Bradley's Blog:Jason Bradley is a freelance writer, editor, and blogger. Jason blogs about transportation, hobbies, travel, and other random topics.
Friday, January 9, 2015
Brainerd, Minnesota Restore: Great place to find used building materials at a great price
Habitat for Humanity's Restore, is a large retail warehouse specializing in second-hand building materials. Restore is located in an unassuming industrial park in Brainerd, Minnesota, and the location is open Wednesday-Friday from 9 am to 5 pm. Despite the limited hours, discounted building materials of all kinds can be found for a bargain at Restore, and I have purchased used lumber, plumbing, housewares, windows, doors, and many other heavily discounted household and building materials. Restore adds new inventory weekly, and many popular materials, like plywood, disappear rather quickly, so I always try to visit Restore early on Wednesday morning, so I can shop the newly added inventory, and save a great deal of money on the building supplies. Before finding Restore, I used to buy building materials for retail price, at the big box lumber stores. Restore is a great option for anyone interested in a great value on used building materials, and many other items.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Minnesota handmade cruiser skateboard
I really like handmade skateboards:
For more info. on Minnesota handmade skateboard decks check out Obsolete. Their new Minnesota Missile is a really nice looking skateboard. I really like the look of this cruiser style skateboard deck. I am getting too old and fat to ride on it, but my daughter would love a cruiser like this made in Minnesota:
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| made by DL boards |
For more info. on Minnesota handmade skateboard decks check out Obsolete. Their new Minnesota Missile is a really nice looking skateboard. I really like the look of this cruiser style skateboard deck. I am getting too old and fat to ride on it, but my daughter would love a cruiser like this made in Minnesota:
Read the description of this board below:
Introducing the NEW, locally crafted, ‘Minnesota Missile’ skate deck from OBSOLETE Skateboards! The ‘Minnesota Missile’ was inspired by the first few skateboards ever made. NO ply’s, NO fiberglass, NO bullish*t. Straight up solid oak. These old school cruiser decks will have you skating for hours.
Locally made by WAAM Industries, each deck has a unique grain pattern and stain+lacquer finish. These decks are available in both the classic tear drop shape, or always popular, fishtail design. Hang it on the wall as a totally-rad art piece or shred it when you’re in the mood to cruise.
Be one of the first to buy at Soundset 2014, this Sunday! Decks come as a complete with Penny Trucks+Wheels and ABEC 5 bearings. Kick it old school with a deck that is truly OBSOLETE!
Introducing the NEW, locally crafted, ‘Minnesota Missile’ skate deck from OBSOLETE Skateboards! The ‘Minnesota Missile’ was inspired by the first few skateboards ever made. NO ply’s, NO fiberglass, NO bullish*t. Straight up solid oak. These old school cruiser decks will have you skating for hours.
Locally made by WAAM Industries, each deck has a unique grain pattern and stain+lacquer finish. These decks are available in both the classic tear drop shape, or always popular, fishtail design. Hang it on the wall as a totally-rad art piece or shred it when you’re in the mood to cruise.
Be one of the first to buy at Soundset 2014, this Sunday! Decks come as a complete with Penny Trucks+Wheels and ABEC 5 bearings. Kick it old school with a deck that is truly OBSOLETE!
sleeper cargo van pictures
I really like the way these expedite cargo van drivers have customized the interior spaces of these Sprinter, Ford, and Chevy cargo vans. Insulating the cargo area would be very important for drivers operating in the northern states during the winter and most of the time I add more R value than suggested, since I have spent my whole life in the northern plains where the winter winds and windchill factors make the extra insulation money well spent.
In the photos below, I like the way the both wells are covered and e track is also installed for securing cargo.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Author Jim Harrison interview: On Why He Writes Patiently
I am very impressed by this interview of Harrison and was drawn to his writing because of the Northern Michigan settings and have followed his writing genius for quite some time. I am impressed by the following writing advice her provides in this awesome interview and commentary via The Atlantic
Entire quote is Harrison's writing advice:
Once I start, I very rarely change my mind about the nature of the story. And when I begin writing, it’s sound that guides me—language, not plot. Plot can be overrated. What I strive for more is rhythm. When you have the rhythm of a character, the novel becomes almost like a musical composition. It’s like taking dictation, when you’re really attuned to the rhythm of that voice.
