Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

The Crate

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The story of a piece of “furniture” I’ve owned for 41 years.

The crate arrived in the US in 1981, delivered to the Manhattan home of the parents of the guy I was dating back then. It was a large crate, but it arrived from Hungary containing only 12 bottles of Hungarian wine, all nestled in tightly packed straw. Even after the careful packing and protection, one of the bottles arrived broken.

The crate was well made of solid wood pieces. It was heavy — probably about as heavy as the wine it contained — and, as you can imagine, a wealthy couple living on the Upper East Side with a view of the Queensboro Bridge had absolutely no use for it once the wine was removed. Their son, a senior at Hofstra University did, though. He was living in a dorm room and it would make a nice piece of furniture.

The Crate Becomes Furniture

So he brought it back to the dorm, put a pair of hinges on its lid to make a door, and installed a shelf and some cup holder hooks inside it. He then stood it on one end and put his dorm-sized refrigerator on top of it. It made a nice addition to his 9 x 12 dorm room.

I don’t remember if I came into the picture before or after its arrival. I dated Stew for about a year, breaking things off not long after we graduated. I seem to recall him adding the hinges, which means it arrived after I did. But I don’t recall getting the big thing from Manhattan to Hempstead. So who knows? It doesn’t really matter.

When we graduated and moved out of our dorm rooms, he offered up the crate, since he planned to go back to his parents home in Manhattan and definitely didn’t need it. I took it. I liked crate furniture. (I still kind of do.)

The Crate in My Homes

Between my college graduation and today, I’ve lived in exactly five homes.

The first was my first apartment right out of college, which I moved into in spring 1982. It was in a sketchy area of Hempstead, NY, on the sixth floor of an apartment building with windows that included a view of the Hoftstra dorm towers. It was a large studio apartment with separate kitchen and dressing room/closet between the main room and the bathroom. In hindsight, it was actually a nice place, although the area, as I said, was sketchy. A few of my friends were afraid to come visit me. I never had a problem there.

I fixed up the studio into two rooms by placing three tall veneered particleboard bookshelves between my sleeping area and my living room. I had my original bed — the twin I’d grown up sleeping in — and a lot of junk furniture. The crate became my “coffee table,” sitting right in front of the Ikea fold out sofa.

In summer 1983, I met my future wasband. In January 1984, he and I moved into our first apartment together, a third floor walkup in a row of houses right over the Cross Island Parkway in Bayside, NY. The crate came with us. I honestly can’t remember where we put it in that three bedroom apartment. It may have been in the spare room, which became a cat hair infested storage space until I was forced to find homes for my two cats — my future wasband was allergic and had asthma. (To this day, I wish I’d kept the cats and found a home for him.)

Two years later, in January 1985, we bought our first house together. It was an interesting home made entirely of reinforced poured concrete with something like 40 jalousie windows — that’s the kind you crank with a handle to open slats. Built in 1926, it was unique and would have been a fixer-upper if you didn’t mind working with a sledgehammer. On a quiet street in Harrington Park, NJ, there was a Conrail freight train line just beyond the backyard. For 11 years, I lived with freight trains literally a stone’s throw away from my bedroom window.

The crate became the coffee table in the TV room. It was probably around then that we started storing board games in there. By this time, it was used lying on its long side with the hinged lid on the top.

In 1997, my future wasband and I made the move from the New York metropolitan area to Wickenburg, AZ. This was a huge life change. We bought a brand new spec house on 2 1/2 acres of horse property for the same price as the old house along the tracks in New Jersey. Our cost of living plummeted and our quality of living soared. I was in my late 30s and it was my first full-time taste of living away from a metro area. I loved it. (I thought my future wasband did, too, but after hearing from my sister about some of the places he’s lived since we split, I’ve begun to suspect he prefers suburbia.)

My Crate
Here’s the crate in my previous home. Both it and the comfy brown leather sofa that was in that room made the move with me to Washington state.

The crate came with us. It became the table in our TV area on the second floor. We still stored games in it. And I even have a picture of it there, since it was mentioned in an old blog post I wrote while going through my divorce.

