This house that I live in now is furnished, which is a first for me. I've always had a car, or lately, a truck, filled with my junk, and this has always been enough to sustain me. All this junk now sits in the dark in a small room in what could be referred to politely as an up-and-coming Brooklyn neighborhood, eagerly awaiting my return. I am not sure the feeling is mutual.

Down here, I have a far more minimalist lifestyle, simply because I couldn't fit all my clutter into my two massively overweight bags. And while I aspire to the minimalist ideal in my mind, in practice, stuff has always done me well. Things make your life easier. Anyone who actually practices minimalism either doesn't have the space, lacks the money or just throws a lot of things away.

In finding the right place to live for a year we choose the one that came pre-furbished. Why buy a kettle, if it comes with the house? A bed? Chairs? Television? The furbish-ness my home has given me hours and hours of simple and personally satisfying joy. When I start the kettle in the morning for my coffee, I tell you, that sucker is a beaute. And she's free, all I have to do is look after her.

And there is where the rub lies. In signing for this place, we took responsibly over all of this stuff. Christy and I are the guardians of this furbish till we leave, and it is our solemn responsibility to keep the place together. We must protect it all from the evil forces of the world that cause breakage. Unfortunately, I just happen to be one of those entropic forces.

I broke my second chair today. How was I supposed to know that it was going to break in half like that when I stood on it? I mean really, I've stood on many chairs before, and they tend to injure me more than I injure them. I've got scars to prove it. This chair here wooden, nothing really to speak of, but as it's guardian, I feel that it is my duty to fix it. So this weekend, my project is a bit of restoration work. Lots of wood glue and long screws.

The weekend previous, I finished the project of restoring the kettle. I was not about to give up on this simple electronic device without taking it apart and having a bit of a look around. Lessons learned in this project include that Sydney bugs like to hang out beside electrical wires (the warmth, I think), and the electricity down here feels much different than it does in the States. Not sure if that is due to the amperage or the voltage, but I have no plans to look any further in the matter. For the record, I fixed it and the kettle works again like a charm. Thanks to this guilt cloud of guardianship. Things must not break under my watch. That and my proclivity to take things apart.

I am excited to fix a chair that I would have never bought in the first place.

Two of 'em, in fact. The chairs, while not structurally sound when I first met them, have always had the potential for structural soundness. While I feared that the kettle was a goner when it broke, with these chairs, knock on them, they have a high fixablity potential. Anyone in interested in Colin's latest furniture project? I'll take pictures.

While I am on the subject of breaking things, I can't but help but mention that Christy has an amazing ability to destroy headphones. With clockwork regularity, she puts headphones out of commission. It takes, by my count, three months and they are then ruined. I have no idea how she does it.