had forgotten about the session and made another commitment so he asked to push his appointment off a week. Sunday's participant however is still good to go, so he'll be coming in.

This means that I will get Saturday all to myself. Shop time at my house always equates to doing something for my wife. All of my projects start out as my wife saying "we really need ***", then I go looking for some plans and we pick one out, and then I go to work on building it. I'm not quite to the point of designing my own stuff yet, hoping to get there soon. Right now I'm in the beginning phases of a dresser that was in an issue of Woodsmith magazine a couple of weeks ago, so I hope to get some good progress made on that tomorrow. We really need a second dresser in our bedroom as the one we have right now is a hold over from my bachelor days, and as an Army officer I don't own too many civilian clothes so my dresser was rather small, ever since my wife and I got married 3 years ago we've been constantly fighting the issue of not enough dresser space.

 

[MidKnight]

New father here. 14 month old twins.

Shop time is limited. To almost none. I've not even completed my grandfather's burial flag display. I savor the spare 30 minutes here and there that I get to build. I get excited about it. I can fully understand, very fully, your thoughts. I have had the same.

However. Part of being a dad is putting literally everyone else first. Sometimes it sucks. But my kids love me. My girl has learned to hug. And when she hugs me I know all sacrifices I make are shadows of the rewards.

But yeah, I would have initially said the same.

Happy fathers day.

 

[Itchytoe]

This year, Father's Day for my family is next weekend. People are busy, so we're having our normal get together a week later. We don't really care if we celebrate the same time everyone else celebrates or not.

If what Dad needs on Father's Day is some time alone, that's what Dad should get. Have a nice quiet Father's Day by yourself this weekend, and another one with the immediate family next weekend. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was two for the price of one.

 

[craigwbryant]

So like I said, I wound up getting all of today to myself. I spent most of it out in the shop and managed to get the case built for the dresser that I mentioned in an earlier post. This is my first case constructed with dado/rabbet joinery. It took a lot of time and I had a spare piece that I cut the dados in before cutting them into the project pieces, just to make sure my setups were correct. I am sure this probably would have taken some of the guys here about 2 hours, but I took a lot of time to make sure things were as close to perfect as I could get them. I talked to my wife tonight on the phone and shared this photo, she's excited about the project and the progress that I made. I'll get to do more work tomorrow after my participant sessions.

 

[jharris2]

Father's day is YOUR day Craig.

That's the day that the family's obligation is to you.

My friend and neighbor is a dad and didn't have to work this weekend.

His adoring family made all kinds of plans for him when all he wanted to do was turn some bowls and hang out in his shop.

Enjoy your day!