Pouring Monday

To most folks, a rainy Monday is the suck -- to me, it's the music!

This means I'll see David Gabriel today -- he just called, and is on his way up later this AM. Thus, construction will continue on the basement shelving I so desperately need. Marge finished her unpacking and 'nesting' (as she calls it) back in January; I've yet to even begin, save for the DVD room and my drawing and light tables. The rest has been boxes, stacks, three storage units and a horrorshow; I barely made it through this CCS semester teaching, due to the constant difficulty getting to anything I need for class and lectures.

This involved a fair amount of prep -- Mike Bleier (my stepson) saw to the initial electrical work, prepping everything with new outlets (there were none, save for the washer/dryer outlets) and the wiring necessary to eventually installing lights and more outlets, where needed. Our plumber installed a sorely-needed pressure tank, which had to be done before any other work on the basement was undertaken. That was all finished by the first week in March, and I cleared a full half of the basement for the work ahead. I've given almost all my old pasteboard shelves and bookcases away -- Mike and his wife Mary claimed four of them, and the rest went to needy CCS students, starting with Joe and Becca Lambert, all gratis (the last three will be picked up today, again by/for CCSers -- use 'em in good health!). Marge and I have held onto and used the wooden shelving units here and there about the house; nothing has gone to waste or ruin.

As I've shown you before on this blog (see photo at left),

Dave does terrific work; check out the viewing room shelving he and his brother Mike designed and constructed back in February -- beauty!

But the basement library needs heavy-duty, rugged and long-lasting shelving units, and those can only be built, not bought. Dave initially wrestled with the sheer bulk and no-nonsense constructions I wanted, but he's now well into it; it's nothing like the marvelous work he did in the viewing room. The design is functional, not particularly pleasing to the eye (though I always love the warmth of wood, in and of itself): these will be sturdy, standing floor to ceiling, and holding the maximum number of books of all sizes possible, with the topmost shelves for backstock. I need them all; by the time we're done, 3/4 of the basement will be dedicated to the library.

Dave began work on the basement project late last month, working with his amigo Josh; they got the sheetrock up, the mud work done and sanded, and I primed and painted that in a weekend. Dave came back this past Thursday and Friday, and he and Josh pulled together all the preliminary work on the shelving for a full half of the basement, completing work on three massive shelving units -- the rough equivalent of the shelving I had in my then-new Marlboro studio last year at this time. They had to fight the weather (a rental truck took care of the Friday haul of needed lumber, ensuring it remained dry) and lack of lumber (incredibly, not a single lumber yard or Home Depot in the WRJ area had 2"x 4"s!); that's now been solved, and the unit components are all cut and stacked in the garage and basement.

Dave and Josh are returning today to finish the ten-foot-long shelving units they'd cut and prepared for, and I can't wait.

By the end of today, those will be up and bolted to the walls; then Mike can complete the electrical work, placing lights and outlets as needed. Man, we are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel!

This means, after some cleanup and a little touchup on the painted cement floor, I can unpack every box currently stacked (five-or-more feet high) in the quarter of the basement we placed boxes during the move, opening that area up completely for me to seal & paint the floor and prep for sheetrocking and that basement area's completion. That section will ultimately sport shelving and some office/work space, with a computer work station for scanning/lecture prep for CCS needs and future publishing ventures. Back in December 2006, Dave safely removed the custom-built looooooooong computer desk/workstation Olivier Flaggelot had built for me for the Marlboro studio space (based on a rather inventive design we both cooked up, sketched, and Olivier constructed); that will go into the last quarter of the basement, along with more shelving, which will allow me at last to have my entire library accessible and out of boxes for the first time since the late 1980s!

(And yes, Mike Dobbs, this time the shelving is accomodating expansion, too -- more shelving than I'll be filling!)

