About Me
The Dirty Meerkat Workshop website and content was established to share projects and allow others to follow along on my journey in the workshop.
I can trace my beginnings back to shop class in junior high school. It started with a few projects in class such as a tv stand, gun box for my BB gun and even a wake board made of plywood (that I never got around to trying out). Also around that time and later on I was making things working with my father on a multitude of projects around the home. Such projects included building a deck, bookcases, a gazebo or two, a new computer desk and even a full size arcade machine.
Life progressed and other projects were made to varying degrees of difficulty and satisfaction. But with each new project lessons are learned from the mistakes made and from the experience gained with the new tools and new techniques we try out.
I’ve been fortunate to move on from my last workshop being half of my two care garage to a larger dedicated workspace. This is where the Dirty Meerkat Workshop starts and where more projects begin and continue. Feel free to follow along.
So the origin of the name Dirty Meerkat began at a now defunct comic convention that ran in Houston Texas circa 2013. Myself and a group of friends were attending and after the show we met up at the lobby bar and took up residence at a table that had been vacated. The table still had the remnants of drinks from the prior visitors on the tabletop but as it was the only open table at the time, this didn't bother us.
While sitting at the table chatting a younger gentleman approached our group and sat down. He inquired as to what our fandoms were (what type of pop culture, comics, movies, etc. we had interest in) and we gave various short answers. He informed us of his lesser known fandom and then proceeded to start tapping on the table. While tapping he muttered something under his breath that we believed was "dirty meerkat" and then proceeded to start taking the drink remnants from the prior table occupants and started to pour them all into one glass. As we watched him, he then started to drink this glass of drink leftovers. After doing so we were less than enthused to continue chatting with him and he wandered off.
Later from outside the bar we spotted this young gentleman continue to do this same behavior and wander from table to table. Later he would start creeping on a celebrity guest at her table, but that is another story...
After this incident I had registered the domain dirtymeerkat.com as a joke and put up a picture of a meerkat. This website sat unused for a number of years until I sat pondering the desired name of my social media presence for my woodworking, 3D printing, CNC interests. It then hit me to make use of the domain and established the Dirty Meerkat Workshop.
No affiliation with the Urban Dictionary definition, I had the domain before that became a definition :)