In 2013, as my divorce dragged on, I packed up the crate and moved it into storage. When the movers came in September of that year, they took it with everything else all the way up Washington State, where I’d leased a hangar for my helicopter and had plenty of room for my cars, boat, and storage of furniture and household items. The crate — and most of my other stuff — lived in storage for nearly a year.

On May 20, 2014, we broke ground for my current home. By my birthday at the end of June of that year, the shell of my home was finished with the concrete slab laid. I had a party and my friends helped me move just about everything out of the hangar, across the river, and into my new garage. Including the crate.

As my various posts about building my home detail, I did a lot of the interior work on my home myself. Once I had a space to get work done, I started collecting tools. Eventually, I needed a miter saw so I could cut lumber to build a workbench and other things. The saw I bought did not come with a table. I decided to use the crate as a miter saw station — after all, I had more than enough furniture from my old house and wouldn’t need the crate as another coffee table. I put wheels on the bottom of the crate — nearly everything in my garage has wheels so I can move it — and mounted the miter saw on top. I put new shelves inside the crate to store saw blades and related parts.

And since then, I’ve used the saw on its crate table to build all kinds of things out of lumber: a workbench, 8 garage shelving units, a jewelry bench, two chicken coops, and small tool tables. I also used it extensively while finishing the upstairs of my home to cut Pergo for the floors, lumber for stem walls and rails, and trim throughout my home. The beauty of the saw on that table is that I can roll it anywhere I need to in the downstairs space when I need it and then roll it out of the way when I’m done.


Here’s the crate and its saw in its current location. I’ve set aside a 12 x 12 section of my garage as a workshop for building and repairing things. The crate has been the home for my miter saw for 9 years now.

The Crate Today

I’m in the midst of a huge garage reorganization project and I finally found what is likely to be the “forever home” for the crate and its miter saw. I’ve been tooting my progress on social media — Mastodon — with photos. This morning, I looked at a recent toot that showed a photo of it and thought about my history with this crate. I think I’ve owned it longer than just about anything I currently own. I can’t remember a single thing — other than a handful of keepsakes from my childhood and college years — that I’ve owned longer.

And that inspired me to share this blog post.

I have no real emotional attachment to this crate — please don’t think I do. It’s just its utility that makes me respect and keep it. Someone took the time to build this out of nice, strong wood. It crossed an ocean carrying just 12 bottles of wine and came close to being discarded. Instead, it’s had a long life as part of my life — and it continues to serve me to this day.

How many things do you own that you can say the same about?

It Really IS All about Calories

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Stop with the fad diets already! The only ones that really work are the ones that reduce calorie intake.

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I’m dieting. I’m doing it for my physical and mental health. I think those are the two best reasons to get back in shape, no matter what that entails.

I started the diet on May 1 of this year and have lost, as of this morning, 19.6 pounds. I want to lose a lot more. I’ve done it before and I felt great. But then I just got back into my old overeating habits and, over the course of 10 years or so, gained it all back. So now I’m dieting again, taking my body back to 2012. I have about 40 pounds to go, so I’m nearly 1/3 there.

And yes, I did weigh “that much.” I’m 5’8″ tall and I can hide those pounds. But I still have to carry them.

Don’t Be Dumb about Dieting

When I mention to folks that I’m dieting, they immediately respond with recommendations for the various fad diets or techniques they use. It happened just this morning when I went to the clinic to have blood drawn for bloodwork on my annual physical. I had to fast so I was there when they opened at 7:00 AM. I was back home with my first cup of coffee 30 minutes later.

The phlebotomist — that’s the woman in her 30s who drew my blood — said that the only way she can lose weight is to cut out carbs. And because she’s allergic to dairy like milk and cheese, she has trouble getting enough protein.

“Are you a vegetarian?” I asked, not quite understanding.

“No,” she said, “but there are only so many kinds of meat out there.”