Remaining work thereafter involves framing the laundry room, which will also be lined with shallow shelving (for standard-size paperbacks and vhs videos), and closing in the bulkhead with (a) weatherproofed door(s), which Dave will likely build, given the odd shape and size of that doorway. The goal there is to keep the bulkhead fully functional while sealing the basement from heat loss -- it remained pretty comfortable all winter, despite the heat loss, just from the warmth generated by the boiler and hot water heater. Still, for those below-zero weeks, we'll be installing at least two baseboard heat units at the far end of the basement, just in case.

OK, time to go -- I've got a busy day ahead. This afternoon, Cat and I will be focusing on the long-under-construction website; hopefully, we'll have something up later this week, however skeletal. It's been a long time coming! I've been emailing Cat digital art & photo files all weekend, and I'm still hoping Jane Wilde gets around to mailing Cat a disc with all the work she and we'd done last year.

[Cat, U R my computer guru; art (c) Cayetano Garza]

It's coming together. It's all coming together.

Tomorrow, I'll offer my first CCS graphic novel discussion class -- I'll be moderating a session on the first volume of Junji Ito's Uzumaki, which is among my favorite horror comics and graphic novels from anywhere in the world. I've prepped a Q&A sheet (which I'll post here later this week), and then it's Ivan Brunetti week at CCS. Ivan and his wife arrived this weekend, and he's scheduled a full run of workshops and lectures; last year, Ivan arrived with Seth and Chris Ware for a three-day whirlwind of creative and instructional activity, of which I only experienced one day, due to my schedule and the long drive from Marlboro to White River Junction. Now that Marge and I live fifteen minutes away, I hope to sit in on all of Ivan's sessions, except today's. Hooooo doggies! OK, enough of my rambling --

Have a great Monday, one and all!

A Peek at the New Digs

I'm usually up by 5:30 AM -- but I was so fried from this week, and from the fourth drive up to and back from Burlington in a week, that I conked until almost 10:30 AM this morn. We drove home last night in falling and blowing snow the entire way, and I managed the drive comfortably until we were 40 miles north of White River Junction -- by then, I was just too exhausted to safely continue driving. Fortunately, Marge was wide awake and happy to take over, and we were definitely through the worst of the snow, so she drove the final stretch of I-89 and the 15 minutes of I-91 home. I barely stayed awake that final haul; had I been driving alone, I would have pulled over more than once to rub snow on my face to keep myself wide awake.

So, Marge is safely home from her trip to visit our grandchildren in Texas, and I savored our first night and (today) day together since last week.

Still, got some work done. Just wrapped up part one of the multi-chapter interview with Bryan Talbot (links to be posted here soon!), and finally have some time to post -- sorry I missed my usual AM arrival.

Photos today -- this is the shelving done thus far on our new home by David Gabriel, who (along with his brother Mike) completed this chunk of the renovations needed for my collection and library about a month ago. We're eagerly looking forward to Dave's return, as the construction of the basement library/office begins at last.

Dave and Mike did a stellar job; Dave not only fulfilled my hopes for the viewing room shelving (which, thankfully, houses all my DVDs -- finally, the library in easy reach, and in a single room!), he consistently improved upon and enhanced every aspect of the project.



Walking you around the viewing room, the first evening after Dave and Mike had finished their work on this space, you can see here the door to the room and the first bank of shelves. These extend from floor to ceiling, across the span of the interior wall and around the top of the back window --



-- which is framed on its other side by another bank of shelves.

Standing at the window, this is the view of the shelving that Dave constructed on the interior wall to the right of the window. Note the angled roofline cutting into the room; Dave's shelving perfectly follows that form, wrapping around to the inside area, and continuing alongside the door -- which is across the room from the entryway we began this room tour with.

(This door, BTW, presently opens up to the unfinished room over our garage. This will be, by summer, by writing/mailing/office space, once it's finished.)

The two doors leaning against room door are from the closet (which we'll be getting to soon enough). At this stage, the double-sliding-doors have been removed -- ostensibly for Dave and Mike's easier access to the closet work area, but these hanging doors may remain off. Time will tell.

