Life with a geek....

Yesterday was a day of organization around the house. I was organizing the living room and my husband, whom I lovingly refer to as the geek, decided to organize his desk space.

Barry and I have been together for 6 years or will be together for 6 years on February 1st of this year. He's different from anyone I've ever known. Well, I think he's just plain different. He's what we'd call a geek. When we met, he was designing and building control panels for reverse osmosis systems for many uses from homes to dialysis machines. He's now building (or doing the electrical, wiring, etc., for...) fire trucks, trailers to pull horses for the RCMP and assorted other vehicles.

For our first Halloween party, he went all out and painted the basement with a special UV luminescent paint that activates under black light.

It was an incredible sight to me when he flicked the switch for the lights to go off and the black lights to come on. It reminded me of something from CSI.

Naturally, every Christmas the lights are getting brighter with more of them. And yes, they are synchronized to blink with the music.

It has it's downsides though; clutter. There are wires hanging from doors, things I can't even put names to, sitting on shelves as well as what used to be my kitchen table and huge and I mean enormous wires going right through my kitchen, into the band room. I tolerate this because they are being used to record my sons band and I believe that one day, if they continue to work as a team; they can make it big.

Our music is one of my favourite perks. All of our CD's have been ripped onto a main computer to be used as our jukebox. It goes through a mixer, that goes through a small FM antenna. Barry assigns the antenna to an unused station and voila!! I can play our music from any location in or around the property by simply playing FM 88.1 on the radio. As I'm typing, Barry is playing Rita Marley, from his turntable, and it's coming through my receiver. It still impresses me.

A couple of months ago we were talking about our dreams and I was telling him of mine; to drive the Alaskan Highway. A few days later he told me of his purchase.

Photo courtesy of Barry Duff

He bought it from his boss at work. It has very little mileage on it, which is good when you consider what it was used for. Barry is considering ideas of remodeling and eventually it will take us where we want to go.

We all smile and say "that's Barry". These are many of the things that I love about him.

So back to yesterday and my geek, er... husband, needing more desk space. He acquired more junk, I mean some Kee Klamp from a friend of his who runs a store, here in Peterborough. Well this Kee Klamp is or was used for stage and sound equipment (just another area Barry has expertise in). Basically, it's galvanized pipe, with elbows, etc.

So my husbands desk went from being a six foot table, along with our whole dining room table to a six foot table sitting on galvanized pipes, with shelving to hold his monitors and other electronics, sitting on more galvanized pipes, also utilizing old waterbed parts for the shelving.

And what geek desk is complete without it's own bar fridge?

Well alright, it was mine. I brought it home from my office last week but I guess the rotten bugger decided he might as well pillage it while he had the chance.

One thing I can say, watching all of this come together. It's definitely strong. And it's different. But then so is Barry.

So this is life with a geek. Some may know what it's like to get up from their chair and trip over a bag holding a 20' antenna that has future plans to be erected when "we have our own home". This has become my norm and one thing I can say is, it's always entertaining around here, especially if you love music!!!