This weekend marked the day I began the age of 42, a momentous number for Douglas Adams fans. 42 is of course, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. I like to think I’m not superstitious but I’m a human and my day-job shop is haunted so, yeah…. Anyway, here’s to a year in which more of the answers to those type of questions make themselves manifest.

During my childhood, I had a small flip-top desk inherited from my dad, with about six square feet of workspace on which I could build model airplanes. A B-17 Flying Fortress here, a F-4 Phantom there, a Pinewood Derby car every year, the fumes from Testors paints and glues. For a long time, it was a room that I shared with my younger brother and so we both fought for precious space. Twenty years later, the situation has changed significantly but I still have a place to make things.

At our first house, I had space for a long workbench in the garage but it was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Nonetheless, I bought tools when I could or added them to my birthday gift wishlists. I recall one year when I received a variety of F- and C-clamps and was pleased in a way only a woodworker with “never enough clamps” could be. All these scattered tools lived in drawers, bags and boxes, or the workbench out in the spiderweb-filled garage. There wasn’t a real home for it all but I kept building the toolset and hoarding scraps from the cabinet shop with hope for the future.

Then, at the end of 2021 (like three days before Christmas end of 2021) we moved into a new house and agreed that one of the bedrooms could be mine to be outfitted for a workroom. I spent all of 2022 working out of and simultaneously organizing the space with varying degrees of success. It’s still not there, will continue to evolve, and will require a satellite extension in the garage for the bigger, dustier, and/or louder tools. But, time is on my side.

For the first era in my life, if I want to create something, in a variety of media, I can simply walk down the hallway at home and open the door to studio space. It’s a wonderful privilege. I hold nothing but gratitude for all the people who have made space in their lives for me create: particularly my parents, my younger brother (and first roommate), and now Carrie who shares our house with me, Hank the greyhound, Jean-Ralphio the poodle, Domino the black and white tuxedo cat, and Scout the long-haired orange kitty.

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
-Douglas Adams

Models and More

Stuffed with Leftovers

Let It Rip