After my last meeting today in upper Manhattan I took the subway downtown. While walking around I ended up at the World Trade Center site, doing a loop around what has become know as Ground Zero.

Ground Zero is now a construction site. But it’s hard not to get emotional just taking in the vast emptiness in the middle of such a dense environment. While I was taking in the view a low flying jet captured everyones attention - silence - then realization that it was simply taking off from a nearby airport.

All foot traffic is routed in a ring of covered walkways around the construction zone which packs commuters in with tourists. The tourists are easy to spot because they are the ones lined up against the fence taking photos of the construction (me). The commuters are easy to spot because they are the ones giving somber glances at the tourists lined up at the fence.

There’s a new editor on Living In Small Sizes - my wife. I’ve color coded our names (pink and blue) under the post title. So before you ask your attorney to contact me, make sure it’s a “blue” post.

The last TV I bought was a 27″ ProScan from BestBuy in 1995. I remember thinking how huge it was. The “old” CRT design meant it was basically a 27″ cube. I had to remove it from the box in the parking lot and ask someone to help be fit it into the back of my old Volvo. I lived in Capitol Hill, Seattle at the time and I had to double park in front of my studio apartment on Broadway and have a friend help me get it out out of the car, which took a lot longer that getting it in. Fitting it through my back seat door was kinda like one of those Fisher Price square peg round hole type of puzzles. Expect the peg was a 70lb TV.

That TV was primarily used for video games, even after I moved in with my future wife (she loved Busta-a-Move). Then came Netflix in 2000 and we canceled our cable TV, which we have not had since. So for the past twelve years that TV has served largely as a monitor for DVD players.

I’ve watched all these beautiful flat screens go up in size and down in price over the past several years, hoping my 27″ would break and give me an excuse to go buy one. But with a frequency of 3-4 movies a week, I’m just not putting the mileage on it to wear it down.

So I asked my wife to kindly look the other way and I went shopping online for a flat screen. I started at 32″, was certain I needed a 42″ and then literally minutes before I pressed the buy button I swapped out the 46″ for a 52″. It took about 2 weeks to arrive at my house and during that time I started sweating that I’d bought too much TV.

I got home the other night to find my BFTV (Big Fracking TV) unpacked and sitting on the floor. It looked a little too big. But I dared not acknowledge that while my wife was staring at me with the, “what were you thinking” look. My wife, whom I love so much, helped me attach the BFTV to the wall and sat patiently while I hooked up the wiring.

We sat back and started our first movie on the BFTV - The Fountain. About a minute into the movie I realized that 52″ was not too big, but awesomely big, and I turned to my wife with a grin, “ok this is cool”. She agreed, proving once again why I married her.

Before we moved out of our house on the Island I donated my old stereo to goodwill. It was a Denon receiver with Infinity speakers that I had purchased when I was eighteen. The speaker cones had disintegrated badly and the receiver was big and heavy and not that useful for piping audio to multiple locations. For about three years I have been shopping for the answer to my audio needs. I wanted something that supported multiple rooms and managed Internet radio and streamed play lists via Ethernet. The Ethernet component was crucial as I wanted uncompressed streaming.

Nothing fit this bill until Sonos announced support for Rhapsody, the brilliant streaming music service offered by Real. With a two room bundle selling for over 1k, and the unfamiliarity of this style of audio system, buying a Sonos bundle took a leap of faith. From the minute I picked up the shipping box from my front porch I was impressed: the units are heavy, housed in a die cast aluminum and just big enough to suggest their full capability without taking up too much space on the shelf. Set up was a breeze and within minutes I was laying back on my bed surfing the entire Rhapsody music catalog using the Sonos wireless controller.

There are few moments in my life when the experience of a new technology not only feels right from day one, but also signals a welcome beginning to a new way of doing things. Like the first time I placed a compact disc into the tray, watched it slide into a the player and then select a track several deep into the play list from across the room: this was a revolution in playing music to anyone with a turntable or cassette deck.

