Happy day,
Each day I make amazing strides towards realizing the goal of having a modest little fish room. Each night at 3:23am I wake up in agony, mostly because of someone's sharp elbows reminding me not to snore. Its kinda weird, really. It seems that each snort, snore, grunt or heavy breath within my wife's hearing at night causes her arm to tense just a tiny little bit. As the night wears on , the tendons and ligaments and other stretchy compression things in her arm go from merely loaded to cocked. You ever see those shoot'em movies where someone is prowling through somewhere and they hear that unmistakable click-a-thunk of a shutgun being cocked? Its kind of like that. But here's the thing. Unlike the prowler who possesses mad ninja skills, I'm peacefully sleeping. Sometimes I am in dreamland with 72 Virginians, and if you're a fan of the ventriloquist, Jeff Dunham, you'll know why that's funny. But I never, ever get to hear the click-a-thunk. All I get is the KAPOW! Right in the ribs. Or if her arm is laying just so, I get backhanded right on the schnoz. I'm practically going to bed in a hockey goalie suit just have a hope of waking up unbruised.
But sometimes I wake up and I haven't been hit yet. I invoke the powers of slitherin and slide out on to the floor, and then sorta crawl out of the room. This is, of course, fraught with danger, because our floorboards have been tuned. Even though there's carpet on top, you can still hear the notes. And the wife...has hearing far too good for someone her age. But the other night I got through the traps and padded on down to The Haven to ponder The Problem with Seating.
Let's say a room is 10 feet x 10 feet. A loveseat or recliner against a wall has one positioned 7 feet away. This is no good, one is too far to see all the little details that make aquarists shriek with glee. Also, most seating is 21-24 inches high. Add in my torso length to the nose and that's another 30 inches. So my optimum viewing height is 51-54 inches high. If I am 7 feet away, I cannot comfortably see in to tanks that are stacked too high, or too low. Because I don't just want to have fish. I want to watch fish. I want to come home, sit down in front of a tank, and watch what is happening in these worlds I have created. And I don't mind saying that I might like to put on some Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd or 5 hours of psychedelic space rock, smoke a little...I mean...take a physician-approved mood enhancer and relaxifier and fall into these little worlds I want to build. So the seating issue is a thing for me to solve. <insert dramatic doomsday crescendo here> The struggle...is real.
My original plan was to have 5 tanks...a 50g in the center and twin 36g's stacked on each side, with 12in vertical space between the 36's. Its not going to work based on the seating, unless I am content to lay down on one side or the other to see the bottom tanks, which I am not. So I got to thinking. What if two of the 36s were on the same level as the 50, and two were stacked higher. I could sit in a chair on wheels in front of the 3 tanks and roll from one to the other. But what to do with the top tanks that are 30 inches higher? I would need a chair that could rise up...waaaay up. So high up I'd need a step-stool with a handrail to get in it, and maybe a ticket-taker as well because I'm sure some jackwad government official would qualify it as a damn ride. Ok but really, the seat would need to be about 36 inches up.
I have looked at office and gaming chairs for big and tall people. I have looked at barber/salon chairs, which, I did not know, do not come with wheels because apparently that industry does not require consumer mobility for the service to be delivered. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I remember old Sal Peters saying to me, "Don't move or I'll cut the top of yer ear off, you half-wit." I just cant seem to find a seat that has a support structure that can rise from 20-36 inches. It could be electric. It could be pneumatic or hydraulic. It doesn't have to recline, but a little bit of tilt is needed. It does need to be able to be moved. It could be a lot of things, but right now, I can't even find a reality where such a thing might be.
I know I am grandma's special little boy, but I can't possibly be so special that I am the only one who has struggled with this. So...what is your solution to the Problem with Seating?
Each day I make amazing strides towards realizing the goal of having a modest little fish room. Each night at 3:23am I wake up in agony, mostly because of someone's sharp elbows reminding me not to snore. Its kinda weird, really. It seems that each snort, snore, grunt or heavy breath within my wife's hearing at night causes her arm to tense just a tiny little bit. As the night wears on , the tendons and ligaments and other stretchy compression things in her arm go from merely loaded to cocked. You ever see those shoot'em movies where someone is prowling through somewhere and they hear that unmistakable click-a-thunk of a shutgun being cocked? Its kind of like that. But here's the thing. Unlike the prowler who possesses mad ninja skills, I'm peacefully sleeping. Sometimes I am in dreamland with 72 Virginians, and if you're a fan of the ventriloquist, Jeff Dunham, you'll know why that's funny. But I never, ever get to hear the click-a-thunk. All I get is the KAPOW! Right in the ribs. Or if her arm is laying just so, I get backhanded right on the schnoz. I'm practically going to bed in a hockey goalie suit just have a hope of waking up unbruised.
But sometimes I wake up and I haven't been hit yet. I invoke the powers of slitherin and slide out on to the floor, and then sorta crawl out of the room. This is, of course, fraught with danger, because our floorboards have been tuned. Even though there's carpet on top, you can still hear the notes. And the wife...has hearing far too good for someone her age. But the other night I got through the traps and padded on down to The Haven to ponder The Problem with Seating.
Let's say a room is 10 feet x 10 feet. A loveseat or recliner against a wall has one positioned 7 feet away. This is no good, one is too far to see all the little details that make aquarists shriek with glee. Also, most seating is 21-24 inches high. Add in my torso length to the nose and that's another 30 inches. So my optimum viewing height is 51-54 inches high. If I am 7 feet away, I cannot comfortably see in to tanks that are stacked too high, or too low. Because I don't just want to have fish. I want to watch fish. I want to come home, sit down in front of a tank, and watch what is happening in these worlds I have created. And I don't mind saying that I might like to put on some Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd or 5 hours of psychedelic space rock, smoke a little...I mean...take a physician-approved mood enhancer and relaxifier and fall into these little worlds I want to build. So the seating issue is a thing for me to solve. <insert dramatic doomsday crescendo here> The struggle...is real.
My original plan was to have 5 tanks...a 50g in the center and twin 36g's stacked on each side, with 12in vertical space between the 36's. Its not going to work based on the seating, unless I am content to lay down on one side or the other to see the bottom tanks, which I am not. So I got to thinking. What if two of the 36s were on the same level as the 50, and two were stacked higher. I could sit in a chair on wheels in front of the 3 tanks and roll from one to the other. But what to do with the top tanks that are 30 inches higher? I would need a chair that could rise up...waaaay up. So high up I'd need a step-stool with a handrail to get in it, and maybe a ticket-taker as well because I'm sure some jackwad government official would qualify it as a damn ride. Ok but really, the seat would need to be about 36 inches up.
I have looked at office and gaming chairs for big and tall people. I have looked at barber/salon chairs, which, I did not know, do not come with wheels because apparently that industry does not require consumer mobility for the service to be delivered. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I remember old Sal Peters saying to me, "Don't move or I'll cut the top of yer ear off, you half-wit." I just cant seem to find a seat that has a support structure that can rise from 20-36 inches. It could be electric. It could be pneumatic or hydraulic. It doesn't have to recline, but a little bit of tilt is needed. It does need to be able to be moved. It could be a lot of things, but right now, I can't even find a reality where such a thing might be.
I know I am grandma's special little boy, but I can't possibly be so special that I am the only one who has struggled with this. So...what is your solution to the Problem with Seating?
