pyr8queen is an expert woodworker. No, that's not a double-entendre. (Ok, maybe it is. Shut up.) She makes her own furniture, or refurbishes old stuff. That's not her job, or anything though it certainly could be. Anyway, we decided to make space in Tortuga-on-Venice by building a loft bed. (With a secret compartment!) So she drew up some plans, conferred with her father, also an expert builder, and this weekend we set out to get her built and installed.

We went to a lumber yard, though much later in the day than planned - and got to work. Over the weekend I hefted lumber, glued, hammered, clamped, screwed, drilled, cut, plugged and even power-routed wood. When pyr8queen asked me if I'd ever worked with a router before I said, "Sure. Switched routes, packet filtering, Cisco - all that." Nerd humor, thank you very much.

By the end of the weekend I was covered in sawdust, sweaty from working outside in 80+ weather, and generally smelled something like a cross between a shop-class floor and a zoo. But it was cool, because the loft was really taking shape. We'd intended to be done by the end of the weekend, but rather predictably didn't stay on schedule. We did get an incredible amount done, however - to include getting paint and some supplies for organizing the kitchen. And - we found venus fly-traps to eat our fruit-flies. There are two pots of them, and i'm going to paint "Terminus Est" and "Dulce et Decorum est drosophila mori" (respectively; "The End" and "It is sweet and fitting for a fruit-fly to die.") It's important that these little bugs undersand, their end is nigh.

Anyway, I'll certainly post pictures once the thing is done. I think it will be an impressive structure, in an almost ominously fruit-fly-free apartment.