I’m not dead!

Today’s Ebony’s birthday. She’s 19 today, which has kind of put some things in perspective, but I’m still advancing forward. After 22 years, I am finally closing on a construction loan Monday (4/20 amuses me far more than it should, kind of like 6-7…). After all this time, the house is finally moving forward. So, that’s exciting news.

As you might have noticed, I’ve made some long-overdue changes to the site to hopefully make it more usable again. I got a tad overwhelmed back when I was messing with it last time and ended up leaving it as it was. With a clearer head, I’ve managed to make the Posts page much more readable, and I’ve added a search box (I’ve only had the site for, what, like 10 years now, and it’s finally getting a search box? Ah, well…). It won’t help you navigate the maze that is the Commissioned Stories page (browser find is useful there), but at least now I can find my own posts that I’m looking for.

I haven’t been idle all this time. While it’s true I haven’t done a single commission, I have been doing a ton of reading. In the last two weeks, I’ve read something like half a dozen books, learning about governance, economics, evolutionary biology, psychology, neuroscience, and the subconscious mind (I’m currently a little over a third of the way through The Elephant in the Mind). On deck are books on systems thinking, political theory, post-capitalism and a little bit of fiction to lighten things up.

Also, ChatGPT and I are working on designing a new constitution (hence the diverse reading list). It’s still a work in progress, but I think it has some really good features. I will eventually be posting bits and pieces of it on here (since I’m not sure where else I’d put it—maybe I’ll actually make it a book someday).

My boss had given me a book a few years ago called The Daily Stoic. It’s one he reads, and since my dad also practices Stoicism, I was curious to see what it was about. At first, I was kind of put off; some of the advice can be trite and feel like a waste of time, but I’ve gotten more into it since I’ve studied philosophy. It was what recommended the books on how the mind works (biology, psychology, neuroscience, and the subconscious). I can’t say I’m making amazing progress with it, but I do read it once a day and journal a bit. On the note of journaling, I’ve realized that I’ve been using the same spiral notebook for the last 15 months. I’ve got about 25 pages left in it, and then it’ll be time to use up another one of my older, smaller journals. And then, I can indulge in another fancy notebook. Such soft, smooth paper… The pen just floats across it.

No love life. No surprises there. Part of me wonders whether building a house out here in the middle of nowhere is maybe a bad idea, tying myself out here far away from people. But, as long as Ebony and Ivory are alive, I’ll still have reason to be out here, and a couple of my neighbors and I get together pretty regularly. It will be nice not being in the tiny house anymore. I’ve gotten ChatGPT to render something loosely approximating several of the rooms, and man, they’re gorgeous. I hope that reality can live up to the hype. But, if not, at least I’ll still be living in a much bigger (5x) space, and I’ll have a new barn for the girls (one whose interior walls haven’t fallen down) and a place to keep my equipment and vehicle out of the weather. I’m planning to have it wired for two EVs (truck and tractor), and eventually (assuming I stay out here), I hope to go completely solar. The fancy shower had to take a bit of a hit, though. I had nine shower heads planned, but then I learned that the standard water meter can’t support that much flow, and it would take two on-demand propane water heaters running in parallel to keep up. The equivalent electric water heater would literally require three-phase (the nearest connection to which is almost two miles away), so… yeah, not doing that. It’s still kinda fancy, though: three shower heads.

My mom is in memory care and has been since last year. My dad is watching her like a hawk. I’m a little disappointed that he’s hyper fixating on her rather than taking a bit of time to decompress (that was how the memory care place was pitched—as a way for him to have a bit of downtime), but I understand his wanting to spend as much time with her as he can before she’s completely gone mentally. While I am sad for her, I’m sadder for him; she’s largely unaware of what’s going on, but he’s watching her decline on a daily basis.

Work is… work. Well, I guess I should say more than that; from December through the beginning of March, I worked every day (including weekends and holidays) with the exception of one day (where I was having a tooth extracted). The lab that I spent so much on and worried that I wouldn’t get much use out of has definitely proven itself. I’ve turned into a one-man manufacturing facility in there, making almost 750 test units, most of which are now deployed throughout the country. It’s exciting but also nerve-wracking. Being at the bleeding edge of the company like this is… uncomfortable. But, I’m working with ChatGPT to get better at giving succinct, actionable answers that still convey uncertainty when necessary. So, yay?

