Japanese tool workshop.

Wow. What a week.

I just spent the past 5 days up in Main at a workshop on Japanese style hand tools... saws, chisels, and hand planes. I learned a lot... way more than I thought I would, and I've been given lots of food for thought about tool design and use. It's been a remarkable week. While I was up there, I slept in a tent at a local campground, which was great to do. (I haven't slept in a tent since the great bike trip of '02) The teacher was amazing, and he's local, which is nice. The school (The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship... www.woodschool.org) was very interesting... it's a place that was founded by a previous studio furniture maker, and teaches contemporary methods of design and construction. Peter Korn is the guy who founded the place, and it's clear from talking to him that he's managed to find some sort of inner peace... which is something, to paraphrase George Nakashima, that I'm not really sure really exists. At least not for me.

Then I came home and BAM! New bathroom. It's ver nice, smells like fresh paint, and the cabinet under the new sink doesn't really leave much room to shit comfortably. It's funny to me how many toilets I've used over the years where the moron architect made enough room for a toilet, but not for a person to comfortable exist on the toilet... which is sort of the point of having a toilet. I don't think I should have to swing my arm up and over the sink to get paper back there. It's not a normal thing to talk about, but it's true. Everybody has to do these things at least once a day, and there's something fundamentally uncomfortable about not having enough elbow room to do one's business in a well situated manner. Not being able to bring it up in polite conversation would compound the discomfort, making it one of those things in life that must simply be endured. Luckily enough for me, polite converstions are not my strong point, so I just emailed the landlord about it. The sink hasn't been installed yet, so if they can bring it back instead, that would be very much cool.