My beloved told me I was working too hard (possibly the falling asleep all the time was a hint) – and having come off nights I’d singularly failed to actually take any time off*, and so today, that’s broadly what I’ve done. I eventually got off my arse and emptied boxes of clothes out, and endeavoured to sort them into ‘charity’ and ‘keep’. I’ve got rid of lots of tank tops that don’t really fit, skinny fit teeshirts which don’t look good on me at the moment – and are, frankly, a bit worn out. And various other things.
But other than that I’ve pretty much chilled out on the sofa, read more Three Men on a Bummel**, listened to podcasts… and thought about my desk.
See, I was talking to Nikki on Sunday about her desk – and we discussed that she’d not built a standing desk – which is kind of the new in thing, well, slightly new, slightly in. Y’know what I mean. Anyhow – she has done a big rearrangement of her home office and not ended up adding standing. Given my job, in which I’m often standing or walking much of the day (sometimes more or less the entire shift), I want a sitting desk…for those days. But I quite fancy a standing desk for the days off. Really, what I want (as usual) is both.
And then it came to me. I could perfectly well have both. My cake may be available in edible form.
I have a ridiculously cool concept in my head, which involves counterbalances, and scaffolding and funky things like that. Basically I want to use victorian sash window concepts to make it so that not only can the desk be either in the sitting or standing position, but also so that I don’t need to lift the entire weight of the thing each time I shift it. Essentially so I can get home and it be a case of me just dropping it or raising it to the position I’d like.
My brief (very brief) experiment with this says that the standing height I want is about 10″ higher than the standard(ish) sitting desk height. Unfortunately, me being me, each itteration of the desk’s design is more complex than the last and I now have a suspicion that what I want to create involves running metal cables though the inside of the scaffold poles to a central counterbalance weight***. I don’t know if I’ll actually create said object, because frankly any desk would be nice at this point, but it’s awfully tempting.
* I got home, chopped wood for my mum (with the table saw), did university work, then the day after drove all over the country with Nikki to collect my piano**** and a new wardrobe; then yesterday more uni work and moving the piano and wardrobe in (and this, unlike the last wardobe we bought, is a large and high quality bit of Edwardian furniture).
** My dad used to read me Three Men in a Boat when we went on holiday, when I read it I can still hear my dad’s voice… Kathryn spotted a double edition of Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on a Bummel – and got it for me for Xmas, which is awesome, because my dad’s copy of Three Men in a Boat was disintegrating even when I was a kid – so having one I can read that’s not damaged each time I open it, and that I’m deeply attached to, that’s very nice. Also, I’d not read Three Men on a Bummel – and it’s so far as hilarious as Three Men in a Boat.
*** I was originally thinking of counterbalance weights at each end of the desk, but the massive weight of the wooden desktop and the record deck (and potentially amp, monitor, and any other things I may be putting on there) meant that I’d need a massive weight. I will still, probably, need a massive weight, but I can hide it inside a box – or somesuch – which means it doesn’t have to be something pretty.
**** 
