Tempest and I have decided to make a pair of Adirondack chairs for our patio in the back yard. We're going to buy unfinished lumber this weekend and then use the local high school's planar and jointer to smooth and size it. At first I didn't like the Adirondack idea, but I started to appreciate that it doesn't have a Californian heritage, but is still quite appropriate for the area. I like having things that remind me of home, since there is no real common culture in the Bay Area. We picked a set of plans that requires more advanced joinery techniques (i.e. dove tail joints instead of screws alone), but I think that's good since we're both learning the skills. Buying both chairs would cost about five hundred dollars. We'll build both of them for under one hundred. This project has us both excited, but now I have the urge to buy a router at Lowes to build another project -- a lumber and sheet goods caddy that can store and organize what I already have sitting on the garage floor. The caddy project requires dado cuts; of course I could buy a dado blade for the table saw but I think a router has more overall uses. What the hell, I'll probably get both of them, but I like to pretend I have fiscal discipline. I can always rationalize, "The more tools I buy, the more money I'll be saving..."