We went to the Grand Canyon!

On Thursday morning we made the 6 hour drive from my house to Williams, AZ and spent the night there at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel.

On Friday morning we rode the train up to the Grand Canyon and then took a bus tour.  We stayed at the Maswik Hotel on the south rim of the canyon that night.  I left the wife and kids at the room and walked up to the red line bus and took it out to Mohave Point to watch the sunset.

On Saturday we walked to the nearest bus stop and rode the bus to the Visitor Center.  From there we walked along the rim of the canyon to the geology museum.  When we were done at the museum we took another bus back to our hotel, picked up our gear, and rode the train  back to Williams.  We then made the 6 hour drive back and got home around 2:00 am.  I did all the driving so I got to sleep in a little on Sunday.  We spent most of the day recuperating from the trip and I got out to the shop around 4:00 pm and did some gluing up of the broken tomahawk targets.

Please note that we had an 8 year old, an 11 year old, and my mother in law in the car so the actual drive times varied.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

On Tuesday night I got the chance to take the wife and kids to see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on the big screen.  Harkins Theatres has a Tuesday Night Classics program where they play classic movies and it is only $5 a ticket. I was able to buy tickets on their website a couple of weeks in advance.

My younger son is 8 and he just sat there enraptured the whole time.  He was a little surprised when he saw the orange Ooopa Loompas for the first time but sang right along with them on all of their subsequent appearances.  My wife enjoyed it right along with us and I think that my 11 year old fell asleep.

It is my understanding that the script was written to highlight Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka and not focus as much on Charlie.  This was one of the first times that I read the book after having seen the movie and realized that they didn’t necessarily match up.  I don’t care.  I saw the movie for the first time when I was 5 or 6 and fell in love with it.  For the next 10 years I watched it every time that I saw it was coming on TV.  To this day I will sit there and finish watching it if I happen to find it while flipping channels.

I was excited to see the Tim Burton version when it came and really enjoyed it.  It follows the book more closely and was fun to watch.  It will never come close to the nostalgia that I hold for the original film.  Gene Wilder’s deadpan delivery of warnings when the children were misbehaving is classic.  It is something that I unknowing imitated when I was growing up.

It was definitely worth the price of admission and I am glad that I was able to take my kids to see it on the big screen.

 

I am what you call a content creator

Last night, I published a new video to YouTube.  It is 8 minutes and 32 seconds long.  I edited it after work on Tuesday and Wednesday night.  Thursday night I started it uploading to YouTube and then made the plans that I will have available for sale on my website.

I shot the footage in July & August of last year.

Coming up with an idea for a project is fun.
Designing the project in Sketchup is fun.
Building the project is fun.
Shooting the video is fun.

Editing the video is work.  Sometimes I’m in the mood to edit video and hours can pass without my noticing them.  Most of the time it is a complete drudge.

Writing scripts and recording voice overs usually takes longer than editing the video does.  That is why I rarely do them.  Every once in a while the finished video needs them so I will do it reluctantly.  I try to shoot the video so that it needs as little audio explaining as necessary.

Making the plans is boring work.  It’s not complicated, it just takes a long time.

My business model is based on 3 income sources. YouTube ads, website ads, and project plan sales.  YouTube brings in money but I try to use it to get people to visit my website.  Once there, the goal is to get them to buy a project plan.  I also sell t-shirts but I don’t spend much time on it so barely any money comes in from that right now.

My goal is to be able to retire from my day job by the time my older son graduates high school and do content creation full time.  I don’t know if it is an achievable goal or not but I look forward to the day that I only need to work one job and not feel guilty for sitting down and watching a movie at night after work instead of going up to my computer and putting in another few hours on my side hustle.

I also look forward to no longer commuting 2 to 3 hours a day.

It was a very busy weekend

This past weekend was filled with 3 different scouting events.  My older son got the privilege to participate in his first Eagle Court of Honor ceremony on Saturday morning.  I was then able to get some work done on a stand/table for my friend’s new cage for his snake that afternoon.  It is going to be very similar to the stand that I built for my sister’s turtle aquarium. 

On Sunday we had Scout Sunday in the morning for the Boy Scout Troop and then it was Scout Night at Angel Stadium for Monster Jam.  We went with my younger son’s Cub Scout Pack and had a really good time.