I was flabbergasted. This was coming from a medical professional who was certainly young enough to understand how to use Google — just in case the dozens of doctors and nurses around her all day long couldn’t provide advice. (The medical center she works for also has dietitians on staff and I suspect it would cost a lot less for her to talk to them than for me, provided I wanted to wait four months for an appointment.)

I was going to remind her it was all about calories, but then she was done taking blood and wrapping my arm with a gauze pad and what I’ll always think of as vet wrap. I was done and people were waiting. I left.

But it really and truly is all about calories. We eat food that provides energy, which is quantified as calories, to our bodies. Throughout the day, we move, sit, walk, nap, lift heavy things, climb stairs, and maybe even jog or bike or do something really active. All those activities — yes, even napping or vegging out in front of the TV — burn calories. If we eat more energy than we need, our bodies store it as fat. If we use more energy than we eat, our bodies should tap into those fat reserves and burn fat.

I will put myself out there and say this, which I am 100% convinced of: it is not possible to lose weight without reducing calorie intake or increasing activity levels to burn more calories or both. Ask your doctor. I cannot imagine her disagreeing.

Doing the Math

So every day your body is doing math for you. Well, it’s not actually doing the math. It’s just doing what it does. But you can do the math yourself if you keep track of the calories in what you eat and have some way of calculating the calories you burn — like maybe a smart watch or FitBit?


Here’s Sunday in a nutshell: calories consumed, calories burned, and basic nutritional information.

I use a calorie tracker app that’s really easy to use, mostly because it has just about all packaged and chain restaurant food programmed into it. I’m on a diet, so I’m not eating out much. I’m eating food that’s on my diet plan, mostly because its easy and its nutritionally balanced. But I’m also making my own meal once a day and I’m weighing everything that goes into it. I’d say that my daily calorie count is about 90% accurate; that means I’m only off by about 10% if at all. I’m comfortable with the margin of error.

My Apple Watch (series 3, folks; I don’t need more) keeps track of my activity levels — although I honestly think it doesn’t count flights of stairs right. (I definitely climb the stairs more in my home than my watch says I do.) It automatically imports my activity, included my estimated calorie burn, to my phone, which is where my calorie counter app lives. The app gets the data and displays it on my Food page for the day, as you can see in the screen grab here for Sunday, when I was pretty active. I’m not sure how accurate this count is, but I’d say it’s within 25% of what it reports. So if it says I burned 2000 calories, I feel pretty confident that the real number is between 1500 and 2500 calories. I know that’s a big spread, but it’s close enough for me. My goal is for my watch and health app to report a calorie burn of at least 1800 calories a day.

I’m restricting my calorie intake to about 1000 calories. I’m not kidding around here, folks. I want to lose all the weight this summer, before I go back to the boat. For those of you who think this isn’t healthy, understand that the diet plan food is nutritionally balanced — as I said above — and, just in case, I take a quality daily vitamin/mineral supplement for women aged 50+. During the first two weeks, I had occasional days where I felt a bit out-of-sorts, but I’ve been fine since then. Certainly enough energy to get my work done, including more than a few strenuous chores.

The math is pretty simple. According to many reputable sources, 1 pound of weight equals 3500 calories. (And yes, I’m aware that this “rule of thumb” isn’t a foolproof formula for losing weight. If you research this, be sure to focus on what’s said by reputable sources and not the top Google hits, which are sponsored and not reliable.) So using Sunday as an example, I took in 1014 calories and burned 2423 calories. That’s a net of 1409 — I burned 1409 more calories than I took in.

I need to add a few things about this diet that I think are important. The diet plan wants me to eat six times a day. Most meals — the packaged bars and microwavable “hearty” foods — are 90 to 110 calories each. So that’s 500 calories for 5 meals eaten 2 to 3 hours apart. The small portions are hard to keep you feeling satisfied when you first start, but within a week or two, they become enough to keep you from getting hungry until next mealtime. I really believe that spreading the calorie intake over the entire day — rather than “fasting” (which so many people are pushing these days) — prevents your body from going into a sort of “starvation mode” where it might start burning muscle instead of fat.