You can’t go to it. It has to come to you. You have to find the voice of the character. Your own voice should be irrelevant in a novel. Bad novels are full of opinions, and the writer intruding, when you should leave it to your character.
When you’re not writing in the first person as the speaking character, the danger is there’s too much temptation to show off. And many writers do. They hit what they think is a high note, then keeping shooting for that. I like what Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker says: She has to have a story, she can’t just have effect. There must be more than writerly effect. And it’s true. Nobody likes a showoff.
So, you learn to think like the character, to speak with them. Wolf’s structure grew out of that rhythm more than any conventional sense of plot. In the case of my novel Dalva, I felt I could dream the character. It’s like you have an extra voice in your brain while you’re writing. And it’s a wonderful feeling, though it doesn’t happen often.
Entire quote is Harrison's writing advice:
Once I start, I very rarely change my mind about the nature of the story. And when I begin writing, it’s sound that guides me—language, not plot. Plot can be overrated. What I strive for more is rhythm. When you have the rhythm of a character, the novel becomes almost like a musical composition. It’s like taking dictation, when you’re really attuned to the rhythm of that voice.
You can’t go to it. It has to come to you. You have to find the voice of the character. Your own voice should be irrelevant in a novel. Bad novels are full of opinions, and the writer intruding, when you should leave it to your character.
When you’re not writing in the first person as the speaking character, the danger is there’s too much temptation to show off. And many writers do. They hit what they think is a high note, then keeping shooting for that. I like what Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker says: She has to have a story, she can’t just have effect. There must be more than writerly effect. And it’s true. Nobody likes a showoff.
So, you learn to think like the character, to speak with them. Wolf’s structure grew out of that rhythm more than any conventional sense of plot. In the case of my novel Dalva, I felt I could dream the character. It’s like you have an extra voice in your brain while you’re writing. And it’s a wonderful feeling, though it doesn’t happen often.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Believer Magazine link and what Nick Hornby has been reading
http://www.believermag.com/issues/201409/?read=column_hornby
STUFF I’VE BEEN READING
A MONTHLY COLUMN
by Nick Hornby
BOOKS BOUGHT:
Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of “The Great Gatsby”—Sarah Churchwell
Detroit: An American Autopsy —Charlie LeDuff
The Fever—Megan Abbott
My Salinger Year—Joanna Rakoff
Swing Low: A Life—Miriam Toews
The Blue Room—Hanne Ørstavik
BOOKS READ:
A Man in Love—Karl Ove Knausgaard
Traveling Sprinkler—Nicholson Baker
My Salinger Year—Joanna Rakoff
Crooked Heart—Lissa Evans
I am a father, so I know something about the pain of childbirth: it didn’t look too bad to me. Reading Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series, however, is an act of heroism, and only those who have been through the experience are really entitled to talk about it. I bought A Man in Love, the second book in the series, pretty much the moment I’d finished the first, A Death in the Family, but after a couple of months of reading shorter, less intimidating, and, frankly, much more fictional novels—Knausgaard doesn’t make stuff up, and you know that if he spends three pages describing the peeling, cutting, and frying of an onion, that onion actually was fried, in real life—I began to wonder whether I had another Knausgaard in me.
I was lured back partly because I missed the sound of Knausgaard’s voice, and partly by the title of this second volume. I wanted to know about his marriage, partly out of prurience: how many novelists are prepared to offer up every single narrative beat of a relationship in an attempt to make sense of it? A recent piece entitled “How We End Up Marrying the Wrong People” in the Philosophers’ Mail, an online newspaper set up by the writer Alain de Botton, suggested that “a standard question on any early dinner date should be quite simply: ‘And how are you mad?’” What we normally do, of course, is reveal our own madness and discover the madness in our spouses over a period of years, by which time the information isn’t as much help to us as it might have been in the first flush of romance.
We hope you enjoy this excerpt.
To read the full piece, please purchase a copy of the magazine from The McSweeney’s Store.
