I don't write much about personal stuff here. I remember when the '70s were christened the Me Decade. While that phrase has gone out of fashion, that's probably because subsequent decades have demanded more intensely self-referential, self-obsessive, self-worshipful adjectives, and I can't think of any catchy enough. Perhaps this can be solved with a little math: the '80s as the Me² Decade, the '90s as the Me³ Decade, and so forth -- although thus far the '00s are simply the Bush Decade, a continuation of the trend only if you happen to be George W. Bush.

But after a couple of disruptive, unsettling days, I feel like indulging myself a bit. I have a lot of projects. I'm actually pretty good at planning projects, and I'm not bad at managing fairly complex projects, but I do seem to have a lot of trouble getting work done myself. Aside from the intellectual exercises in trying to save the world, or more commonly understand our doom and gloom, an unreasonable compulsion to try to review every shred of music I can get my hands on, and a few website projects, I've had a few domestic homeowner projects, which grew dramatically following the Feb. 25 events.

My father had quite a reputation as a handyman. After much reflection, I'm not sure I'd credit him much further than that. His carpentry was solid and functional, but he didn't care all that much about finish -- the worst was the time he repainted the '49 Ford with a brush. As an electrician he was flat out dangerous. But he could fix almost anything, and convert the most worthless junk into semi-worthless curiosities. He bought a house before I was born and lived in it until he died, but he bought a couple more along the way for something to work on. When I was young, he expanded our house by 40%: he contracted out the foundation and framing, then finished it all himself. I've seen him hack usable rooms out of attic spaces. Any time we needed a new piece of furniture, we'd go down to the lumber yard, or the junk store.

That all seemed normal at the time, and while I wasn't nearly as good at following in his footsteps as my brother was, I did pick up a few things along the way. When I moved out on my own, I started buying tools like I knew what I was doing, and for a brief period I went through a period where I built a dozen or more pieces of furniture. I always figured that when I had my own house I'd rebuild it like he did. I always imagined him helping, but my first house was far away in Boston, and by the time I moved back to Wichita he wasn't much able to help. The upshot is that I've had this frustration building up of all the things I've wanted to do to a house but never got around to doing. So now we've decided to put some money into the house, which has set me off and turned me into something of a loose cannon.

One thing I've long wanted to do is to network the house: to put in a structured wiring system to centrally manage low power wiring to every room in the house. So that became part of the plan, even though in a 1920-vintage house it's much easier said than done. I want to be able to see the entire front porch, so decided by install some surveillance cameras. And I want to be able to communicate without opening the door, which means an intercom system. Also wanted new, stronger doors. All of this took a long time to shop for. Only now are we getting some of it installed -- Wednesday was D-Day for the doors, which also took most of Thursday, and I still have some mess to clean up, while we're still awaiting parts that they forgot about. The wiring is started but not operational yet -- the front door has the new intercom button, but it's not plugged in yet. I hope to get at least the first phase -- intercom and cameras -- working next week, but it's been a long, slow ordeal.

I also had to replace two computers, so I figured I'd buy a bunch of pieces and build them. I worried a lot about what would be my main Linux system, so I went with a conservative AMD X2 system, ASUS motherboard, 2GB RAM, RAID-mirrored 320 GB hard drives, GeForce 7600 GT video card. It came together without a hitch. The other system would run Microsoft Windows, which I need to deal with some media formats. I figured that everything there would be supported, so ordered a little more cutting edge system: Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel motherboard, 2GB RAM, 320 GB hard drive, GeForce 7950 GT video card, Vista 64 Bit Ultimate Edition. It's been a nightmare. The Antec power supply was evidently DOA. The EVGA video card had a broken capacitor. I took it to a local repair shop, who replaced the power supply and pronounced the machine (except for the video card) fit. EVGA never acknowledged my RMA request, so I returned the board to Newegg, who refunded my money. I bought another video card, plugged it in, and tried to load Vista. It doesn't work -- says there's "a hardware problem" but not what. Sounds like a Microsoft problem to me, but I'm stuck and aggravated, and not sure what to do next.

Eventually I hope to move the router down to the structured wiring cabinet in the basement. Also run the phones and cable through there, and eventually the music as well. I want to build a gateway server down there to beef up the router, and add audio and video archives to tap into from anywhere in the house. To do that I need to get wiring upstairs, and to do that I've started to work on access through the attic. Thus far I've managed to build up a cache of lumber to go into the attic, and to clean up a bit around the entrance, but that's another slow project.

Longer term I want to install vinyl siding and soffits on the upstairs -- first floor is mostly brick. I've been shopping that job off and on for years. Like many such jobs, it's more than I can do, but within the grasp of my imagination. Plus, like my father, I'm picky about it. Thus far I've seen siding estimates for everything from $3800 to $17000. I came close to settling on one before last winter closed in and other problems knocked its priority down.

Longer term than that would be remodelling the kitchen: I hate the self-suffocating stove -- a fancy KitchenAid gas unit where the oven sucks so much air away from the burners that they fail to light, or if lit burn so unevenly that the igniters kick in -- and the counter tops are crap. The rest is more/less tolerable, but I really need a vent, and more storage would be better. Decor is something we haven't touched since moving in, other than by covering almost every wall with book or CD shelving. The latter would be improved with more built-ins. My niece fancies a career in interior design, so I'm looking to her for ideas. The only other big thing on the drawing board would be to carve a second bathroom out of the larger bedroom. That might be the biggest functional improvement, but it's also the most separable and the least necessary -- for now, the easiest to postpone.

I bought a home design software package to run on the Windows box when/if I get it running. I should then be able to build a 3D model of the entire house, inside and out. No telling how much mischief that will get me into, but for now, at least, it doesn't work. In theory it should help. In practice it will most likely be another weird and buggy piece of software that will irritate me to no end. Maybe it will inspire another endless project: a paper design for a free software replacement.

When these projects go right you feel like you're able to understand and take some measure of control over your world. When they don't, you feel like a hopeless idiot, blinded by the hubristic notion that you think you can have it all your way. As it is, I keep getting bounced back and forth between these poles, ultimately making me think that the real expertise I'm developing is a finer understanding of how and why so many things go wrong. But that's something I've been doing all my life, so it may just be the paradox of the thinking human condition.

This week's jazz got interrupted by the door ordeal, so I've fallen a bit behind, but should recover for the June deadline. Recycled Goods shouldn't be too bad. Got a gratifying note from Randy Haecker at Legacy, concluding "You review more music than anybody!" He should know, because he send me more than anyone. I got a request from the Voice to write something for the June Jazz Supplement, but figured I had too much else looming, so turned it down. In some sense, that's an admission that I don't see much of a future in jazz writing, but it's a good sign that they wanted a piece.

Also interrupted was the blog, but after skipping two days, I write three pieces today. Started working on a book post yesterday, pulling quotes from Ira Chernus' Monsters to Destroy. I have so many books like that to thumb back through, that will probably be my fallback mode over the next few weeks. On the other hand, I haven't gotten back to a scratch file entry I started at least a month ago: the idea was to raise the question of whether it would be worthwhile to try to hack the notebook and other writings into a chronology of the Bush era. I don't know, but it seems possible. One thing there's plenty of is volume.

Just a few more pages to go in Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow, with many more books awaiting my attention. Thought I'd take a break yesterday and cook dinner. Tried to make chicken biryani and screwed it up several ways. It's a dish I've had bad luck with in the past, but I figured I knew better by now -- another case of overreach. But everything else, especially the brinjal bartha (eggplant, tomatoes, onions, spices), came out fine. So it's been going; so it seems always to go. I'm feeling fortunate. For one thing, I know it could be much worse.