Four More Days until Christmas

Hey race fans! Just four more days until Christmas.

We are going to go right up to the wire and beyond with Box Bend.

This year, Santa is putting a new home office under the Christmas tree. The existing home office... er... "World Headquarters," is being manned out of a spare bedroom in our house. It's a fairly good sized and nice "office," but it has been slowly eroded by the inclusion of things like craft supplies and doll houses and other things that the elves that run around this place have snuck in during the middle of the night.

The new WORLD HEADQUARTERS of Box Bend will also be a shared space, but it will be a shared space with a couple of other businesses that we are in. One of us comes out of the profession of architecture. This person, who shall remain nameless, likes dark spaces, the smell of libraries and coffee shops (read: tons of paper), and dark spaces. So... the new World Headquarters of Box Bend is going to be in a former storage space that we are converting to... well... the Box Bend World Headquarters. (At least for now.)

Our contractor (who rocks!) is almost done with the space. The painters came by yesterday (on Sunday!) to finish the painting. The hardwood floors will go down, the electrical stuff will be finished, and the fixtures, as well as the hardware, will go in. He is saying that this will all happen before Christmas Eve. We know how scheduling goes so we are not holding our breath, but we are fairly jazzed that we are a few small jobs away from this bad boy being wrapped up and ready for the filing cab, the computer, the printers, the love seat that doubles as a sleeper... that we are picking up tonight, etc.

The day gig is mercifully going to allow us some time off for the holidays, and we will use that time to transfer the accoutrements from the existing bedroom... er... World Headquarters, to the new, better, darker, task-lamp-friendly, office.

We want to give you a peak into the hodgepodge of crap we are talking about here, so this new space will include things to be transferred like: a Steve Steigman print from the Weaver Gallery called, "Blown Away," (anyone over a certain age may remember the TDK ads that were popular in the '80s based on this print. A similar print can be viewed here.); a bunch of plaques -including a egocentric and much loved design award; an honorable discharge from the US Navy; a French license plate; a metal print of us with some friends at the Rolling Stones concert; no fewer than four Le Corbusier prints (an architect); and a framed print from Boerth's Frame and Mirror (RIP) in Fargo, ND that shows sequential shots of cities and states clearly beneath each one: Moscow. London. Paris. Fargo. If that were not enough, there is also a cool shot from Scott Gilbertson of Gilbertson Photography of a literal Turtle surfacing in a pond; a signed Max Neutra print; three diplomas from fine institutions of higher education; and a sweet little red clock that states; God Save McQueen and shows an almost rubber stamp image of Steve McQueen jumping the bike over the fence in The Great Escape.

(Side note... because it is a side note type of day... Steve McQueen, who rode bikes regularly, did not actually jump the Triumph motorcycle painted to look like a war time BMW German bike. His friend Bud Elkin jumped the bike for him. Okay. That was it. For all you Triumph fans and Anglophiles out there, this one was for you.)

Oh yeah, a knit blanket of the Union Jack will also make it's way to the new World Headquarters. After all, what would a World Headquarters... er... "Secret Lair," be like without a little nod to James Bond? After all, we are saving houses and real estate from a fate worse than death, right? (Kids and secret lairs, though?)

Stay tuned.