This is the question that I am most asked by people who don’t get to see Jay very often. Or who haven’t seen him in a while. To be honest, there are times that I wonder this myself. What IS Jay doing?? Since Christmas I have been so busy with my own projects and adventures that I haven’t been keeping a close eye on him. He spends almost all of his spare time in the basement. Shall we take a little walk to see what he’s doing? Come with me…

The first stop when we walk down the basement stairs is the washer and dryer area. Well, it seems that he’s been doing laundry…

He even cleaned off the cabinet by his little workshop door! I haven’t seen that surface in quite a while. So it appears that he’s been doing some cleaning.

His desk is clean, too? This might be more serious than I thought! Perhaps I should call the doctor today for an appointment because I think that Jay might be ill.

Wait a minute. There’s something on the 3D printer…

Is it a little dunce cap? An upside-down ice cream cone? A trumpet mute?

It’s solid. Hmmm… We’ll have to see what else we can find that might give us a clue as to what this object is meant to be.

That’s all I can find in the little workshop. Let’s go back out into the main area of the basement to see what else we can find.

This is Jay’s main work bench. There’s a LOT going on in this one area. Let’s see if we can break it down in pieces.

Here’s another 3D printed object. It looks similar to the silver one that is still on the printer. I have a feeling we’re going to learn what these are for if we keep looking.

Uh-oh. I know what the 3D printed items are… they are nose cones for rockets! This is not going to be good for anybody who is around the area where Jay intends to set these off. Although, the safest place would probably be at my parents’ house since there’s nothing else around them. Of course, when I was in 6th grade we made rockets in science class and then went to the Lutheran camp on the lake to set them off. A lot of us ended up walking quite far to go fetch our rockets.

Based on the nose cones it appears that there might be at least two more rockets in progress. And they are going to be quite sizable. *shakes head*

Let’s keep looking to see what else we can find.

I believe that we’ve found some artillery being prepared for Chad! Do you remember Chad the Spad? Wait, I think I just saw him a minute ago.

There he is!

He’s been hanging out with Jay at the work bench. I know that I’ve heard Jay talking to somebody down there, but I figured he was talking to himself. Nope. He was carrying on a conversation with Chad.

“So, Chad, do you think these missiles will look good on your wings?”

“Dude, they are kind of small. Can’t you make them bigger?“

“That’s not realistic! I made them myself, including the 3D printed tips. And you have no idea how difficult it was to get those fins on there perfectly straight.”

“But I want to strike terror in the heart of the enemy. To do that you need some nasty big guns. Also, it helps out with the ladies. Come on, man! Do a fellow squid a favor and make them badass!”

Poor Jay. I don’t know how he’s going to win that battle.

Looking closer at Chad, though, I can see that Jay was using his CNC laser cutter to do some vinyl cutting.

That’s some pretty nice graphics work! Hopefully Chad was okay with them. Although, he probably wanted Jay to do a little weathering to make him look battle-tested. After all, the ladies really fall for guys with scars.

There’s something else on the bench that has me scratching my head:

Is it a prop tester? If you look a little closer it appears that the prop might rotate. We’ll have to see if we can find any other clues for this one, too.

Turning around I can see that there has been some activity in the other end of the basement.

Where did the train set go??

It’s still there, but in pieces. This might be partially my fault. You see, for Christmas I ordered a dust collector for Jay’s workshop. Except, it was apparently a very popular model because even though I ordered it in November it was back ordered until February (I’m still waiting for shipment notification). We don’t have a garage or out-building for Jay to use his wood working equipment and I felt that we should try to get the dust under control. We don’t want to breathe that stuff in all of the time. With that in mind, Jay has been working to organize and set up his workshop with the idea that the dust collector will go in the far corner. Also, this spring we need to get our basement fixed so that we can keep the water from coming in when the snow melts or it rains kind of hard. The train set would have had to move at that point anyway.

Using some of the material from the train set he made a nice bench for his compound miter saw. To the left you can see his router table, too. The dust collector, from what I’ve been told, will be going into the corner to the left of the router table.

There’s been more lighting added, too. Jay told me that he’d had to order more LEDs because he had used up all that he had stashed.

Remember the Panther? Yep, he’s still waiting to be finished.

This is the other bench, which is directly across from the compound miter saw. At first I thought that Jay was modeling a Surrey with fringe on top, but that’s not really fringe. It’s more of a veil. This might have something to do with the rotating prop on the work bench. Ah ha! It’s the swamp buggy that Jay keeps yammering on about. When he’s finished it will look similar to a fan boat that you see in the swamps, but this is meant to go sliding across the grass and/or snow.

Wait… what’s that I see in the background?

Do you recognize it? Do you know what it goes to? If you said the Mercury Rocket that we saw on the work bench… you would be correct! I think this is the last of the rocket parts that we’ll see today.

Look what I found! It’s the train set! This is where it all resides until Jay figures out a place to put it. Right now he’s more into the wood working stuff than the train stuff.

Even the buildings are in a tote. At least they won’t get dusty.

As we leave the basement and digest all that we’ve seen I’ll leave you with one more picture:

The nursery! It’s where all of the baby planes live. Aren’t they cute?! Who’s a good widdle warthog?! Who is? That’s right! You is a good widdle warthog!!