The final meal — which I usually have midday — is “lean and green”: real food that includes a lean protein like just about any meat in the right portion size and a salad or green vegetable. I do salad and I buy boxes of baby mixed greens and other salad veggies to make it interesting. Low calorie or “lite” dressing. The other day, I had a grilled 4-ounce ribeye steak and a bowl of salad with lettuces, cabbage, cucumber, tomato, raw mushrooms, and a nice balsamic vinaigrette dressing. So I’m not exactly suffering here.

The other ingredient to this diet is water. Drinking lots and lots of water. My “diet coach” claims that the water makes me burn fat, but I’m not 100% convinced it’s as easy as that. I do know that on days when I drink more water, my weigh-ins have bigger ticks down. I drink a lot of plain water and water flavored with Gatorade Zero, which adds electrolytes I might need from working in the heat of summer. No diet soda or juice.

This is basically the same diet I used in 2012 to lose 45 pounds in 4 months. Back then, I didn’t count calories or have a watch that monitored my activity, but I still lost weight. When I was off the diet, my stomach wasn’t expecting those big meals, so it took a few years for me to go back to my nasty, stupid overeating habits and start gaining it all back. I still can’t believe I let that happen; I won’t let it happen again.

And one more thing: could I do this without the diet plan food? Yes, but it would be a lot more difficult. I’d have to come up with five food portions a day that were right around 100 calories each. I’d have to make sure they were nutritious. I’d have to count every calorie for every ingredient in every meal to make sure I wasn’t going over the allowed amount. That would be a lot more difficult than just buying the damn food and eating that.

Weighing In


Yes, I cropped out the numbers. But you can see the trend and that’s all that really matters.

My daily weigh-in, which is also on that calorie counter app, tracks my progress and gives me a space to write notes every day. I report when I “cheat” — for example, having street tacos for lunch instead of my “lean and green” meal.

A lot of folks say you shouldn’t weigh in daily, but I don’t care. I do. It keeps me motivated. Watching the scale tick down daily — with the occasional tick back up a tad — helps me monitor my process and see that I’m moving forward.

Why Those Fad Diets “Work”

You might be wondering why the fad diets you’ve tried have worked for you. I can attest to the fact that the Atkins diet worked for me back in 2004; I lost 20 pounds back then and felt pretty darn good. Until I went off it, of course.

Did you ever think about how cutting carbs out of your diet, for example, actually affects calorie intake? Or how fasting twice a week affects the total number of calories you take in for the week? Or how the Atkins diet or Paleo diet or Whole 30 diet fill-in-the-blank diet really affect calorie intake?

And how many of those diets are actually healthy? I think the Mediterranean diet is, but it’s definitely not the kind of diet you’d use to lose a lot of weight quickly. It’s more like the kind of diet you’d switch to when you were at or near your ideal weight to stay healthy and eat right. It seems smart, to me, and, to be honest, it’s kind of how I eat anyway. (I just eat too much!)

And yes, I’ve gotten lots of recommendations about Weight Watchers. I cannot comment on it because I’ve never tried it. But I have to think that any diet that promotes healthy eating in moderation is a good diet. And if it helps you lose weight when you need to, even better.

Going Forward after Meeting My Goal

In my world, it’s all about portion control. I like to eat good food. I don’t eat junk food or fast food, but I’ll have huge portions of an excellent stew (with noodles!) or fresh baked bread or just about anything tasty. I need to eat less of what I do eat. That’s my go-forward once I’m down to my ideal weight.

I never want to do this diet again. I just want to eat smart in moderation. If I do that and stay active, I shouldn’t be in this mess again.

And don’t fool yourself — losing weight and staying fit isn’t about making yourself look good for other people. It isn’t about rail thin supermodels or societal norms. It’s about your health.

Sure, there are plenty of fat people who live long lives, but are they physically able to make the most of those lives? Do they have nagging health issues that hold them back? Bad knees, shortness of breath, stomach issues? Who wants to be like that?

I don’t.