Lounging in bed with my wife last night, handing the Sonos controller back and forth with excited hands and smiling every time we found and played some obscure song, was the beginning of a new way of listening to music. It felt great to fill our half furnished, half remodeled home with something as powerfully comforting as familar songs. We haven’t even set up the second zone yet and already plan on one for our daughter’s room and the basement.

Old house = walk in closets. New house = reach in closets. Going from 2000 square feet to 1300 appeals to my family for a variety of reasons except for the closet space issue. The solution was to add storage capacity to our reach in closets using a closet system. There are many available and the range in pricing is thousands of dollars. I decided to go with EasyClosets.com - there design tool was easy to use and the price seemed good but not too good (I have learned the hard way never to take the lowest bid).

I ordered two closet systems - one for each bedroom. They arrived within the week and required two trips by the UPS driver. By the way, the UPS driver let me know how cruel it was of me to order large quantities of anything that wasn’t presents for needy children during the weeks before Christmas. My bad.

On one hand I was alarmed at the amount of cardboard and packing materials I was faced with recycling and throwing out, on the other hand I was happy with how well everything was packed. Not a single chip or scratch on any of the hundreds of pieces. Twenty-three boxes total.

The first sign that EasyClosets.com was not named by their customers was the list of tools recommended for installation:

Yes, that is a hack saw. There are four other saws also shown. WTF? Five saws? What type of person owns all of those saws, yet is not capable of building a set of shelves and owns the pickup truck to get the materials themselves?

I spent twelve hours installing the closet in our bedroom. That’s two days of work (weekend - pffft). I still have another closet to install. Last night I was breaking a sweat sawing brushed nickel poles to the correct length for our four hanging rods. And if you’ve ever tried to hack your way through thick metal tubing then you will realize, as I did, that EasyClosets.com forgot something on their list of tools: a vice!

Anyway. They look nice at least. The drawers are full extension and the entire system is sturdy and takes weight without any give.

One of the great things about moving is the opportunities to start over. My family used a moving service to get our stuff out to Fairfield and they charge by weight. Putting a dollar sign on all your stuff is like going to your own garage sale where all of your stuff is on sale - and you realize you own a lot of stuff that isn’t worth a dime to you, much less the cost of moving it 2000 miles. So we gave a sizeable portion of our stuff away.

Good riddance - time to start over.

One of things I promised myself before I physically left the Island, was that I would help my family build a space - a life - filled with fun, happiness, tradition and comfort. With that mantra in mind we went furniture shopping yesterday in Iowa City. We ended up at Iowa Artisans Gallery which carries Sticks Furniture and Object Art. I’ve seen Sticks at the Fireworks Gallery in downtown Seattle, but just learned that they are made here in Iowa, in Des Moines.

We ended up taking home this big, four season themed Lazy Susan and a colorful mirror framed with daily principles for getting the most out of life:

The best part about a new home is new paint - I love picking out new colors. Thanks to the folks at Green Building Supply here in Fairfield, I have discovered a great new paint to use as well - Dunn Edwards. I’m using their acrylic paint which covers well, does not smell and colors beautifully. I loved the colors so much I decided to go with as many as I could work into the house. Each bedroom is getting it’s own color: green, blue and yellow. The hall, living room and dining room will all be tan/brown, with each room having a slightly different saturation. I want the hall to be darker then the living room, but Dawn wants the hall to be lighter.

I want the tan to be neutral enough to tie in the view of the three different room colors and work well with the light fixtures in the hallway and living room. At first I found these fixtures to be hideous, but they’ve grown on me and I think they can work.

Currently there are only two rooms in my house which are not a construction zone - the bathroom and the kitchen. I chose to set up my home office in the kitchen. After living like this for over a week I think I’m ready to move to Tokyo.

My kitchen-office (click photo to go to Flikr page and see notes):

My living room, note large saw (i.e., large noise):