When life gives you lemons...throw them at people you don’t like.

It’s good for your stress level and tenderizes the lemons for juicing.

As was eventually expected, my trusty home computer gave up the ghost this past weekend. My best guess is that it was 7-8 years old and so woefully underpowered for what I made it do that it’s a surprise it didn’t pack its bags for greener pastures long ago. Thank goodness for backups and mirrored iTunes libraries at work. But, there’s still some things that I might lose; that’s for the tech nerds at work to decide once I bribe them into performing a postmortem on the Dell. But, as seems to be the case with me recently, the secondhand items acquired through my poorer days in school have began to need replacing (much to the agony of my years of working very hard to pay off my last little bit of debt and get some semblance of an emergency fund). I actually had no concrete plans to replace the beast.

At least I already knew what replacement computer I wanted. After my mom talked me into the more expensive version of it - “Get as much memory as you can afford!” (says the woman who got into computer science when memory came in KBs, not GBs) - I will soon have a trusty new laptop at my disposal. I suppose this could be a blessing in disguise; my computer did die well within my ability to take advantage of substantial student discounts (looks like I won’t be back in school until August ‘11), I wasn’t in the middle of any major freelance projects I can’t recover, and well, I just plain NEEDED a new computer. This new little friend will let me cruise around to the comfortable parts of the house, travel without being totally disconnected, and, once I get some server space at work will allow me to don the coveted WAHoo hat - a big plus for my days packed with personal commitments right after work. It also solves the very inconvenient issue of having to go into work on the weekends to handle major projects. I can do it all from my kitchen table in my jammies. It also forces me into a nice little upgrade of my design software. Have I mentioned that the software I had was the version before Adobe introduced the “CS” version designation? Yeah, they’re up to CS5 now.

And I hear the chorus of all of you seasoned laptopites saying “Um, duh Michelle, I’ve been doing all of this for years.” Well, this is my blog and I have finally replaced the second to last time bomb I own, so enjoy my party for a minute.

Ok. Believe it or not, this post isn’t about my laptop.

And since I know my mom is sitting there with a confused look on her face trying to remember if I’ve told her about the aforementioned “last time bomb” (I haven’t, Mom), it’s my off-balance, peanut-sized excuse for a “laundry center” I use every few days. For those of you still stuck on the term “WAHoo”, it means Work At Home. I'm sure both of these will spawn their own musings within my blog.

With the demise of a desktop comes the opportunity for harvesting newfound space (very important in a tiny little condo). My office will soon be devoid of personal computing devices. With my 2011 goal of hitting the Etsy, things are going to get craftily messy in my house with crochet and sewing. My sewing workspace has previously been the kitchen table which has prevented me from depositing my detritus there, causing it to be deflected to other parts of the house. The mess from sewing in the kitchen has also always been a bit of sticking point with me. Well, this problem can be solved.

So, this is the first post in a new series chronicling the building of the Fortress of Stitchery. Some renovations will be required, some stuff has to be made, and who doesn’t love a good adventure story. I’ll be making things that assist in workflow processing (wow I’m a nerd) and will be developing nifty storage solutions for the small space. And it all has to pack up for my Sunday sewing parties at my mom’s (which, I must say, have been pretty small lately...).

I am well aware that this post is missing my usual crap dazzling photography - I will add it in when I am no longer on the loaner laptop (thanks Mom!).