Note, too, the small rounded corner shelving Dave created for that corner beneath the angled interior wall. This was Dave's idea, and I dig it -- it provides some shelf space for my monster figures and movie collectibles (like my drive-in speaker!), as well as one of the surround-sound speakers for the final viewing room set-up.

We've removed the two detached closet hanging doors from this shot: that's the same interior door (facing the entry door, across the room) you saw in the last photo.

This angle gives you a good view of the bank of shelving to the right of the interior door, which is the first portion I racked as I began unpacking after Dave and Mike's work was done, and I was free to begin setting up the room. All my animation collection neatly fits this space, including my beloved collection of King Kong, Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen films.

Now, this is a little difficult to describe here, but if you continue looking to the right of these shelves, there's another angled wall that cuts down into the room. That angle runs the length of the wall (which is directly opposite the window, which is visible in the first and second photos I've shown you here).

That leaves precious little space for shelving, further compromised by the heating baseboard extending across almost half the length of that end of the room.

However, Dave did make optimum use of what little wall we do have to work with beneath that angled interior wall. This shot doesn't give you as clear an orientation to the layout of the room as the previous shots do, but it's the best we could get at this time.

This floor-to-beginning-of-the-angled-wall bank of shelves on the left leads into the full floor-to-ceiling set on the immediate right, which run up alongside the narrow strip of wall on the left of the wide closet doorway.

As you can see, ample shelving space, all perfectly designed for optimum racking of DVDs, with enough clearance throughout for vhs tapes and many DVD boxed sets.

Dave's efficient use of all available space, including the areas dealing with the angle-cut of the inside wall, provides a space pleasing to the eye and useful for tucking and storing odds and ends -- including remotes, etc. -- that are coming in very handy. The warmth of the wood (which Mike polyurethaned, two coats) contrasts the blue walls perfectly, and the entire room now has an expansive warmth, thanks to the woodwork, that's really comfortable to spend time with. Nice!

I should also mention, before we get to Dave's final completion of the interior closet shelving, that this was the only room of our new home we had to paint. For the original (and only preceding) owners, this was apparently the bedroom of their two little girls. It was a truly hideous patchwork of violet and pale green walls -- perhaps color-coded for the girls? -- and clearly had to go.

Marge chose this eye-soothing hue of blue, which wasn't as oppressive as the dark blue I had chosen for our Marlboro home's basement viewing room (which never, ever provided sufficient space for the sprawl of my equipment and collection, and was hardly usable in our five years there). This worked out well, and Dave began work within two days of my completing the spackling, sanding and repaint job on the walls.

Okay, back to the photo tour of the viewing room:

This is the entryway to the closet, which also showcases the shelving Dave completed for the narrow wall extending out from the right closet doorway frame. So, what you're seeing here is a portion of the interior of the closet (with the hanging doors removed, natch) and the floor-to-ceiling shelving running up along the wall outside the closet doorway -- and on to the entry door we began this photo tour with.


Here's a tighter shot of the shelves to the right of the closet door frame.

The three display shelves to the left of the entry door were Dave's idea, too. Having seen some of my monster models, which I've nowhere to put just yet, Dave asked if I'd like space to display two or three of them in this otherwise unused space by the door frame. Like all Dave's suggestions, this was a good one, and also provides a handy shelf -- directly across the room from the rounded shelves in the opposite bend-of-the-wall, visible in the third photo above -- for another of the surround-sound speakers.

Good call, Dave -- and excellent execution!



Here's the best angle we could manage to photograph the closet interior -- again, floor-to-ceiling shelving. This was a particularly tight area for Dave and Mike to work within, but per usual, they did a fantastic job. It's perfect.

These shelves are sized not for DVDs, but for larger components of the video collection: the floor shelving is designed for laserdiscs (they all fit!), the rest for big-box videos from the early years of the 1980s video market, those glorious oversized color vids from the likes of Gorgon Video, Wizard, and the rest.

