My dad made a set of patio furniture for me, which is in need of a waterproof stain before I put it out on the patio. I finished the bench with a brush, but I wasn't happy with it. So I tried out my HVLP sprayer on one of the chairs.

I finally bought new tires for my motorcycle, replacing the original Dunlop's that came with the bike with a new pair of Metzler tires. Before I go on, if you're not a biker you won't appreciate how excited bikers get about a new pair of tires. I'll try to keep this relevant to non-bikers, but be warned that you might want to bail out now.

A couple years back I took an interest in hand cutting dovetails, and I found this great video on the Fine Woodworking website about how to do it. It made the layout pretty simple to follow.

Until recently I hadn't actually done anything about hand cutting dovetails. A couple of weeks ago, I decided that a) I needed to be out of the house and b) it was time to try cutting dovetails. I don't have a picture of my project handy, but it turned out not to be too bad.

Last night I discovered that saws are a lot like cars: sitting unused for extended periods does not improve them. My tools have sat idle since last fall, when I finished construction on my shed, mostly because this winter has been too cold to reasonably go outside and work in the garage.

I convinced Elena to do a little modeling for me, and we had some fun with the pictures. You can download her wanted poster below.

My Motorcycle Now that I've had the motorcycle for a few months I have a little more perspective on it. It's turned out to be really fantastic. There is still something a bit scary about being on a motorcycle, but at this point it's a good kind of scared. It's an exhilaration, a bit of an adrenaline rush.

President: Now Available in Black It's a happy day for me. Less so for my right-leaning wife and step son. This is something I've been waiting for since I was a kid: when a black man really could be elected president. To be sure, it took a perfect storm of circumstances. The Republican party needed to discredit itself with the public, and the candidate had to be somebody extraordinary.

For those of you who haven't heard, Debbie K. Schmidt died on Sunday.

I rode my motorcycle to work for the first time today. It was 37 degrees when I left this morning, and the ride was 45 miles long. Sunrise occurred just as I arrived at the office. As an added bonus, I took the windshield off my motorcycle last week, because I was tired of the turbulence behind it. Which made the ride very smooth.

I've been riding since early September now. So far it's been really great. I've been easing into this thing fairly slowly, steadily increasing the complexity of what I attempt. Last weekend I took it on the highway to my parents' house (55 miles), which was by far the biggest challenge I've taken on with the motorcycle.