The Office saga part 1 (from the Archives)

I'm a little behind with The Campsie Project, but luckily, I've found a post that never got posted. Here's how my office (which is sweet) came to be! —mick

I don't know what I'd do if I were an insulator.

What a pain. and itchy, too. tonight we had the Whirlwind Marathon Get Mick's Office Ready night of activity. On the agenda, for prepping Mick's future office: hang a ceiling anchor for the fan! run speaker wire for the soon-to-be-rocking Bose in-ceiling speakers! Don't forget! Drill holes to run that speaker wire through! Hang insulation!

I would have completely forgotten about the last one if not for Lucy… Insulation? What's that? Insulation is something that just never occurs to me in the course of daily life. In fact the last minute quick-before-they-lock-the-doors trip to Lowe's had me begging for pity not just so I could come in, but also for guidance about insulation. All I ever wondered before was 'how did Dow-Corning get The Pink Panther as a spokes…panther?' (by the way, I haven't even seen it, but screw the new Steve Martin remake of The Pink Panther. That sacred ground will always belong to Peter Sellers, pal. And if you haven't seen it in awhile, The original Pink Panther is a really brilliant ensemble comedy.—Now we return to our regularly scheduled house renovation. So—I'm getting better at my time estimates. I estimated 5 hours to do these things and I was right on the nose. Not that I'm bragging about Five Hours. Nope, I'm slow as… as… I don't know—something that's really slow… with this stuff. I'm merely pointing out that I'm getting better at realizing how friggin' long any given task is going to take. But deadlines have gotten me swunged into action. It's gradually dawned on me that—since Lucy moved in—the onus has really fallen on these shoulders to live two places or get in gear. And this living two places thing is not my style. I love to travel, sure, but trying to actually live two places? Keeping up with all my ideosyncratic papers and beverages and foods and technology and music? Times TWO? Man, it's exhausting. So I'm jumping at the chance to get the floor refinished and the ceiling drywalled so I can call up Insight Cable and get some high-speed internet in here and set up shop. Hence the frantic work party. And the last task of the eveniing was my first attempt at hanging insulation ('hanging?' I dunno— you 'hang' drywall and wallpaper). It's not hard, is my impression, but on some basic level it quickly sucks. There's something about it that makes it one of the few tasks that we've performed that I don't look forward to doing in the future. Obviously, there are some things we've jobbed out (like floor refinishing and some drywalling) because it requires a degree of finesse that's tricky to obtain. But not insulation. Insulation is just a crappy job to do. Still with any luck it will make for a warm and (privately) rocking office, dyude.