Next time my kids complain about homework with fractions, I will tell them about my classmate Frank.  Frank, aka Frankie, wears fantastic stars-and-stripes workboots and has mad drywall skills. Tasked with measuring trim for a door jamb, Frank explained how he added up all the quarters and eighths and sixteenths of the various layers in … Continue reading Warring Fractions

This week wrapped up my first month in the Building Construction Technology curriculum at my local college of applied technology. Here are a few takeaways from my return to college: Construction school is kind of like Lord of the Flies, in that whoever holds the tools commands authority. Tools are power; you gotta bring your own. Leftover drywall … Continue reading 1st Month, 10 Takeaways

There is a world of smells inside a college of applied technology. Our woodshop smells rather pleasantly of sawdust, though sometimes—like when I don't hold the angle-grinder properly—it reeks of charred Southern pine. In the dental technology lab, where we are constructing new cabinet doors, there is a chemical scent that I suspect is from the sanding of false teeth. The machine … Continue reading Ooooh That Smell

After weeks of feeling like a total klutz with compound miter saws and hammer drills, I finally got an assignment in my wheelhouse. I dusted off my art history books to deliver a presentation on doors—yes, doors—from Tudor to Craftsman. It was a timely assignment, as we've been working on a pair of barn doors for the school's equipment … Continue reading Entry Point

As a writer, I love words. I like to mash ’em up and make jokes out of them and bend them to my will until they mean things that you would usually use different words to convey. When I try to pinpoint moments in my adult life when time flies and I get lost in … Continue reading Ahead of the Kerf

I signed up for the Building Construction Technology curriculum to give my life some...structure, and so far college-level shop class has provided the scaffolding I craved. For one thing, it has given me a new schedule. Writers' hours be damned. I clock in like Joe Lunchbucket every morning at 7:30, and slide down the back of the dinosaur, Flintstone-style, … Continue reading Universal Language

Today's class on building materials, fasteners and adhesives was as boring as a 4x8 sheet of oriented strand board (OSB), which, I now know, is a manufactured structural panel used for wall and roof sheathing. Even our fearless leader was yawning as he spearheaded the vocational death march through Carpentry Fundamentals Level One. I'm not complaining, … Continue reading Board, Board, Board

In our first two weeks of Building Technology Class, Polly and I leaned heavily on a fellow non-traditional—i.e., older—student, as we experimented with the circular saw, router and brad gun. So capable, patient and helpful was this classmate, in handsome silver-framed readers and camouflage ball cap embroidered with a Bible verse, that we finally had to ask: What gives? … Continue reading Who Teacheth Us

Today was Fall Festival at the college of applied technology, so we abandoned carpentry for corn hole and volleyball against the Aviation, Nursing and Dental Hygiene programs. If you ever have to wager on a sportball game between builders and phlebotomists, bet on the builders. (Just don't ask them to toenail a syringe into your brachial artery.) I … Continue reading Party School

A coatrack stands in the fallout zone of the table saw, where a fine powder of wood dust accumulates like snow on a tree, a silent totem of the whirring blade's ever-present threat. Standing by the coatrack at the end of class today, I thanked the instructor and waved good-bye. "Still got all my fingers," I said. "That's not … Continue reading All Thumbs