Many of the titles released on vhs in the big-box format have never been issued in other any form, and for some -- like the original Herschell Gordon Lewis and Andy Milligan vhs releases, and curios like the Spectreman series -- the boxes themselves are artifacts of a key era of exploitation cinema and video that has long passed. I treasure them as much as my poster and pressbook collection. So, at my request, Dave designed and constructed this interior closet shelving to accommodate as much of this part of the ol' collection as possible.


This was the best we could do, photographing the deep interior of the inner closet shelving. It's almost impossible to get a camera into the confines of this area with enough visibility to capture what it's like inside. It's a wide, deep closet, ideal for my needs -- and it was mighty tough for Marge to give up!

Fortunately, the rest of the house has so much quality closet space, Marge has more than enough. So, this worked out fine for me.

I can't wait to complete the set up of the viewing room, and hopefully savor it for years to come. I'm beginning the setup process this weekend, and hope to watch my first movie here by next weekend.

As you can see from this little photo tour, David Gabriel has done an extraordinary job for us.

There's still much to do, work that will carry on into the summer: an unfinished room over our garage that will become my office, mailing room and writing studio; the entire basement, which is unfinished and will become my sorely-needed library for books, magazine, comics and the collection; and Marge's screened-in back deck porch, which we'll get to once the ground thaws, dries and spring is here.

But that's a long way off just now.

Have a great weekend, one and all, and see you here as time permits...

Saturday Musings

Well, the move is over -- tried to post an announcement here yesterday afternoon, but for some reason it wouldn't go through. Maybe it'll post this AM.

Apologies for missing two daily posts this week. The move, the move -- and the down-to-the-wire Center for Cartoon Studies tasks (the move derailed my administrative paperwork chores terribly) -- kept me preoccupied.

_______________

There was also Thursday's trip to Middlebury College, to speak to Cole Odell's excellent comics class, among the missing time blog-wise -- Cole was a gracious and attentive host, we had some fun, and his class was great, a remarkable mix of students. If I had a photo of the group, I'd post it, because they really were a lively and engaging group; their questions were insightful, it made for a solid session.

I was invited to join the group for lunch after our session in the classroom, and we were joined by two professors (one of whom, Don Mitchell, I knew from my Breadloaf Young Writers Conference days and was overjoyed to see, though we didn't get to talk much) and I shamelessly showboated, answering any and all questions.

The drive to and from Middlebury was a treat, too, though loooooooong: having moved over an hour "closer" to Middlebury, I still had the same duration drive I used to have from Marlboro! Such is the "ya can't get thar from heyar" nature of roadways in Vermont, especially midstate. It's a two-and-a-half hour drive, I was told -- that said, I gave myself extra time and made it to Middlebury with time to spare. Two pancakes and two sausage patties worth of time, in fact.

The drive to was ravishing: it was two degrees outside and crystal clear; the air was so cold that the running rivers were steaming (a procession of uncanny, non-moving vapor wisps that hung over the water, which was and is churning too fast to freeze) and the vegetation on the immediate banks were bristling with whiskers of frost. Stunning, eerie, beautiful.

The ride home meant taking another route (I'm exploring this part of my home state every chance I get, having a fresh geographic orientation now to all points), which involved a steep climb up Route 125 from Ripton, a route I chose for sentimental reasons: it takes me right by the old Breadloaf Campus. I love that place.

Cooler still, though, were the deep-frozen brooks and streams along 125, which were spectacular; the play of light and shadow midday, with the sky just easing into overcast with the occasional peek of sun, was mesmerizing. I stopped at one point and pulled on my boots to wander down by the brookside and savor the frosty tableaus. Winter, at last.

Cutting down Route 100 -- the road I grew up on and know so well -- I saw a sign saying "Bethel: 18 miles" and thought, "Huh, that'll cut me over to interstate 89 in no time!" Sure enough, where 100 and 107 meet/split (depending which way you're headed) in Stockbridge, I cut up over to Bethel (driving by the ever-alluring Advanced Animations sign; it's not an animation studio, but a remote VT business that builds all the life-size animatronic creatures and dinosaurs that tour the world, including the popular museum "Dinomation" exhibits) and was on 89 South in record time.

