On Sunday several friends and I broke our bicycles out of storage. We spent most of the afternoon riding from downtown Grand Rapids to Jenison and back, with a detour around the currently closed-for-the-season Millennium Park. Total miles: Just under 24. I haven’t been on my bike since early October, so I am still a little sore; but it was worth it. For the first several miles of the ride I had a big goofy grin plastered across my face.

Folks have been pestering me to ride in the MS-150 this year. In past years I have either had no bike or no time. This year, we will see. I told them I would give something approaching a definite answer at the beginning of May.

And speaking of the end of the semester, there are four weeks of school left, plus finals week. All of my students are passing, and none of them have cried. At least, not in class. At least, not yet.

Work is keeping me busier than I would like, which is nothing new. I have made a conscious effort to spend more time practicing tai chi and kung fu, in order to keep Master Lee’s class at the forefront of my mind. When I spend more free time thinking about work than I do about tai chi, something has gone seriously wrong.

Happy New Year, everyone!

It is something of a tradition for those who Blog to post a year-end retrospective and prospective. This is mine; my fortunes seem to follow the Eastern New Year more closely than the Western, and the things in my life which are most important seem to align with the animal signs.

First, the past.

The Year of the Wood Rooster was very good to me. Here are some of the highlights, in roughly chronological order:

I quit a job which was fast making me very unhappy. I took a six-week break from working, then began freelancing with the people who eventually became my new co-workers.

The change in surroundings left me with much more physical, mental and emotional energy, which I turned toward reconnecting with the people around me. In particular I threw more energy into Master Lee’s class. The previous year or so of systemic depression made it exceedingly difficult to focus on the class to the extent it deserves, so I had a lot of ground there to regain.

For the first time in twenty years, I programmed some computer games: An arcade game, and a strategy game. Not the most complex things in the world, but the experience re-ignited in me the joy of programming which I had lost. Good thing, too, considering this is what I do for a living.

Somewhere in there I met a wonderful, beautiful woman. Though we were not together for very long the experience left me with a renewed self-confidence which I had once lost, somewhere along the way.

At the end of summer, in the middle of August, my brother and I took a week-long vacation to New Orleans to visit my father and step-mother. It turned out that my timing could hardly have been better. Hurricane Katrina happened the week after I returned home. Thanks in large part to work my brother and I did, helping the parents to organize their belongings, they had no trouble at all evacuating when the storm hit.

And probably the biggest change in my life, I bought a house.

My sign is the Earth Rooster. This is the year of the Fire Dog. It looks like it should be a pretty good year for me. Notice that the prediction for the Earth Rooster says “I will be much more sociable and communicative than usual”. At the western New Year I made a resolution to be less of a hermit. Looks like I chose wisely.

Now, what are my plans for the upcoming year?

Nothing too specific. This semester will be my last at Kendall College. Though I enjoy teaching, it is too much of a time commitment, and leaves me stretched too thin to devote the appropriate attention to the other things in my life which are so important. Also, it pretty much nixes my social life for eight months out of the year.

Once upon a time I wrote poetry and short stories every day, and filled hundreds of pages in journals every year. It is time to start doing that kind of thing again. Perhaps I will visit the UICA writers’ studio which I had a hand in starting, many years ago.

I would like to practice tai chi and kung fu more often and more regularly.

I would like to throw more energy into maintaining and improving Master Lee’s school.

I would like to create some more computer games.

I would like to meet another wonderful, beautiful woman. Or two. Hundred.

I would like to turn my house into the kind of comfortable, beautiful place that I and my friends can use to relax and re-connect with each other and the world at large.

But most of all, I want to be as happy as I was last year, and help my friends and family to have as wonderful a year as I hope to have.

If you look at the photos in my previous post you will see that my house is big and old and beautiful…and empty. So Christmas and the new year I made it my mission to do something I have never done before: buy furniture.

I don’t shop much. I’m a fella™, and as a fella™ I like to walk into a place already pretty much knowing what I will walk out with. Not so, buying furniture. When you buy furniture, apparently you are supposed to take into account the other furniture you own, if any, and how your old stuff will look with your new stuff, and vice versa, in a recursive shopping free-for-all. There are no hard-and-fast rules around the experience, but dammit! All I want is a couple of chairs!

