2007: Time for a new default icon.

Gerald Ford's burial is today. A significant media event, for some odd reason. But the thing that I haven't seen anybody else mention is that Gerald Ford was the last surviving member of the Warren Comission, and with his death, I understood that some of the files would be released. It looks as if I was wrong, and the files are sealed until 2039. Not that it really matters: the full text of the Warren Comission Report is available on line.

I feel like I'm getting dumber.

It's probably more related to lack of good sleep than anything. Right now I'm in that groggy eyes-don't-focus place that reminds me that I was up at four-something this morning and didn't really get back to sleep after that, but in looking at posts from previous years, I seem to be less eloquent than I used to be. I write less often, and the things that I write about are simpler. Things seem foggier, thicker, slower.

Maybe I've peaked. Maybe it's downhill from here.

Hell, that sounds a lot more defeatist than I intended it to sound. The Big Broken Box™ is coming together. It's a slow pace, but there has been significant progress: being able to see the floor in the living room and the laundry room is huge, and having decimated the bedroom with the mopping and all makes it easier to breathe. I still need to reconvene everything and find a place for it, as digging through plastic bins to find matching socks is not something that can last for long, but there are appreciable dents in the *stuff*. The living room is nearly liveable, the dining room is... well, the dining room is on hold for now but must be addressed in the next month or so to get more BarbStuff down to KCMO. The kitchen is actually pretty clean, but has become the in situ freespace for the bedroom stuff while rearranging. The bathroom is still pretty much straight out of a horror movie, but a half-day of serious cleaning would do it into at least passable shape, which is all it can reasonably be expected to sustain given the Cthulhoid nature of its roots. The Room Where No One Walks is actually walkable, though it is closed off to keep the cats from claiming it as their own. It needs a chunk of major work, including ripping out the carpet and likely taking down plaster and all; that's probably best combined with a kitchen remodel since they are adjoining, and the wall between them is grotesquely partitioned into linen closet and pantry space that is abysmal in its design (deep and narrow with no closet space).

Other than the bedroom closet, that's the main floor. And realistically, the RWNOW doesn't need to be available in order to have people over in a social sense, so I'm actually pretty damn close to party-size in the house.

How the hell did that happen? :)

There are some caveats: the basement needs a healthy dose of chucking and building, as that is the space that a lot of stuff needs to go (tools, chemicals, art/craft supplies, cables, etc.) and I need a semi-organized place to make that happen. The One Room needs appropriate lighting before too much longer (I have the fixtures and everything I need to do it, I just need to actually do the work) and having the shelves in there has been a tremendous boon to organizizationism. As corny as it is, I'd really like to put up pegboard in the lab area of the basement so I can have a hangy-place for some tools that are in high demand in a lab. The main area needs a serious decimation, and fairly soon as this will be the primary buildy/crafty place for the facade stuff. The lavender room is pretty much a toss I think. There is a lot of stuff that I do need to go through, and it's possible that it will become an ebay staging area, but most of the stuff that's in there at this point is destined to go away.

Then there's the studio.

I've kept this for last on the list because it's very likely to be last in the queue. I've been doing a lot of moontabulating over what to do with the space. It was originally the master bedroom when we moved in, but that was a rather tremendous waste of space. Eventually we moved the bedroom downstairs (after cajones moved out), and I took the space as studio. I ended up doing a lot of photography there, as well as shooting a pretty involved video, but the ceiling is really way too short to be useful as a video studio. It did well as a recording space for Made out of People, but it needs better soundproofing, and I really don't want to throw a lot of money into doing that until I know whether I'm going to want to change the roofline. Besides, the upstairs bathroom needs to be remodeled, and should be expanded into that space, which would make upstairs the master bedroom/bathroom suite. For now, it needs to be pretty much gutted, and the actual control room moved over to what has been Barb's bedroom. Before that happens, after she is completely gone from that room, it needs to be stripped and rewired to become the new control room.

Whew.

It strikes me that I may be better served by making the Room Where No One Walks into the new control room, since my eventual plan is to build a garage that will be the primary studio space, and that room is physically closest to where the garage will be, and is directly above the utility entrance panels. And since it has to be gutted anyway, it would be easiest to fit. That would leave that upstairs room as rentable, and even though it's smaller than the downstairs rooms, it's kind of nicer because it's quieter and has access to the back deck.

Ah, it's all still pretty far-off anyway for that level of conversion.

In the meantime, I need to come up with an appropriate DVD/CD storage concept that does not involve spending any money. I have lumber and tools, so it will likely involve making a set of shelves large enough to hold CDs and DVDs yet small enough to fit behind my bedroom door. I think that there is something in the Book of Leviticus that says that I can be stoned to death for mixing southern yellow pine and finished oak in the same piece of furniture, but I think in this case it's necessary. I'd rather use aromatic red cedar, but it's not stable enough and will warp. And I need to make workbenches.

Ah, the joy of stuff.