The Long Version

The kitchen years

I went to SAIT in Calgary for the Apprentice Cooking program, then worked as Head Chef at Ric's Grill. While chefing it up at Ric's Grill I was offered the opportunity to teach the cooking part of the Hospitality and Tourism Diploma at GPRC — the Grande Prairie Regional College, now Northwestern Polytechnic. I was feeling some real pressure at the time. I was still a new dad, I was beginning to really struggle with HCS and the physical requirements of a Chef position. I was shutting down Ric's Grill so that we could renovate and open a new restaurant called Township71. It was the day before opening Melanie and I were surprised to realize she was pregnant with what grew to become our handsome boy Daniel.

I wrote curriculum. I built lesson plans. I stood in front of students eager to learn and I had to be the one with the answer by day 1. That was the hardest time I ever had and the best one. All my years speaking and teaching Product Knowledge/Steakology/Orientations and everything a good chef does to ensure the kitchen and dining staff know everything they need for success.

The last full kitchen I ran was Majors Homestyle & Tractor Jack's. Before that, Ric's Grill & Township 71 — I started at Ric's Grill as Head Chef on the same day Patience was born, ten days late. There's a story in that.

What stopped me wasn't a single moment. Hajdu-Cheney takes hands and feet apart slowly. There comes a point where you can't sustain twelve hours on the line with a thirty-pound stockpot and a saute pan you have to grip white-knuckled. Standing and walking 12 miles a day over 8–16 hours was no joy. I wish I knew it before everyone around me did, still, I'm grateful I got to leave on my own terms. I wish I would have stopped or slowed down my degeneration but the years since I stopped have been the hardest of my life.

The constraint

Hajdu-Cheney Syndrome — "hay-dew chaye-knee" — is a rare connective-tissue and bone disorder. The skeletal system reabsorbs faster than it should; the bones in the hands and feet get smaller/shorter over time. There are roughly a hundred documented and not even fifty alive cases in the world, give or take. It's the reason I built Bare Your Rare. The full version of that story lives at /hcs.

Family & heritage

Melanie and I were apart for a decade before we got back together, and then had three kids in five years. The kids' stories, and the eight family lines that meet in them, live at /family.

Since I left the kitchen I've used a lot of that returned time putting our family history together — back to the 1600s on a couple of branches. The long-form research turns into video documentaries on YouTube at @DriftingSplash9. The Lakeman Branch of Our Family and Haiste Family Line From Daniel On are the two longest, ninety minutes each. The condensed versions live in the heritage section of this site.

Three sites I built

I run three websites now, which is funny to type given that I'm not a programmer.

This one — thomascheesman.ca — is the personal hub. bareyourrare.org is a writing project about Hajdu-Cheney specifically and rare disease in general, built for the small group of people who go looking for it and don't find much. gpresidentialsociety.com is the volunteer hub for the Grande Prairie Residential Society; I sit on its board and the website work is one of the ways I contribute.

I work with Claude, Anthropic's coding assistant, to build them. I don't write all the code; I spec the design, the voice, the editorial moves, and Claude writes them out. Sometimes I write bits here and there but I am leagues behind AI and to tell the truth I am better off learning to use them than I am to learn how to build a pac-man game. Three sites in eighteen months says something about how that collaboration goes.

What I'm chewing on

I've kept structured goals — BHAGs, PDPs, annual reviews — for almost twenty years. The frameworks stayed even when the kitchen left. I admit the framework has been a little neglected the last year or so.

Lately the threads are: Bitcoin and decentralized ledgers (curiosity, mostly), AISH advocacy — Alberta's disability program is in a slow crisis and I've written about it — and the slow craft of getting the family record onto the page/slide/YouTube before the people who remember it stop being here to ask.