Hi all,
I’ve heard that if something happens one time, it could just be luck, a second time is a coincidence, and a third time establishes a pattern. Well, today marks the third installment of the series, “The AwkEng Encounters the Spousal Veto,” and I think it’s fair to say there’s an established pattern where the brilliance of my proposed projects are not appreciated by my executive advisory council. The chair of the board invokes the spousal veto and my ideas never make it out of their nascent, exploratory phase. Nevertheless, I am happy to share these ideas with my readers, who are free to judge them on their own merit. (Readers can find the first installment of the Spousal Veto here and Part Deux here)
The House with no Couch
I love bean bags chairs. They’re fun to plop in, and throw, and they’re cozy. When the old couch started to fall apart several years ago, my proposal was to forgo replacing it, and use bean bag chairs for everything. We opted instead for a built-to-order couch that came in two pieces and was quite an adventure to get up the stairs. Fast forward to several years later, and I’m happy to say we have one oversized bean bag, but the couch hasn’t generated quite the amount of buyer’s delight that we hoped it would. The bean bag is loved though (especially by the kids, but maybe the novelty is that there’s only one been bag, so it gives them something to fight over), and while I’ve proposed all bean bags, the idea hasn’t made it past committee.
The House with No Wi-Fi
Several years ago (ok, it’s been almost two decades at this point), I did study abroad in Namibia. One thing I still think about from that trip is that we had no TV and no wi-fi in the dorms. In the evening, when it got dark, we’d turn out the lights… and go to bed. There was nothing else o do. Practically speaking, my wife’s job is fully remote and she works from home, and I do a mix of work from home and work from the office, so I’m not sure we could have no internet, but I’m curious what would happen psychologically if we had no internet after say… 7:00pm.
The experiment would start by placing the router on a plug-in timer. Outside of the allotted hours, the router would simply be off. Feedback from the executive advisory committee was that while I’m free to personally experiment with not using the internet at certain times of day, the household is not electing to participate, so please don’t touch the router. Given that the crux of this experiment depended on adding friction to internet access, I consider the idea effectively vetoed.
The House with No Lights
I’ve read over and over again that humans naturally have a polyphasic sleep cycle, where it’s quite normal to wake up for a period in the middle of the night, before heading back to sleep. Modern electric lighting supposedly interferes with this pattern. (I also have a memory of reading about a study of an aboriginal tribe… between “morning larks,” “night owls,” teenagers that naturally stay up later, and the elderly who naturally wake up earlier, there was only a brief time period, less than 10-15 minutes, where someone in the tribe wasn’t awake, which seems to make sense, from an evolutionary point of view, but I digress.)
Anyway… I’m incredibly curious what would happen if the only light I was exposed to either came from the sun, or was too dim to interfere with my circadian rhythms. I don’t want to do without electricity (after all, the wi-fi would be on before 7pm), but I would consider unscrewing all the light bulbs. Candles (or small electric candles, for safety reasons, but only if the lux was one candle-power equivalent) would be ok. E-ink tablets and e-ink monitors would also be alright, and depending on whether or not the wi-fi experiment is running in parallel, reading an e-ink tablet by candle light would be approved.
Despite the enthusiasm of certain members of the board, the spousal veto carries a heavy weight, can’t be overruled, and the lightbulbs remain installed.
Cat or Dog?
Since the first edition of the AwkEng Encounters the Spousal Veto, it would seem that the executive advisory board chair’s views on the matter of cat or dog have evolved. A dog is now open for consideration in committee meeting. Still no cat though.
Best regards,
Sam Feller
AKA The Awkward Engineer