Home again in a little over 90 minutes -- a faster route to Middlebury, when it isn't storming! Cool!

Once home, I was scrambling: Dave Gabriel and his brother Mike were working here (wait until you see the shelving work they've done -- photos, soon!) and we were scheduled to complete the platform and assemble the flat file before they headed home. That meant ripping into Windsor and picking up some last-minute supplies needed for the task, which I did, and before Dave and Mike were out the door, my flat file was assembled in the basement atop its new platform (in case the basement ever floods) and ready at last.

This means I can now file my artwork, all of it, and clear my small studio room -- and bring in my drawing board and light table. This means this week, amid all first-week-of-the-new-semester CCS hubbub, I'll be able to chip away at finally setting up one portion of my new home. It's been weeks; I'm eager to get into it.

__________________

With the conclusion of the movers work at Marlboro yesterday afternoon, I took a few moments after the truck pulled away to wander the house, say goodbye to one of the sweetest homes I've ever lived in: the first I've owned, too. It was indeed kind to us, and we were kind as we could be to the house, rebuilding it from the shell it was when we first saw it. The new owners are excited, the closing is on Monday -- they have heady plans for further reworking the house, making it into the home they need and want. Ah, I love change, transition: it's always an agonizing process, but necessary to life.

I took my last walk through the house, seeing the rooms empty, completely empty and open for a new family, for the first time. It's never been completed as a house and empty before, in our experience. We were moving in as the work was being completed back in December 2001 to April 2002, so I'd never seen the house empty, clean, free of the clutter of our lives (and, ahem, my enormous quantities of shit). I went outside and walked around, took one last, lingering look from the back yard across mid-Marlboro, and then I was off. Met the movers in Ascutney, we unloaded (into my rented storage space), and that was that.

Then, back to work at home. All in all, a most eventful couple of days.

I finally wrapped up my syllabus work this AM, and Marge offered to help me set up my CCS office space in White River Jct., which must be done by Monday night -- so, with that, I'm off. Got bookcases to pick up from the storage space, work to do in my Verizon Building office at CCS -- see ya here tomorrow.

Ratchet-Ass Bissette

Not posting much today; too much to do, with crunch-time here on many obligations the move/house purchase/house sale and all attendant duties has back-burnered. The move concludes -- at last! -- on Friday; our closing on the sale of our Marlboro home is Monday. Soon, this'll all be behind us...

But what's ahead today is what's essential. Two meetings today, one decidedly Center for Cartoon Studies intensive, etc. -- and contractor Dave Gabriel is back in the saddle here today (at last, the flat files will be up by tonight!), so I've got to be ready for him in about 15 minutes -- but there's always time to touch on making sense of our President's behavior.

First up, comics amigo Howard M. (morning, Howard, good to hear from you!) sent me

this link concerning another possible rationale for the Negroponte move, and one that "is more logical than Cheney resigning" to his mind (though he's no fan of Novak).

Howard adds, "What pisses me off most is why there is no debate on why the Bush plan doesn't included diplomacy. As bad an idea as the military surge is, if there was also a diplomatic surge (like the ISG recommended) to get the Iraqi's to resolve their political differences it would be hard to argue against. Better still would be to do that while withdrawing but that would make too much sense. But all the Congress can manage to say is that sending more troops is a bad idea. The level of "debate" is pathetic..."

Agreed. Alas, though, as the past six years have demonstrated, Bush doesn't 'do' diplomacy. I know, he said he didn't 'do' nuances, but clearly diplomacy falls within that category (in the mind of the man unable to sort out strategy vs. tactics, leading us all into an international war on a tactic). Pathetic is far, far too kind a word.

This in hand from truthout.org, compliments of HomeyM this AM. (Have a great Wednesday, see you here tomorrow with something less depressing, I hope):

New Oil Law Means Victory in Iraq for Bush

By Chris Floyd
t r u t h o u t | UK Correspondent
Monday 08 January 2007

Surging Toward the Ultimate Prize

The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.

