Appointments are suddenly common-place. It seems that a significant portion of the process of building a home involves spending time with the minutae, festering details, and selecting from the narrow range of choices that define each. "Here are your options. Choose one. Move along."

For example, yesterday afternoon we chose cabinets. I took nearly an hour off from work, picked up Karin, and we drove to the south end of the city to look at miniature versions of wood panelling that in some small and moderately abstract way reprsents both something that we've already bought, and something I would have never before considered thinking about -- and therefore know little about (apart from practical experience). Imagine me, standing in a cabinetry showroow, fondling little brushed chrome, nickel, steel handles and knobs -- in some perverse way trying to figure out which design (a) "suits our personality" and more importantly (b) predictably will not annoy me for ten years when I'm cleaning, repairing, modifying, or simply just using them.

It's bizaare.

We, of course, visited the showhome shortly afterwards and projected abstract memories of vague selections overtop the realities of concrete examples. It sounds easier than it really is.

And then things themselves get a little more finely detailed. We spent ten minutes with Steve, the sales guy, pondering a mental checklist of random building nuggets. The conversation prompted him to give us a short VHS tape (12 minutes of sugar-coated house construction details), a refridgerator magnet checklist (for real checking-fun) and a groovy leather briefcase with our builder's logo splashed across the front (in case we forget to whom we gave all that money).

And ultimately, a vacant lot was meandered once again, neighbors were introduced by casual happenstance, timelines were filed with some rare certainty, and uncountable fine resolutions were brushed carefully across the perceptions of our minds. Oddly enough, some of this actually makes sense. Oddly enough, abstractions in raw materials seem less floundering as each day drips by.

October 28, 2004 after 10AM | house | this is more