Edging toward fall

Loosely inspired by Sohla El-Waylly’s get-out-of-jail, Off-Script Chicken and Rice

IKEA pegboard installed. Level and square, which was significantly harder than I thought it’d be.

More office shots soon. Hopefully will be fully cozied by end of year.

This morning I sat a the local coffee shop and ate this expensive toast. It was delicious. But it was also so normal and pleasant.

This dog.

When you stop going places…

Breakfast was solid.

Cucumbers— read the room. I’ve already harvested like a dozen. Stop growing so much. (actually this is awesome)

Ruff day.

Today’s Hike

Today’s Lunch

And some updates on our Lettuce Grow

This week’s reading haul.

My office is coming together.

A mostly disappointing “hike” on the Gwynns Falls Trail

Bookshelves are looking good.

Turkey legs were on sale, so I made a tiny bit of stock.

New desk day is coming… soon.

I had hard time choosing just one.

I want a new desk, but I am struggling to figure out what exactly I want.

Here’s an old picture of my desk setup. Some small things have changed, but it’s roughly accurate.

I have three core problems I’d like to solve.

1. I do not want my speakers to be on separately, ugly stands like they are.
2. I do want to be able to center my monitor– currently there is a not very helpful “wire organization” shelf that makes it so that I cannot clamp my monitor arm where I would need to in order to center the monitor.
3. I do not want seesaw style legs that take up so much room under the desk itself.

The current dimensions of the desk are 67" x 20".

The speakers have a large footprint – they are 8.5" x 7" x 12".

The wall the desk is up against is approximately 10 feet.

I have thought about doing a very large, 98" desk that essentially takes up the wall using the Ikea KARLBY countertop, but everyone seems to think this is ridiculously large. They’re not entirely wrong– at that length, I would need some kind of center support and/or metal bars down the center to avoid sagging. That seems no good.

Most of the “hot” desks are sit-stand desks like the Fully Jarvis or Uplift (which Elsa has). I had a standing desk once before and found I really didn’t use it. While I like the design and simplicity of these desks, paying for an adjustable height desk that will stay static feels a bit silly to me.

I have contacted a local furniture maker whose style I like, and they quoted me a very reasonable base price for a large desk that was quite reasonable– I just have to actually decide on designs.

So here’s my dilemma– I don’t know what the right size desk is! I am confident I don’t want to go to the “standard” 30" depth– my current 20" is largely “enough”, and so while I could go to 24", 30" seems bonkers to me. One idea I had was adding a 48" shelf to the desk. This way my monitor could go on the shelf, so could my laptop, but my speakers could be on either side. The problem– this monitor has a 10" deep “foot” to the base, which is enormous and why I put it on the monitor arm. A 10" deep shelf seems ridiculous on a 24" desk. That means still using the arm, which is not really compatible with having a shelf.

Here is an image to scale of a 72" x 24" desk, outlining my speakers, the monitor, my laptop stand, and the desk mat area. As you can see, while the geometry does allow everything to fit on this desk, I am not sure it will feel any larger. By adding 4" in one dimension and 6" in the other, I am adding 388 square inches (467 + 524). I take away 120 square inches by tossing on the two speakers. The 268 square inches of additional space, added all around, is just not that much. It would achieve all three goals, but I think would still feel a bit like a “small” desk in spite of its size because how large everything I’m placing on it is.

Anyway, I would love for some advice. Is the above plan really the right size? Might I come to regret having to tuck my laptop behind my monitor? Is any larger simply unwieldy? Are their solutions I’m not considering?

Help me buy a new desk.

Lunch wasn’t bad.

Dinner’s not too bad either.