Thanksgiving in Afghanistan

How Cool is That?

Susan wanted her work area pared down, large shelves moved out of the way so she had more room to walk around.  That meant she had a clear wall now and we debated a lot about what to do with it. Blackboard chalk? Too much dark.  A metal sheet for a giant magnetic board? Too expensive and too heavy.  A giant cork bulletin board? Yes.  Oops.  Heavy. Expensive.  Not to mention there would be big holes in the wall if we took it down (Do we know "I've been thinking..." is part of her life and seems to always mean something with tools involved?).  That's a sort of no-no in our apartment building.  Yes, we could do it but...

Browsing around an Office Max store she spotted these foam boards (picture above shows them at Walmart).  Lightweight, and cheap!  It's a thick foam core board with a thin layer of cork.  We bought some wood lattice-like strips (like a yardstick size/thickness) at Lowes and hot-glued them to the backs at the top, middle and bottom of each board.  Then I needed just one screw at the top and bottom of each, attaching through the wood strip for stability.

Then it was off to Ikea to get the table top and Krille roller legs (the legs cost more than the table top!).  This is the third table we've attached these legs to and they are really smooth.  The picture shows her area before she's had a chance to scatter stuff everywhere -- you don't want to see it now.

We will add a 24x30" raised section to the table at the left end, on Ikea Capita legs.  You can barely see them on the right in the second picture, raising up a different top.  This will give her a standing-height work surface on half of the large top. ( In our experience you do not want to use the Ikea adjustable legs, they are just too wobbly.)  If you add a second top area on Capita legs you wind up with all the space under it to put more of your stuff that you never manage to put away.

Here's this guy's answer to the more expensive flat-file cabinets:

Lucy

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  Well, not actually diamonds.  How can we afford to travel around like we do?  I was lucky enough to marry a woman who did not want a diamond so her wedding band cost me only $12.50. And best of all, she hates to shop for clothes and shoes!  Of course we do have a gazillion books in the house and her Amazon wishlist has over 90 books on it, all of which she has marked as "Highest Priority" in anticipation of the holiday season.

Lucy is about 9" high. She's looking out for you.

Here's another movie recommendation:  A Perfect Day.  Benicio Del Toro and Tim Robbins.  5 stars.

Boxes

I got on a kick of making little boxes for a while.  Why? I have no idea, they just happened.  This pattern comes from a placemat we bought somewhere in a museum store, it was gold and a really cool open structure and best of all, it was easy to stuff in a suitcase.  These are all about 4" high.

How about a movie review?  We love opening our mailbox and finding a red Netflix envelope.  Sure, we could stream movies but the tv is in the bedroom (slow reception) and it's so much easier to back up and re-play stuff from a dvd.  We also like to put captions on and sometimes that doesn't work well with streaming.  So what did we watch on Election Night instead of returns?  Weiner.  It was definitely a good portrayal of  the word "hubris."

We also watched Trash, set in Rio. The same Rio where we had the Olympics this summer....Hmmm.  We sure didn't see this part of Rio on tv. Excellent film.  We initially picked it because Martin Sheen and Rooney Mara were in it.  Interesting to see a film where the only two "Hollywood" names are somewhat pivotal to the story but don't dominate it.

Remembering: Veterans Day, November 11, 2016

Don Madden, Da Nang, Vietnam, 1969

Two Aren't Enough

Why make one armadillo when two will do?  Why make two when you can make a herd of them?

You've seen my bulletin board, how about one of my favorite shelf spots?

Those little skulls do get used sometimes. This (the moon shape) was one of my first attempts at sawing into metal stuff.  Susan had to physically restrain me from polishing it up and sure enough, she was right - the patina it has developed is perfect.