Would YOU Sell a Joy Machine?

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I get an offer on my 2003 Honda S2000 — and say nope.


My “fleet” of vehicles in the four-car garage on the north side of my home. My little 17′ Sea Ray jet boat is hiding behind the truck; it needs to be sold. If you look closely, you can see my 1999 Yamaha Grizzly ATV parked outside; I bought that new, too.

My Jeep is still packed with art show gear and, frankly, with another show later this month, I’m willing to let it stay packed so I don’t have repack it. My truck is a pain in the butt to park and I didn’t really need to haul anything. So when I went to a meeting with my tax accountant and down into Wenatchee to run some errands, I took my Honda.

It’s a 2003 Honda S2000 and I bought it new. It has about 69,000 miles on it and I drove it for most of those miles.

The Joy Machine

Honda and ToyotaThis might be the only photo I have of my Honda and Toyota parked side by side. For years, the Toyota lived at whatever airport I flew my helicopter to most often: Prescott, Scottsdale, and, in this photo, at Phoenix Deer Valley.

Now I know most folks say it’s dumb to buy new cars when used cars are so much cheaper. I think I’ve heard the “drops $5000 in value as you drive it away” claim about a million times. But when you keep your cars for 20+ years, depreciation is not something you really need to worry about. You really do get your money’s worth, even if the car is a total junker when you dispose of it — like my 1987 Toyota MR-2 was.

This car turned on to be a classic because Honda only made them for a few years. So after normal depreciation for the first 10+ years, the car has started to appreciate. It’s “desirable.” It certainly does turn a lot of heads and get a lot of complements.

I don’t drive it very often, but when I do, I remember why I call it my Joy Machine. I swear that if I had the worst day of my life and was totally miserable, I could get in this car, take it for a drive in the mountains, and be totally joyful within 30 minutes. It’s a blast to drive, with fast engine, six-speed transmission, nearly zero body roll, grippy tires, and good brakes. Top down is the way to go, of course. Replacing the stock stereo with a modern, more powerful one a few years ago — why did I wait so long? — makes it perfect for any road trip, provided you don’t need to take much luggage. In no reality could this be called a “practical” car, but hell, that’s what the Jeep and truck are for.

The Car Dealer

So I drive the Honda into Wenatchee the other day, all the way to the north end of town, and pull into the Home Depot parking lot. I need to return some irrigation stuff and get different irrigation stuff. (Don’t get me started on irrigation and careless landscapers with lawnmowers.) As I’m walking away from the car, a guy pulls up next to me in an SUV.

“I want to buy your car,” he says to me.

“It’s not for sale,” I say to him.

He then proceeds to tell me that he’s with a car dealer up the road and that the car is very desirable and worth a lot of money.

I tell him that I know exactly how much Kelly Blue Book says its worth because I looked it up the day before, out of curiosity, when also looking up the value of a truck camper I want to sell.

“You’re selling a truck camper?” he says. “I just bought one of those the other day. We’re looking for another one. But I really want to buy that car.”

“Well, everything has its price,” I admit. “Come up with a big enough number and I’d consider selling it.” I didn’t tell him how big that number had to be, but it was pretty big. A lot bigger than KBB said it was worth. After all, it wasn’t just a car. It was a Joy Machine.

We exchanged numbers and he said he wanted to come up and look at both vehicles. He’d bring someone from his office.

I really do want to sell that camper — it’s a 2007 Lance 950 sized for a long bed — and if I could lure him up to my place by letting him have a closer look at the car, I was willing to do it. I had the JD Powers numbers for the camper and had discovered that it was worth a lot more than I thought it was. I was pretty flexible on price, though; I’d paid less than the current value for it. If he came near what I wanted and handed over cash, it would be his.


I had a lot of fun times in this truck camper and I sure hope it goes to a good home.

The Visit

True to his word, he contacted me later in the day to set up a meeting at my house the next day, Friday. 3 PM was the time. That gave me all day to finish clearing out the camper, washing road dirt off it, and vacuuming it. I did all the cleanup with it still in the garage — my garage has a drain so I often wash vehicles in there, in the shade. (It clears the dust off the garage floor at the same time.) Then I got the truck in there and lowered the camper onto it. I pulled out of the garage and closed the door.