Oh, I got a kegerator. Not sure if I had one when I last wrote. Maybe I did but didn’t say anything about it. Anyway, I know it’s kind of tacky, but Bud Light on tap is kind of nice at the end of the day. When the weather is nice (and we’ve had an unusually long period of nice weather), I like to have a beer or two while sitting on the porch with the livre du jour. Not as healthy as scything, but I have dedicated a room in the new house for workout equipment, and I’m looking forward to being able to work out in a safe, climate-controlled area that doesn’t involve me driving half an hour each way there and back.

There’s so much about the house that I’m excited about. It’s not the insane house from 2020—the one with 100 linear feet of glass 10 feet tall. This one is much more practical, yet it’s got “me” written into just about every nook and cranny. From the road, you drive into the driveway, which takes you through the barn (in and out garage doors so I don’t have to back up). Once inside, you can close the garage doors and walk towards the back, where a door on the left side takes you through a covered breezeway to the house. On the other end, you’ll be in the laundry room. It’s a decent-sized room, with the washer and dryer facing you on the opposite wall to your right. Beside you to your right is a folding table. There’s a window on the back wall of the house, and you can look down the property. Eventually, I’ll have the girls moved back there so that I can watch them. To your left on the far wall is the water heater. Closer to you on the left wall is a doorway that leads into the master bathroom (and its fancy shower). More on that later, but if you walk through it, you’ll be in the master closet, which makes for a short trip to take laundry to and fro. Crucially, though, as soon as you get in from the barn, you can drop your dirty clothes in the laundry room, then walk straight into the shower if need be so as to keep the rest of the house clean.

Directly across from you (between the washer and the water heater) is the doorway into the pantry, and from there into the kitchen. I borrowed (stole) that idea from my parents: it makes it easy to unload groceries when it’s a straight shot through like that. The pantry is large, like the one in my favorite house I lived in when I lived with my parents, with a deep freezer (and probably my little freezer that I’ve been doing experiments trying to create clear ice) and lots of shelves.

Beyond that is the kitchen, the first of the rooms I’m really excited about. I mean, I appreciate the laundry room and pantry, but the kitchen is where some of the “nicer” features come in. The centerpiece (both figuratively and literally) is a giant 5’x6′ peninsula (like an island, but attached) for doing all that baking I’ve missed doing. As you walk in from the pantry, you’ll run into it. To your left is the refrigerator, and to your right is the sink. This house will have a dishwasher (mostly for resale value if and when it comes to it). Between the peninsula and the dishwasher is the walkway into the rest of the kitchen. To your right, there’s a door to the back porch (a mirror image of the front porch, both 8′ deep, roughly 20′ wide, and with a cute gable roof over them). In front of you is a wall of cabinets, and the range is roughly centered in them. I will have so much countertop space! Such an improvement over the exceptionally limited space I have here.

The kitchen is also the first of the rooms on our tour that has a theme. I’m going with “base elements” for this one, with stone represented by the earth tones of the floor and countertops, wood by the cabinetry (on the redder side of brown, medium-dark but lighter than the cabinetry in the dining and living rooms—more on those later; my excitement grows as we venture into them), water in the blue highlights of the backsplash behind the sink, and fire in the red highlights of the backsplash behind the range.

As you turn to your left, turning your back to the back door, you’ll see you’re centered under a vaulted ceiling running from the front to back of the house. Immediately in front of you is the dining room, and you can see beyond it into the living room.

As you step across the threshold of tile into the dark, red-brown engineered hardwood of the dining room, you’re transported back in time. To your left, cabinets form a wet bar, and brass expanded metal across the front of the doors is reminiscent of a Victorian apothecary. Behind it hides the glassware and reagents for proper drink-making (I make a really good old-fashioned, a pretty good piña colada, and I’m dabbling in sazerac). The kegerator is built into the cabinetry for a quick glass o’ ale, to be served at the hardwood table with leather seats to your right. It’s got a butterfly leaf in it for when I have guests, but otherwise, it’s fairly compact, which it needs to be because on either end of it is an opening in the wall.

Those openings lead into a hallway on the other side of the wall that houses the workout room (to your immediate right), a bathroom (centered on the hallway), and the guest bedroom (on the front corner of the house, next to the living room). For resale value, the workout room will be able to be carpeted at some point, but I’ll have it done in rubber mats when it’s built. No sense putting down carpet to just cover it with rubber, you know?

Back in the dining room, you move forward with the cabinets on your left and table on your right, and you can see the space darkening in front of you as you pass into the living room. Dark, rich, red-brown built-in bookshelves line the wall to your left. Two Chippendale-style chairs sit at angles, facing a sofa on your right. Warm, incandescent-style light gives the room a cozy, intimate feeling. Above you, the vaulted ceiling continues up to the edge of the front wall of the house. In front of you is the front door, and you can see out onto the front porch. My hope one day is to have the place landscaped, with vibrant flowers of all different colors. For now, I’ll have to just settle for mowing it regularly; the place is pretty expensive, and I’m not sure how long it will take me to have a landscaping budget.

