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Author Topic: Presents that mean a lot
Hobbes
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[Warning: some of the pictures here are partially fuzzy, they were all scanned in tonight, and I didn’t want to risk damaging the book. Also, some of them are very large and can take time to load on a slow connection]

I stayed at my Grandfather’s for a week this summer. We, as usual, had a great time, but while I was there he said he’d found something recently and figured I would enjoy it. As a few of you know, my Grandmother died about 3 and a half years ago, well my Grandfather had been trying to sort through everything in their house and had come upon something of hers.

Here it is. What’s so special you ask? Well of course mainly what makes it special was that it was my Grandmother’s (here’s her signature in the book), but there’s some other reasons as well. I’m a Civil Engineer, and this is a book from US Steel that is full tables of numbers and various lists of facts on all sorts of different types of beam designs (Sample). The other thing that makes it special is this, notice the date? 1936. This is so cool! [Big Grin]

Hobbes [Smile]

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Dagonee
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Very cool. I love looking at old structural books like that, although the ones I have access to are from the 60s.

Can you imagine designing a building with all the information coming from such books instead of databases?

Dagonee

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BelladonnaOrchid
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That's really cool, Hobbes. Thank you for sharing that.

I, too, have come upon some really neat gifts from those who have passed. My room-mate, which some of you may remember me mentioning, had a death in the family recently. His grandmother died, and she was an avid knitter/crocheter/cross-stitcher. They have been giving away most of her things to people they feel would get good use out of it, and since I do all three of those things, I've found myself amongst a heap of unfinished projects and extra yarn.

The most special part of what has been given to me was a heavy hand-made wooden box that nobody knows from where it came. It has the initials 'LW' inlaid in it, and a crescent moon that was burnt into it. The box has paint of different colors on it, as though it was an artists box, but when it came to me it was full of embroidery thread. When they found it, the hinge was broken on it, and so once that was fixed, it was as good as new.

Things that are passed down like this I know mean a lot to me, and that someone put so much care into the make of that box and that it has a history that is unknown brings me to cherish it even more. I know also that I will lovingly finish the projects that were given to me, and I think that I will give them back to my room-mates' family members. I'm sure that they will appriciate the time that she put into those items once they are completed, just the way that I'm sure you (Hobbes) will appriciate your Grandmothers' book.

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skillery
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My mother in-law made me cry two Christmases ago.

She made me a pair of beautiful pillowcases with satin trim. The fabric was dark blue with dolphins.

I cried again at my birthday when she gave me a fleece blanket with brilliant fabric sea creatures, each individually stuffed with batting, and sewn onto the blanket. She had stitched around the edge of the blanket with bright rainbow thread to match the creatures. It is truly a work of art.

I told a 10 year-old kid, who still brings his blankey to church, that I was alright with his blanket attachment thing.

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Hobbes
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Things people make mean so much more. I never tell anyone that though, because I know when I was little and my parents told me that it meant I'd put like 25 minutes into a birthday present or something and that was it, and by "it" I mean crappy. [Big Grin]

Annie gave me, for V-Day, a beautiful, and very warm, quilt she had made herself. [Eek!] I'll never be able to fully communicate to her, or anyone else, how much it meant to me, or how much I love it, I use it every night, even if it's too hot. [Big Grin]

Hobbes [Smile]

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ak
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Why did your grandma use a steel manual? This is so cool! I have one of my grandfather's too! The AISC steel manual from the 20s. It's so awesome. Realize, though, that the M beams are new since then. So you will have to have a new book too for those. I treasure these old engineering books and drawing things that have passed down in my family. I have several slide rules, for instance. They are so awesome! I have 4 generations of engineers in the patrilineal line, all of whom were packrats. <laughs>
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Hobbes
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You know, I don't know. My Grand mother was an amazing and wonderful woman, she put herself through college (remember, this was in the 30s/40s) and got a Computer degree (though it was called something else since computers wren't really big enough to have their own degree). I have no idea what she would be doing with a CE table, it's possible she just got it from her father or something, I really don't know.

Hobbes [Smile]

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