>Actually, I find it kind of therapeutic. The work I do all day, mainly as an electron pusher is ephemeral; I like to do something physical with my hands, resulting in something tangible I can look at 10 years from now and say, "I built that". I built a deck and fence behind my place in '03 - concreted in the fence posts, dug & poured deck piers, the whole nine yards - grunt work, sure, but satisfying to me, anyways. Getting too old to do that kind of stuff professionally, though - and pushing electrons pays better < g >

But why do it like a pro - with eye on the meter and on the wallet? Do it like an amateur, in its literal sense, like someone who does what he likes.

After two houses over the course of 25 years (first one from a corn field to being lived in, this other one from a fixer crapper to a nice place that it is now), I've found out that both wife and I are actually delaying things to do so we'd still have something to do later. I still have a bunch of tools at hand, and there's always something more to do, and it does relax.

For a while, while doing the groundwork on the first house, I have developed calluses on my palms - and was proud of them in a way; then I actually wasn't so proud anymore when I realized that I got them by using my tools but not getting quite used to them. Once I got my shovel to the point when it "works by itself", the calluses mostly vanished, though not quite. I had some of them for years, and I kept complaining about how hard it is to find a really good keyboard ;).