Raw Talent

My father is an amazing handyman. Over the course of his life, he has held jobs that involved fixing cars, building houses, fixing/building helicopters. I don't think there's much of anything he couldn't fix. I enjoyed working with him on various projects while growing up (except the aforementioned repairs on Red Fred.)

My mom is quite the seamstress. She sanity checks me on projects that I'm doing from scratch. She is my go-to-person on sewing questions, especially for the directions that come in patterns, because those things are written in a language only Lilliputians can decipher, and I don't know any Lilliputians.

Due to these great skills & knowledge bases my parents have passed on to me, I generally label myself as moderately crafty and an okay "handyman". My mathematical & logic-thinking brain has served me well in tackling new projects, at the very least enabling me to be able to figure out what questions to ask. And I do have the common sense to know when a project has gotten over my head (And I don't do anything with electricity or plumbing, but I know to turn them off if there's work to be done.) I think I generally fair well on projects. My errors usually come from getting in a hurry or something that wasn't foreseeable.

Several years ago, my dad taught me how to hang drywall. He reminded me of the old adage "Measure twice, cut once." Perhaps he should've told me: "Measure twice, remove measurement device, cut once."