At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," says the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. "It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972." If the government's parliamentary majority prevails, the law should take effect in March.

As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works since the very beginning of the invasion - indeed, since months before the invasion, when the Bush administration brought in Phillip Carroll, former CEO of both Shell and Fluor, the politically-wired oil servicing firm, to devise "contingency plans" for divvying up Iraq's oil after the attack. Once the deed was done, Carroll was made head of the American "advisory committee" overseeing the oil industry of the conquered land, as Joshua Holland of Alternet.com has chronicled in two remarkable reports on the backroom maneuvering over Iraq's oil: "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and "The US Takeover of Iraqi Oil."

From those earliest days until now, throughout all the twists and turns, the blood and chaos of the occupation, the Bush administration has kept its eye on this prize. The new law offers the barrelling buccaneers of the West a juicy set of production-sharing agreements (PSAs) that will maintain a fig leaf of Iraqi ownership of the nation's oil industry - while letting Bush's Big Oil buddies rake off up to 75 percent of all oil profits for an indefinite period up front, until they decide that their "infrastructure investments" have been repaid. Even then, the agreements will give the Western oil majors an unheard-of 20 percent of Iraq's oil profits - more than twice the average of standard PSAs, the Independent notes.

Of course, at the moment, the "security situation" - i.e., the living hell of death and suffering that Bush's "war of choice" has wrought in Iraq - prevents the Oil Barons from setting up shop in the looted fields. Hence Bush's overwhelming urge to "surge" despite the fierce opposition to his plans from Congress, the Pentagon and some members of his own party. Bush and his inner circle, including his chief adviser, old oilman Dick Cheney, believe that a bigger dose of blood and iron in Iraq will produce a sufficient level of stability to allow the oil majors to cash in the PSA chips that more than 3,000 American soldiers have purchased for them with their lives.

The American "surge" will be blended into the new draconian effort announced over the weekend by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: an all-out war by the government's Shiite militia-riddled "security forces" on Sunni enclaves in Baghdad, as the Washington Post reports. American troops will "support" the "pacification effort" with what Maliki says calls "house-to-house" sweeps of Sunni areas. There is of course another phrase for this kind of operation: "ethnic cleansing."

The "surged" troops - mostly long-serving, overstrained units dragooned into extended duty - are to be thrown into this maelstrom of urban warfare and ethnic murder, temporarily taking sides with one faction in Iraq's hydra-headed, multi-sided civil war. As the conflict goes on - and it will go on and on - the Bush administration will continue to side with whatever faction promises to uphold the "hydrocarbon law" and those profitable PSAs. If "Al Qaeda in Iraq" vowed to open the nation's oil spigots for Exxon, Fluor and Halliburton, they would suddenly find themselves transformed from "terrorists" into "moderates" - as indeed has Maliki and his violent, sectarian Dawa Party, which once killed Americans in terrorist actions but are now hailed as freedom's champions.

So Bush will surge with Maliki and his ethnic cleansing for now. If the effort flames out in a disastrous crash that makes the situation worse - as it almost certainly will - Bush will simply back another horse. What he seeks in Iraq is not freedom or democracy but "stability" - a government of any shape or form that will deliver the goods. As the Independent wryly noted in its Sunday story, Dick Cheney himself revealed the true goal of the war back in 1999, in a speech he gave when he was still CEO of Halliburton. "Where is the oil going to come from" to slake the world's ever-growing thirst, asked Cheney, who then answered his own question: "The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."

And therein lies another hidden layer of the war. For Iraq not only has the world's second largest oil reserves; it also has the world's most easily retrievable oil. As the Independent succinctly notes: "The cost-per-barrel of extracting oil in Iraq is among the lowest in the world because the reserves are relatively close to the surface. This contrasts starkly with the expensive and risky lengths to which the oil industry must go to find new reserves elsewhere - witness the super-deep offshore drilling and cost-intensive techniques needed to extract oil form Canada's tar sands."

