Well, that escalated quickly

Irish Whiskey is like Lay's potato chips: You can't have just one.

...and that's why I'm hung over and wasting an absolutely lovely day by sitting on my couch.

I've been home for a week. My family's little homecoming rituals have evolved this year based on my only being home for a week at a time. Every year I say that I'm going to slow down a little, spend more time at home... and end up spending more and more at work. This time I pulled the plug on that. I've still got almost 2 weeks to go here; the longest I've been home in the last 6 years. 

 After 6 months, decorating Heaven's Waiting Room is truly complete. I'm not a believer in the man cave concept. I'm the man of the house. My house IS my cave. Now, the garage, however, is Mantown, distinct and different from the man cave.  Mantown is the site of my workshop, which is in the primitive stages.
I very proudly built my first real project this week. A workbench. As we don't plan to stay here more than 2-3 years, I built the bench so that it can be knocked down in under 5 minutes, with the legs through-bolted and braced. The bottom shelf is the brace. Removing that allows me to fold the legs under the bench, and the whole thing stows like a card table. Pretty proud of that. I got cheap, though, and used MDF for the work surface, and I can tell already that it's not going to last more than a year, even with my ass usually away to sea.
    My tool collection is truly sad. Somewhere along the way in the move, most of my power tools disappeared. My old home up in Boston, the Ant Farm, was a glorified Soviet-style apartment block. No shop space. Much of my stuff stayed in my mom's garage, site of my last shop. Tools grew legs, and I suspect there were some sticky fingers, as the garage was a busy place what with brothers and a teenage niece that discovered it made a great party spot for her and her friends. So it goes.

 Strangely enough, my vast collection of various power sanders made it. I still got like a dozen of the damn things. I swear I collect them, and I'm pretty sure I grabbed one of my brothers' too, so, wicked sorry, bro.

 But, yeah, my drills, saws, grinders.. all gone. Sucks. Gotta buy new ones.

 New shop, new opportunities, though.

    Christmas is just around the corner, and the palm trees in my yard are all lit up nice. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and I bought bunches of lights to decorate outside, as my neighbors go all out, and I didn't want to be the guy with the dark house. Nice, really- about 80% of the houses on my street have something going on for Christmas/Hanukkah lights. Really makes you feel happy.

 Turns out you can get fir Christmas trees in Florida. I wasn't sure. Actually cheaper than in Boston.  The Mrs. went all-in, decorating inside and out. It's my first Christmas home in 3 years, and she wanted to make it memorable. Minus today's hangover, it's been a lovely week, and while the folks back in MA are freezing their nuts off, tomorrow, Christmas Eve, we're going to the beach, again.

 Oh, I took a 15 minute break in the middle of this post to throw a line in the water and take a few casts in my pond. Either I've got all 1lb bass in my pond or I catch the same retarded fish every day. Little dude's gotta be getting pretty beat up.