I also pulled the Honda out into the shade just outside its garage bay and gave it a good washing, top down. (Yes, it is possible to wash a convertible with the top down.) I dried it off and it sparkled. I put the vinyl top cover over the folded top. It looked amazing. Seriously: when you take care of your stuff, it shows. (My 1999 Jeep — also bought new — has never been so lucky; I beat the crap out of it on a regular basis and it shows.) I closed that garage, too.


My Joy Machine after a quick wash.

Now you might think I’m nuts inviting a stranger who approached me up to my house, supposedly to look at vehicles. But I’m not a complete idiot. The garage and house was closed up so there was no way he’d see anything else that I owned. And I texted my neighbor Teri and asked if I could borrow one of her men — either her husband or his cousin who was visiting — for the occasion. They both rolled up in his side-by-side at about 2:45. They had a gun with them.

(I’d considered bringing my gun down from the house, but there was no place I could hide it on my person when I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. So I had no problem with them bringing one that they kept in the side-by-side.)

So yes, I understood right from the get-go that this could be some scam to get me to reveal more about my possessions than just these two vehicles or even an opportunity to rob me or worse. And I took precautions. ‘Nuff said.

He showed up late. Very late. Almost 4 PM. He was alone. He looked at the camper and was impressed. I’ve only owned it since 2017 — six years — but during that time, it was always garaged when not in use. Yes, I did live in it for months at a time when I went south for the winter, but I kept everything in good condition and fixed problems as they cropped up. Here’s another news flash: when you take care of your stuff, it doesn’t break very often. So although the camper itself was 15 years old, it looked great and worked pretty much perfectly. I also had all kinds of extra gear for it, including vinyl room panels for under the sleeping area when it was off the truck and the tie-down equipment the next owner would need to secure it to his truck. That stuff alone was probably worth at least $1500 if bought new.

Then he wanted to see the car. I walked him over to the other side of the house where it was still parked in front of its closed garage door. He might have been drooling. He told me he wanted it and he wanted to hand it down to his daughter, who is now six years old. He said his boss also wanted it because they could sell it. They’re opening a new location in Arizona and I suspect he was imagining driving it down there. Heck, I was imagining it, too — and I’d already driven it between Arizona and Washington state three times.

He wanted me to give him a price on the car but I wouldn’t. I told him he needs to give me a price. In the meantime, I’d already given him the JD Powers printout for the camper, along with my price, which was the “average retail” on that page. (Again, I’d take less, but he didn’t need to know that yet.)

The whole time we chatted, my neighbor and his cousin just hung around. My neighbor, who has some physical disabilities, stayed in his side-by-side. His cousin trimmed the sagebrush along my driveway, which I had on my list of things to do. My neighbor’s wife drove in with their dog and table scraps for my chickens and her husband left.

The car dealer and I finished out chat and he left. On the way out, he told me I had a great gardener. We all had a good laugh about that when he was gone.

The Offer

The offer came the next day, Saturday, via phone call.

It was disappointing. He told me that they wanted to buy both vehicles. They offered me slightly more than the JD Powers number for the camper but the exact Kelly Blue Book number for my Joy Machine. They said it was a package offer — both or neither.

I laughed at him. I told him that I didn’t care what KBB said it was worth. It was worth a lot more to me. I told him it was my Joy Machine and explained what I meant. He understood. But he said his boss wouldn’t buy one without the other.

So I told him that he was out of luck because I was definitely not selling the car at that price or even anything slightly above it. He tried to reason with me, but I was firm.

He said he’d talk to his boss. (Does that statement come pre-programmed into car dealers?) We hung up. That was yesterday and I haven’t heard another word from him.

Meanwhile, I listed the truck camper on Craig’s List. If the guy they supposedly had in the office looking for a truck camper really exists, I hope he sees it.