Nick Hornby is the author of six novels, the most recent of which is Juliet, Naked, and a memoir, Fever Pitch. He is also the author of Songbook, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for music criticism, and editor of the short-story collection Speaking with the Angel. His screenplay for An Education was nominated for an Academy Award. He lives in North London.
STUFF I’VE BEEN READING
A MONTHLY COLUMN
by Nick Hornby
BOOKS BOUGHT:
Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of “The Great Gatsby”—Sarah Churchwell
Detroit: An American Autopsy —Charlie LeDuff
The Fever—Megan Abbott
My Salinger Year—Joanna Rakoff
Swing Low: A Life—Miriam Toews
The Blue Room—Hanne Ørstavik
BOOKS READ:
A Man in Love—Karl Ove Knausgaard
Traveling Sprinkler—Nicholson Baker
My Salinger Year—Joanna Rakoff
Crooked Heart—Lissa Evans
I am a father, so I know something about the pain of childbirth: it didn’t look too bad to me. Reading Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series, however, is an act of heroism, and only those who have been through the experience are really entitled to talk about it. I bought A Man in Love, the second book in the series, pretty much the moment I’d finished the first, A Death in the Family, but after a couple of months of reading shorter, less intimidating, and, frankly, much more fictional novels—Knausgaard doesn’t make stuff up, and you know that if he spends three pages describing the peeling, cutting, and frying of an onion, that onion actually was fried, in real life—I began to wonder whether I had another Knausgaard in me.
I was lured back partly because I missed the sound of Knausgaard’s voice, and partly by the title of this second volume. I wanted to know about his marriage, partly out of prurience: how many novelists are prepared to offer up every single narrative beat of a relationship in an attempt to make sense of it? A recent piece entitled “How We End Up Marrying the Wrong People” in the Philosophers’ Mail, an online newspaper set up by the writer Alain de Botton, suggested that “a standard question on any early dinner date should be quite simply: ‘And how are you mad?’” What we normally do, of course, is reveal our own madness and discover the madness in our spouses over a period of years, by which time the information isn’t as much help to us as it might have been in the first flush of romance.
We hope you enjoy this excerpt.
To read the full piece, please purchase a copy of the magazine from The McSweeney’s Store.
Nick Hornby is the author of six novels, the most recent of which is Juliet, Naked, and a memoir, Fever Pitch. He is also the author of Songbook, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for music criticism, and editor of the short-story collection Speaking with the Angel. His screenplay for An Education was nominated for an Academy Award. He lives in North London.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Pictures of rustic birdhouses made from mill slabs of wood
I am a big fan of waste wood utilization. I really like the way these birdhouses look and the way slabwood was used in their construction. Slabwood can be obtained for pretty cheap in this part of Minnesota. Many of the sawmills around Brainerd sell this stuff for around thirty bucks a ton. Sometimes the oak and other hardwoods will be a little bit more expensive and sell for forty to forty five dollars per ton. The challenging part of getting slabwood is finding something to haul it with. For this reason I purchased a trailer chassis from Fleet Farm for $399 on sale. The trailer is rated to haul one ton, which is a large enough weight rating to haul this type of wood depending upon how wet it is and how long it has been drying out in the wood yard.
Check out the pictures of some of the creative birdhouse designs made from waste slabs of pine and birch:
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Pallet Hunting Blinds
Pallets are often found for free on sites like craigslist, and I like to build deer blinds and ice fishing shacks from pallets. Here are some pictures of pallet builds:
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| via wingshooters.net |
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| via texasbowhunters.com |
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| Trent via Pinterst |
Brainerd Jaycees Ice Fishing Extravaganza: Brainerd Minnesota Ice Fishing
I have attended the Brainerd Ice Fishing Extravaganza for the last five years. It is a great event with a ton of prizes, but I have never caught a fish. The Jaycees are a great organization and the money from this event is donated to many great causes, but the reason I attend is due to the shock value of seeing this many people on the ice. I was in awe the first time I loaded up my gear and climbed on the bus to head to this great event. Here are some pictures to give you an idea of what it is like to attend this amazing event:
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| This picture is amazing when you realize it is -20 F with a 30 MPH wind. Party Time! |
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| Add caption |
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