stormdog | Apr. 30th, 2006

I woke up early this morning, anticipating doing some work on the computer room. I gave my parents' house a call to see if I could convince either of my brothers to come by and help me haul my desk upstairs. As it turned out, Jim was sleeping (as I expected), and Tim, though awake, wasn't feeling well and wasn't up to helping out, even in return for an offered Chinese buffet lunch. Instead though, my dad was willing to come by and help out, in return for saving my mom a trip by bringing him out to the high school for rehearsal afterward. The two of us got the thing up the stairs, which I, in my naivete, believed was the worst of it, and soon after drove off to Bradford high school, Kuma accompanying us in the back seat of the cab of my truck, chatting about what's been going on in our lives. We got to school a little early, and as we waiting in the truck for the doors to open, rain pouring off the windows, listening to the car full of my dad's students parked next to us and singing along to the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde soundtrack at the top of their lungs put a big grin on my face.

So, I drove home and met up with my sleeping 'coony girl, who became my next travel companion of the day as we made a foray to the local Goodwill store (where I picked up a computer course for learning to speak Japanese since I seem to have misplaced the other one I had once upon a time) and to Golden Corral for lunch. Stuffed, we got home and lay down together for a bit, but I soon got up; the lure of rearranging furniture was too strong to resist for long. Little did I know what lay ahead of me.

Though I wasn't watching the clock, I'm sure I spent over an hour trying to wrestle my desk through the hallway to the computer room. The passage is like this: there's a small doorway out from the bedroom (though with no door in it) which leads to about four feet of hall way. That hallway has a door to the computer room directly across from the doorway to the bedroom, and a door on the side that leads into the bathroom. After some struggle, I finally got the desk into the hallway by sticking one end through the doorway and taking advantage of the c-shape of the desk to curve it around and through the doorway. From there though, I was stuck. I couldn't make it fit through the computer room door, however I tried. In my desperation, I even went as far as taking the trim pieces off of the inside of the door frame. At that point, it was quite literally a matter of millimeters, but I still just couldn't squeeze the stupid thing through that doorway.

I had tried to take the thing apart earlier only to conclude that that idea was not a possibility. There didn't seem to be any fasteners that would come out; all the screws would turn only a half turn either way and then jam. Andrea thought that perhaps the furniture was built in such a way as to be impossible to disassemble, and I was inclined to agree. At this point though, it was going to come apart one way or the other; either to go into the computer room or to go into the trash heap. So, I wedged a flathead screwdriver into the corner of the front and the top and began persuading the pieces to separate with judicious applications of a rubber mallet to the screwdriver butt. And miraculously, it worked. From there, it was a matter of carrying the pieces into the computer room and setting them up.

Of course, since I hadn't really cleaned the room yet, that was easier said than done. Preparing space ended up being a process of dragging a desk or workbench a few feet, rearranging clutter on the floor from in front of it to the space it just moved from, and going a bit further. Taking baby steps, I got everything where I wanted it. I'll take a picture of it tomorrow sometime and post it side by side with the before shots I got earlier this weekend.

Though my pretty computer, with it's window and blue neon, has again been relegated to under my desk where no one can see it, I'm very much happy with the new layout. I have room on the desk for my two monitors on my primary machine, my docking station and laptop for work, and probably even have room for a third monitor and peripherals for another system (or a third monitor on my primary computer) if I ever get around to setting them up. The only issue I really have is that this desk is decidedly too tall for comfort. My wrists are starting to hurt already, typing here. I need to find an under-desk mountable keyboard tray. (If anyone has one they're looking for a home for, please let me know!)

So, after all of that was done, Andrea and I sat down to watch the rest of the movie we'd started last night but fell asleep during: Tomie. I have to admit that it just didn't grab me. Maybe there's some folklore or other Japanese cultural elements that I'm not conversant with that would have made it make more sense to me. The other one we rented though, Cachorro was pretty memorable. It was really neat to see a movie like this that just could not have been made in the states in the same way. Cool stuff.

Well, Andrea has gone off to bed since she has to be up for her new job in just about four hours. I snuggled up with her for a short time, but I got back up to finish off this entry and do just a little bit more cleaning in here. I still have wires and computer parts all over the floor.

*sighs* It is so very nice to not have to go to work tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing