a sight that has not been seen by anyone in over a decade

 

 My workbench, it is clean.  That work surface literally has not been visible in over ten years, after I sorta stopped doing anything meaningful in the shop, which more or less coincided with when I had to give up the mad scientist hobbies, subsequently becoming very badly depressed for a long time.  I am barely beginning to pull out of that long slump now.

 Things got pretty bad for a while, and I just let the shop turn into a big mess you could hardly walk through.  Now at least I have the work surface cleaned off, although I have a serious storage problem so there is nowhere for the pile of project parts sitting on the top shelf / riser.

 But at least my bench is once again available to work on, which is important because I am about to hang out my shingle for various money-earning local work.

~≈{O}≈~

 I am still working on the air compressor; the power circuit has to be run through a cramped and filthy crawl space below the roof, and I haven't felt limber enough, non-achy-enough, strong enough, healthy enough, and so on.

 The machine also needs an aftercooler and water trap to be added between compressor and tank, then a three-stage drying and filtering setup, which will be accessible outside the sound enclosure which will eventually surround the air compressor.  I haven't had the spare scratch to buy any of that stuff yet.

  That will be a significant project in itself, since a surprising amount of ventilation is required - 1,000 CFM for every 5 HP - to keep the pump and the motor cool.  That will only happen with forced ventilation from a fairly respectable (but fortunately not physically large) blower; convection is not going to bring in the necessary fresh air.