Sidebar: Spiraled! (Or, Why Didn't We Do This Months Ago?)

I don't know if I've mentioned the Cookbook Project or no--but chances are, all of you reading this already know we have this cookbook that we're trying to cook our way through 'Julie & Julia'-style. Only, you know, cooler... because we're not whiny about it. Most of the time.
Anyway, it turns out that softcover cookbooks aren't really up to that kind of daily abuse. Here it is, about  seven months and over a hundred recipes in:

After about the 30th page fell out this weekend, I finally remembered to take it with me to work (there's a Kinko's/FedEx Office/whatever nearby).  For about $5 they cut off the spine, punch holes and throw in a coil.


Giggle.  And look! It lays flat!  Win. 



That's all. Back to regularly scheduled programming...

Well, it hasn't fallen down, yet.

So we have a tiny (as in 7' x 8') "office." I'm convinced it used to be a pantry, or something, but the agent listed it as an office, so we went with it. When it comes down to it, it's plenty of room for a desk, a chair, and a bookcase. We also have two filing cabinets that are a little worse for the wear (one was originally my sister's, and is in good shape but for having been moved four or five times; the other came from beside a dumpster at my old apartment complex and claims to contain "Rob's Professional Files." Sometimes I wonder who Rob was, and whether he had another filing cabinet for his unprofessional files.) Right. Anyway, the point is, they're different sizes, so stacking things on top of them looks kind of weird. Eh, here's a picture. It illustrates the "problem" better than anything:

Yeah, that's ugly. Needless to say, none of our furniture quite offered a solution ("yea tall, deep enough for two filing cabinets, wide enough for two printers on top and a trash can underneath"), so we tried our hand at furniture-making. Anybody who actually builds furniture might suffer some sort of trauma seeing the following ("you used L-brackets where!?"), so.. warning. Construction pictures:

Top board, left, and legs. The top board was precut 2' x 4' 1/2" plywood (about $6, I think), and the legs were actually deck rail supports. They were way cheaper than the actual "table legs" we found at Home Depot ($3 apiece), and longer, which turned out to be a good thing. The top, put together:

It sat like that for a week or two. Then we got around to putting the legs on it:

Okay, so it's not going to win any awards. That back brace looks kind of stupid, we realize. But you won't really be able to see it, and if it keeps our printers from falling on the floor, bring on the stupid. I used some of the leftover quarter round from trimming the baseboards around the top edge, and painted the whole thing white to match the trim in the office:

I find I'm often painting things at, like, dusk. So if you come visit, don't stare at anything too hard. It's surprisingly stable. We got it in, festooned it with printers, and I made it a tiny curtain to match the valances I'd made for the windows in there. Here's the "after" shot:

With the paint and lots of L-brackets, it came to something between $20-$25, which is about as good as we could have hoped for. We'll just hope it keeps standing...

Back in Business

We're lucky enough that this house came with an attic fan. It's truly fantastic, with a few windows open it's like having the A/C on full blast. However.. it either hadn't been used much in the last few years or this past winter was particularly rough on it, because the first time we ran it the belt broke. Considering that for all we know that belt was as old as the fan/house (it certainly looked it), this wasn't too much of a surprise. It gave us an excuse to visit the local hardware store, which we'd do with or without an excuse for the experience. (I have no idea how anybody ever finds anything there unless you've worked there for.. 40 years? More? Really. I'm not exaggerating. We've given up, we just ask for things we need; this time, the Mr. said, "Attic fan belt broke," and held it up for inspection. "Sure did," was the response; the proprietor disappeared into another room, and after some rustling and the sound of something small scattering across the floor, returned with an intact version of the exact same belt. We figure there's a good chance the 'new' one is as old as the 'old' one, but does it matter if it works?) The Mr. reattached the belt and the fan (big, loud and scary-looking as it is) is back in business. Ahh, moving air. It's great--except that we underestimated how much pollen was still floating around in the air and having it on all day yesterday meant that everything is now covered in a quarter-inch dusting of yellow fuzz. Live and learn.