This is how the week went:

On Monday I spent the whole day driving around looking at things. Sofas chairs tables futons desks rugs the whole shebang. I went home that night with one of the worst headaches of my life.

On Tuesday I repeated Monday, but with a more discerning eye.

On Wednesday I went to Art Van and ordered a split queen-sized foundation for my bed, on account of my old box-spring won’t fit up my stairs.

On Thursday I bought a dining-room table from Stone’s Throw, which was delivered Friday morning. Friday afternoon, I hijacked Bock and we headed to the north side of town to pick up my box-springs from the Art Van warehouse. Finally, after a month of sleeping on the floor, or on chopped-up particle-board, I had my bed back in working order.

Or so I thought.

“There you go, have a good ‘un”, said the 20-something fella as he threw my box-spring into Bock’s truck. “Hot dayum!” said I, and “Yee haw. Ummâ…where’s the other half?”

“Says here you ordered one split box spring.”

“That’s right. One box spring, split into two halves.”

“You know, I though it was kind of funny that there was only one. Most people order two.”

“What am I gonna do with half (30″ wide) of a box spring? Put it in the hold of my slave ship? Where’s the rest of it?”

“Let me call 28th Street.”

[time passes]

“They say you ordered one box spring. They can get you the other one, but they won’t give it to you for free.”

“Argh. Okay. When you order A Split Foundation, does that not imply two halves?”

“Well, yeah…” At this point the warehouse floor manager walked over. “What’s up?”

“Hey [manager] guess what? 28th Street is getting dumber again!” (note the “again”).

“Come on; don’t talk bad about our company.”

So the kid relayed the story and ended it with “That’s the most retarded thing I ever heard!”

“Right there with you,” said I, and “Cancel my order. For $500, a box spring had better service me when I lay down on it.”

So I went home, sans box spring. I immediately drove over to the store where I ordered the thing and said “I need to talk to a manager!” A manager came over and I told him the whole story, minus the editorializing of the warehouse crew. He said “Yeah. You ordered the wrong thing.”

“I told you what I needed. YOU ordered the wrong thing. And you only ordered half of it!”

“You said you needed a split foundation.”

“Yeah. A SPLIT foundation! A foundation SPLIT IN HALF.”

“A split foundation is half of a bed.”

“So I should have ordered TWO split foundations? That don’t make NO sense!”

“Sorry sir, if you want to order the RIGHT thing we can get it to you in a week for $300.00.”

“Forget it. Keep your damn bed, I’ll sleep on the bathroom floor.”

So here we are. Today I went out to RCD Direct and picked up what I needed in half an hour, and at half the price Art Van wanted for an inferior product. When I told the RCD fella my story he said “Yeah, if I had a dollar for each time I heard an Art Van story this week I’d have five dollars.”

I think I can safely say I am never doing business with Art Van again.

On the up side, I now have a bed that sits waist-height off the floor, so I can slide out of bed in the morning, rather than climb out of it.

And that’s all I ever wanted.

This is the first round of photos of my house. Enjoy!

My house, which sits on the North side of Innes street. It is hard to tell from the photo, but it sits pretty high up on a small hill. The floor of the basement is about even with the street.

The view west from my porch.

The view east from my porch.

The entryway. I didn’t paint the door.

Facing west into the living room. Note the absolutely beautiful trim and floors.

The dining room. The table came with the house. So did the chairs

The master bedroom. It is hard to get a shot of a large room from small doorway.

The bathroom. There is another one in the basement, which is actually a toilet sitting in a corner of the floor. Huh. Also, the bathroom currently does not have a door. I didn’t even notice until I had been living here for about a week.

Looking toward the south-east from my office.

Looking down on the garage from the north window of the library/second bedroom.

My attic. Those chairs are left over from two owners ago. And so is…

…the Swinging Disco Love Nook! This photo barely does the attic justice. The area around the dormer window has a built-in waterbed frame and its own lights and electric outlets. This photo is from me, laying on my back and shooting up at the ceiling above the waterbed frame.

And this is the view from the attic window, looking down at my car. It is hard to tell from the photo, but I the attic window is close to thirty feet above street level. I have a fantastic view.

So there you have it: The first round of photos. I am almost finished unpacking, and now I need to start Buying Stuff. Like furniture. I will continue to post photos as Chez Winkelman continues to evolve.