Project obsessions and funky electronic lsd

The week before last, I was very involved in two projects. You could even say that my priorities got out of wack and I spent way too much time on said my projects. But, I had a great time. Word spell checker has indicated to me that “wack” is not spelled correctly. I have a hunch that spell checker is wrong on this one, but I have my red dictionary open on my lap to see if it can help out here. The trouble with the red dictionary is that I always get distracted on my way to the word I’m looking for and end up bouncing around the dictionary for several minutes before I realize that I can’t remember what I was looking up. That almost happened this time -- as I was going past the v’s on my way to w, “vervet monkey” jumped out at me, and I was within a neuron’s firing of getting sucked down that path again. But then I remembered my commitment to post a long-postponed second blog posting, and I refrained. No time to monkey around right now. Word doesn’t like “blog” either. Anyway, I don’t seek “wack” anywhere in the red dictionary. I do see “wacked-out” and “wacky”. Those probably apply as well. I think I actually should have spelled it “whack”. So, my project...

Project 1: fix couch

Andrea and I have been looking around for a cheap couch for a while. I check Craigslist every now and then, and I even ventured into a furniture show room. That was just to remind myself of how expensive new furniture is and that I should stay away from areas that are heavily patrolled by proactive salesmen. So, I finally found a winner on Craigslist. It turns out that is no small thing in Tucson. I have been amazed as I look through the furniture section for Tucson at how many people labor under the delusion that their sofa’s being rejected by a thrift store actually increases its value...significantly! I mean, a lot of these sofas look like they belong on the curb; in fact, I think many of them probably have spent some tough times on the curb...you want how much for that??? Just looking at the picture on my computer makes me sneeze! Where was I? Yes, I found a winner.

Here’s the initial run down:

price: $50

upholstery: looked really good from the picture

style: nice. the good kind of character. walnut trim, nice shape and size, etc.

problem: broken leg

I called the guy, who is also a Tim and who happened to be in Las Vegas taking a few days off with his wife. I asked the two big questions: smoker? pets? No to both, which means “proceed”. He said the couch was reupholstered about 7 years ago. Also the leg needed to be fixed – he thought a clamp and some wood glue would do the trick. Someone was coming to buy something else on Friday morning and wanted to look at the sofa. I told him I would buy it for $50. He said he would talk to his wife and get back to me. I got an email the next day saying he would sell it to me. I’m getting into too many details here. Summary: I picked up the couch, and it was better than I expected. The couch belonged to Tim’s grandmother and was made in the 1920’s. Tim had to sell it because he and his wife were moving to England.

So, it turns out that the leg need some serious TLC. When it was reupholstered, they patched the broken leg together with some pink foamy putty stuff (which it turns out is not as strong as walnut). I had to cut the old part off, cut a new chunk of walnut, glue it, finish it, etc. It turned out to be a time-consuming project. But the result was not too shabby (last picture).

Project 2: parabolic rotisserie

Andrea and I went to a big earth-friendly event (Andrea just told me the name: Step it up ’07). I had previously thought about making a parabolic cooker, and I had my eyes open for one, but no one at the event had a parabolic cooker. So I came home determined to harvest some solar energy in a more focused way. After batting around a few ideas, I decided to make it out of plaster of paris. I bought a garbage can lid for 99 cents and some chicken wire at the hardware store. Then I plotted out a parabola on some plywood. I attached the chicken wire to the lid and poured in the plaster. Then I rotated the plywood cutout on the surface to form the dish. This last phase happened late one night in our kitchen, and it was definitely the dramatic climax of the whole operation. Note: plaster of paris dries really fast! Do not try this at home.

The final steps were attaching the aluminum foil and finding a hot dog. I used honey to attach the foil (I later had to re-apply some with good old elmer’s) and the hot dog was procured from our dear neighbors and relatives Nick and Christi (and Ginger – I think it came from her stash). And...voila! It works. It roasts hot dog in about 8 minutes. Actually, probably faster now, since we crossed the triple-digit threshold today here in Tucson.

The effect of these projects was 1) to eat up all a lot of my time (which is to say, all of my free time—and it’s all free now since I am without job) and 2) to clutter up our living room so bad that it took several minutes just to clear a pathway! I feel kind of bad about both effects. Sometimes it’s easy for me to get obsessed with projects like this. Especially when I don’t have much else going on. The good part is that, unlike something like a video game obsession, I have something concrete (pun intended) to show for my obsession. Think about it: a sweet 1920’s era sofa with at least one sound leg and an ability to roast hot dogs limited only by predictable Tucson weather patterns and the ability to procure hot dogs (and, in honesty, I should add, the ability to shoo away the neighbors’ cats).

Finally, the electronic lsd. My camera has started hallucinating. It might actually be photographing other dimensions that we don’t know about yet. I included a sweet self-portrait.