And this unholy union is what Bush is really talking about when he talks about "victory." This isthe reason for so much of the drift and dithering and chaos and incompetence of the occupation: Bush and his cohorts don't really care what happens on the ground in Iraq - they care about what comes out of the ground. The end - profit and dominion - justifies any means.

"Am I am der Painter Man?
Jah, I am der Painter Man..."

[- sung by Adolf Hitler in der Amerikan movie from der '40s, The Devil With Hitler]

Short break from painting duties to say goot Monday mornink, and whew, what I relief. The Iraqis dropped all charges against Saddam Hussein. Goot think, jah?

_________

Grand fellow and contractor-who-took-on-our-job David Gabriel is starting tomorrow, meaning there's further light on the horizon for my own "nesting" process in this massive move. Dave is tackling the shelving in the viewing room first, which will allow me to empty tons of boxes and at least one hallway.

If we can get the platform set up and flat file cabinet up this week, too, in the basement, I'll be at last on my way to setting up my drawing studio as well, which is presently dominated by stacks of 35+ years of artwork. It's all lovingly bagged and stacked with care, but man oh man would Lizzie and Tuco like to get into that room. What fun they'd have! I've already rescued a couple of captions and word balloons once cemented onto original art pages that have dropped off from the sheer age and glue-exhaustion. Some reconstruction lies ahead, no doubt, but first and foremost comes the task of re-filing the art and getting it into safer flat-file storage again.

Ah, time fer der Painter Man to get back to verk --

More later!

Already in the Thick of 2007...

Hope you all had a great New Year; we did, with friends showing up as planned before the midnight ritual on the 31st and spending the night here as our first-ever house guests. This meant that Marge, miraculous Goddess/woman she is, had actually not only unpacked but had completely set up the living room, kitchen, dining area and guest room/office by the 31st! Amazing.

I, on the other hand, am still struggling with the move's logistics and tasks, with daily (as weather permits) trips between Marlboro and Windsor still necessary as I complete packing and moving of my libraries and collections. Here at our new home, I'm also painting a room (the rest, blessedly, needed no painting), which I've almost completed (two coats on some walls) and prepping the basement for its renovation into the needed library and writing space(s). Thankfully, David Gabriel accepted the contractor job for construction of the shelves and spaces necessary to my master plan, and it's all falling into place -- though this means I'll be staggering around the debris of my collection and library for some time to come until all the work can be completed, moving the boxes from place to place around the work areas until it all takes shape and permits unboxing and shelving. Sigh.

The biggest flaw in my master plan involved my art flat file cabinet, which needs to be mounted on a platform in the basement before I can re-file my 35+ years of artwork. Alas, that plan involved moving the platform constructed in 2002 for the Marlboro basement library/office area -- which I had specifically requested be built to be removed/moved if necessary down the road. Well, now that I'm down that road, damn it but we find on moving day this past Thursday that the platform was constructed fully attached to the wall -- and could not be removed. Shit! Thus, my comfy drawing studio here in Windsor is unusable for the time being, the floor covered with carefully-wrapped-in-plastic and stacked decades of Bissette art and such. Until the new platform and flooring is in place, the flat file is in pieces, not a workable unit, here in our Windsor basement.

So, I've taken to drawing in my sketchbook in the meantime -- so be it. It'll be some time before I can move my drawing board and light table into the new studio room, and that's just how it is.

Luckily, though, my upcoming CCS duties this semester do not require the extensive daily access to my collection/library the fall semester classes absolutely revolve around. I've been pretty good about packing and keeping in reach what I will need for this semester, and thus far haven't found any fatal gaps in my shuffling from one local to the new home as far as my upcoming CCS semester is concerned. Wish me luck on that remaining true...

More later today, as time permits. I've got the long drive to and from Marlboro ahead this morning and at least five hours more of packing/moving ahead, and hear Marge up and about downstairs -- she returns to work today. So, off to the morning rituals and to hit the road myself.

Have a great January 2nd, one and all.