Success! My wife was a priming and painting machine: taking care of the microwave cabinet, the lowers, and the drawers. The lower cabinets were positioned into place and their rock-maple tops fitted (waiting on the drawer fronts and pulls to be finished). I cut all the frames for the doors, assembled the fridge cabinet, installed it with my wife holding the thing up in the air (hehehe), tacked together the trash/recycling slider, and cut the shelves for the microwave cabinet. When completely done, our cabinet space will increase by more than a third, will include al the latest and coolest amenities (slides, organizers, spice racks, pullouts, etc…), and the new cabinets completely match the original 1928 built-ins, both in construction and style.

I need to finish the fridge top cabinet, install the drawers, add a corner cookbook shelf, tack up cove-crown around all, and one final coat of paint. SOMEDAY, this will all be finished and we will have the most awesomest kitchen a tiny, period appropriate, craftsman house can have!

I added a pic of Brodie lounging in the sunshine, just because.

I was getting ready this morning for a trip to Boeing and started looking for my notebook because I needed a phone number in it. It then hit me like a baseball bat… My notebook… got left outside… overnight!… in the Rain!! FVCK!!!! I popped out the back door like my butt was on fire, my bathrobe flapping and losing a flip-flop in the dash. Damn… It was sitting on the side of the wheel barrow and had swollen to an inch thick. I walked back to the house, with my head hung down and blotted off what water I could and checked the pages – a light of hope. I use a waterproof, indelible ink in my fountain pens, so there was only a little loss of information or smeared blotches (in spots where I used a cheap pen) where detailed notes and drawings used to be. I could have been SO MUCH worse.

While most folks would have to live with a swollen book, most folks don’t have an awesome steel and iron 1920′s book press sitting in their home office… I blotted the pages again as best I could, separated the wettest ones with wax paper sheets, and put it in the press with cardboard and a towel plotter to get out as much water as possible. I left it there for 8 hours or so and removed it before the pages started to stick together. I then carefully opened every page, sat it on its end with the covers far apart, pages fanned open, on the kitchen tile floor in front of the heater vent. Everything should be just fine… I say that with hope in my heart and my fingers crossed.

I will let it dry for a day or two and then press it again for another 24 hours or so. I might take the opportunity to press a design or my name into the cover – I update when it come out of the press.

UPDATE 4-22-12: Took the notebook out of the press and it is nice and flat. While waiting for it finish pressing I made an embossing stamp out of a scrap piece of popular. My carving chisels were taken in a recent theft, so I used a dremel tool with the diamond carver bit to scratch a simple test piece. It is a stylized version of the Arabic word IQRA. I have more or less adopted it as my own hallmark and use it to stamp my furniture, cabinets, it is on my stationary, and I have a smaller version that I use as a wax seal here and there. I decided it was fine time to mark my notebooks as well.

The one and only thing that keeps me from being more of a desk hoarder is my epic lack of proper funding. It makes me sad to leave them in the store all alone, where no one caresses their tops, opens the drawers slowly, tells them that they are pretty, and where they will end up with someone who will not treat them as nice as I would have.

Below is a selection from of desk-p0rn from the Sherlock Holmes Museum, the Charleston Antique district, Harrods in London, Restoration Hardware, misc. furniture shops, and my favorite Seattle antique store.

1. More time to read, write, build, snuggle, climb, bike, run, laugh…
2. A twin Murphy-bed in my office disguised as a mid-century modern wardrobe so that we have more guest space.
3. For my year-long kitchen project to be finished
4. To remember the password for my old laptop so I can have access to 10+ years of pictures…
5. My very own spending money that I can do with what I wish without submitting to a vote/need analysis
6. To have my FVCKIN’ tools back that some asshat stole…
7. A few new t-shirts for summer and a flat belly to reside under them.
8. For my Mother and Sister to find the perfect place in life
9. For all the dandelions in my yard to cease to exist
10. I would very much like for the really sad, really pregnant girl I say in Seattle yesterday to find someone/something/someplace that makes her warm, happy, and safe.

We were in the UK and Ireland for 9 days and a couple days after we got back, I had a miserable day at my J-O-B and just wanted to work in the garage/shop and make a big pile of plane shavings – stress relief. I walked in the door and there was stuff everywhere (more than usual). Boxes off shelves, lumber moved, clamps scattered… I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing – did my wife move my stuff… No… Wait… Fvck!! I got crazy mad, then wanted to cry. My stomach tied itself in knots and my heart was sick as I made a mental calculation of what all was in my tool boxes. I called the cops.

Police came, took a report, I called in insurance company, and started looking on Craig’s list and in local pawn shops, while taking slow and painful inventory of what was gone. Not one tool, chisel, saw, router, or wrench ever showed up. To add insult to injury, I know who took it all. We had some contractors do some work at the house around Christmas and one of them was a little sketchy. Not weird junky-itch sketchy, he just looked around at everything in the house and yard with an appraising eye and followed me into the shop to get some supplies I had for him to use and he lingered just a little too long. I didn’t really put it all together until weeks later. I won’t go into details because I cannot “prove” anything and an online accusation could lead to court or this guy showing up at my house again and that would lead a different sort of court case… But I KNOW this guy has my stuff. I know, not a hunch, not a feeling, I know. I called the police to tell them what I had found and I was told that unless he was seen on a public street with one of my tools in his hand, that they could do very little. No warrant to search his vehicle, or house, or shop would be forthcoming… Man, it pisses me off that I paid this guy for slow work that I had to finish AND he took my property – tangible links with my father and Grandfather.

I filed a complaint for the workmanship issues and uncompleted work with the BBB, gave him a craptastic review on Yelp, and let the guy who recommended him know what all exactly happened. Maybe I can save someone else’s stuff. Additionally, I cut the plug off of a power planer months before the break-in because it had an electrical short to the metal housing. I hope that he puts a plug on it and the thing shocks the living shit out of him or that one of the carving chisels slips and relieves him of a reproductive organ in the lower abdominal region…

As for Easter celebrations: There were chocolate & peanut butter eggs from my pretty wife, a Cadbury egg from my sister, and I purchased a hollow chocolate bunny, which I savaged, starting with its cute bunny ears… Brodie and I had a wonderful lunch of ham and ham, oh and more ham at my family’s place. Pork is bad for both of us and I was careful not to have any open flames around the house last night. Stamps-With-Foot is in Northern California visiting her sister and best friend in the world, so she was spared.

Below is a video of the Brooks factory tour.  They still do it all by hand.  Watching the video makes me want to buy an new one just because of its provenance.

Early wasn’t pretty. He was dark green and rust, had a flat bed with wooden sides, and an interior only a mother could love. More than once people thought I had arrived somewhere to mow their lawn or haul away their junk. No one would park beside him in parking lots and when he and I changed lanes on the freeway, people got the hell out of our way.

Instead of being shinny, he was useful and I can give no higher praise to a truck than that. He moved us and everything we owned from our old house to our new one, always started the first time, hauled trees and crap to the dump countless times, took me to work when Stamps-With-Foot and I couldn’t carpool, served as a loaner when friends were in town, hauled lumber, gear, bikes, furniture, appliances, dirt, and most recently he delivered 1.5 tons of gravel for our hot tub base, though it did take him 5 trips…

I hope he can be as useful in death as he was when running. Maybe his steel bed, frame, and engine will be melted down and made into a bridge, a ship, or a building. Goodbye trusty old friend. Thank you.