One thing you might have noticed is that I haven’t described the master bedroom, yet I hinted at the presence of a master bathroom. This is possibly the most “me” thing of the whole house. As a hint, The Hardy Boys, Volume 11: While the Clock Ticked. There’s a reason the whole left wall of the living room is bookcases…

Turning around and returning through the living room, dining room, kitchen, and pantry, you arrive back in the laundry room. As I mentioned, there is a doorway into the master bathroom. As you walk into it, you’ll see the toilet on your right and the fancy shower (with triple heads) to your left. Beyond the toilet is a double-vanity (a guy can dream of eventually having someone to use the other sink), and beyond the shower is a standalone tub. I haven’t really gone all-in on a theme for this room, but I’m thinking “light and airy”. The built-in heat lamp should make it very comfortable to step out of the shower, and the exhaust fan will make it not-so-miserably-humid in the house (the tiny house likes to hover around 80–90% unless I run the dehumidifier 24/7, something I’ve been doing for the last 2–3 years).

Moving through the master bathroom, you wind up in the master closet. Nothing particularly noteworthy here, but if you keep going, you’ll be in the master bedroom. It’s fairly large—the largest room in the house, actually, big enough for me to practice Tai Chi (oh, yeah, I learned Tai Chi back in November—I said I hadn’t been idle…) in front of the king-sized bed. There’s a nice, big window in front of you, past the bed, and there are smaller ones on the wall to your left. Those face the barn, so there’s not much to look at, but I’m considering doing one of those Zen gardens (with the white rocks you can rake into patterns.. baby steps). Here is also where you’ll find one of the few carpeted rooms. I love carpet and have missed it dearly, and since my bedroom isn’t a high-traffic area, I look forward to getting to indulge myself. Part of the size of the room (other than just “that’s the size it ended up”) is so I have space to splay out on the floor and bask in its carpeted goodness. For the walls, I am seriously considering azure blue, maybe with clouds. My parents did my room that way at one of the houses we lived in, and it was just such a nice thing to wake up to.

As you walk into the master bedroom and turn around, you’ll see another door beside the one to the closet. That door leads to the study. Accessible only from the master bedroom and windowless, it’s truly the inner sanctum of the house. The carpet from the master bedroom spills into it, providing a warm, brown that contrasts nicely with the redder wood of the bookcases and L-shaped desk along the far wall. To your left is a Clavinova (I think it’s finally time I upgraded my keyboard), and if you step inside and turn around, you’ll see a writing desk separate from the L-shaped desk. That writing desk is where I will spend part of my mornings journaling, free of distractions in what I hope will be the most silent place in the house.

Turning and leaving the study to reenter the bedroom, you’ll see a doorway at the far end of the wall to your right. Going through it, you’ll find yourself in a small atrium area. To your right is what I’m calling the “electronics closet” where routers, switches, Wi-Fi antennas, etc. will reside. It’s not quite centered in the house, but it’s close, so it’s a good place for everything to come in at one place and get distributed back out. But, there’s something else here, too. In front of you, there’s an unusual-looking door. You unlatch it, but there’s uncanny weight to it as it swings open. You find yourself in the living room, and you close the bookcase behind you.

Going through the front door to your left, you find yourself on the front porch. The ceiling is painted a light blue to keep the wasps from building nests, and there is comfortable seating here. Walking off the porch, you find yourself in the driveway. Turning around, you see a handsome, red-brick house with a hipped roof. The porch you just came off of has the same gable front facing you. To your right is the barn, where the car is parked. The barn is a metal building but insulated against heat and cold, with ridge vents to allow airflow and hopefully reduce the stagnant air.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the tour. As I’ve taken you through it, I’ve lovingly caressed the leather on the backs of the chairs in the living room, inhaled their heady scent and smirked knowingly at the hidden door. I’ve felt the give of the rug underfoot in contrast to the solid feel of hardwood. I’ve seen the glint of glass behind yellow expanded metal, sat at the head of the table and imagined a game of cards with my neighbors. I’ve felt the cool, smooth granite of the kitchen countertops and gazed affectionately out the back door at the girls in their pasture. It’s all so real to me, and I’m so excited to get to finally see it.

But, I’ve dallied too long. It’s already tomorrow. Take care, all.