Andrew R Gross

Another small project.  I made a book display stand for my stepfather. Laser cut book display stand Reddit.com/r/diy link 

Tomorrow is my 31st birthday, and I'm blessed with incredible health.  Which makes this a fitting time to make a statement that I feel needs to be said about my mortality.  I believe that it is most likely that when I die, it will be due to cancer.  And furthermore, I don't consider this a bad thing. I went to a doctor for a general checkup last week, and asked to get my genome screened or sequenced in order to assess what hereditary diseases I'm at elevated risk for.  The doctor told me I was about five years early and that it wasn't an affordable or covered service yet, so I guess I'll just have to wait.  When I mentioned that I was fairly confident I'd die of cancer, she was taken aback.  "Why would you say that?" she asked.  Her tone was respectfully professional but without an effort to hide her disapproval that I would prognosticate my own cause of death.  Did she think I was being disrespectful to people with cancer?  Did she think I...

Three weeks ago, Julie and I went camping.  Twice each year, our friend Ann organizes a game in the forest called the Fox Hunt.  It's a bit like hide-and-seek.  Foxes are given a twenty minute head start to go hide in the woods, after which the hunters pursue them.  The foxes attempt to make it back to the base they left from without being tagged, however their trails are marked with surveying flags. The dogs have gotten really good at camping The result is surprisingly tense.  Both sides have huge advantages and disadvantages.  The foxes simply have to go into the woods and come back without running right into someone, which seems easy, however the woods we use lie in a valley carved by a stream, which funnels people back towards the middle and makes it hard to circle wide.  Eventually, you've got to come down from the sides to come back.  The hunters, meanwhile, just need to follow a brightly lit trail.  In practice, though, it isn...