NaNoWriMo 2011
Giving NaNoWriMo another shot this year. Here’re the results of the first night.
My office is modest. In terms of feet and inches, one could refer to it as mid-sized, and I guess it is as home offices go. There are two bookcases in it made up of very thick wood, equally brown, heavy laden with oft ignored items, conference binders, school supplies, Ikea containers, Popular Mechanics issues, and a folded Pop Warner jersey. My wife’s Pitt Engineering diploma hangs proudly on one wall — I should note that proud is the state of many of my wife’s things, hanging or not, especially when they exist in spaces that are otherwise devoid of her presence — and one of my favorite photos in the world, matted and framed, serves as the gorgeous hypotenuse of a sad right triangle underneath one of the windowsills because, if I am remembering correctly, we were not to hang too many things on the walls.
Bibles and concordances share shelf space with candles on the second of three shelves that exist between two windows. The first shelf from the top is where the dictionaries and more candles are, as well as the 2.670 engine I built during my brief stint at MIT. On the last shelf are my software development books, faux flowers, more candles, and a box of random garbage/knick-knacks. The windows are usually shielded by closed blinds that should themselves be clothed by some sort of window treatment, but the rods that sit a few inches above the window boxes are naked, metal, bare. The carpeted floor beneath everything does see light, but only, and exactly, three times a day.
Perpendicular to the shelved wall is a desk. I wrote code there. Perpendicular to and about three feet from the other end of that desk is a futon. I spend most of my time there. Guests made full use of it in a more conventional way, but it’s primary function these days is to hold me upright and awake. I write journal entries there, usually for what amounts to three hours of time in one sitting, exactly three times a day. The futon is covered in greenish-brown microfiber, and there are two pillows on it that I do not ever use.
The office is important here, but second in importance to its location. It is in a house, of course — my house. The house, though, does not exist where it should, where it used to, where anyone would expect it to. The move, if you would call it that, occurred in tandem with a discovery, which occurred directly after I returned from a perfunctory trip to what used to be my local Home Depot to buy air filters for the vents in the house. The move left my old lot bare, the topography of it pipe-jigsawed.