The Problem of Seating

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LordHappy

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Happy day,

Each day I make amazing strides towards realizing the goal of having a modest little fish room. Each night at 3:23am I wake up in agony, mostly because of someone's sharp elbows reminding me not to snore. Its kinda weird, really. It seems that each snort, snore, grunt or heavy breath within my wife's hearing at night causes her arm to tense just a tiny little bit. As the night wears on , the tendons and ligaments and other stretchy compression things in her arm go from merely loaded to cocked. You ever see those shoot'em movies where someone is prowling through somewhere and they hear that unmistakable click-a-thunk of a shutgun being cocked? Its kind of like that. But here's the thing. Unlike the prowler who possesses mad ninja skills, I'm peacefully sleeping. Sometimes I am in dreamland with 72 Virginians, and if you're a fan of the ventriloquist, Jeff Dunham, you'll know why that's funny. But I never, ever get to hear the click-a-thunk. All I get is the KAPOW! Right in the ribs. Or if her arm is laying just so, I get backhanded right on the schnoz. I'm practically going to bed in a hockey goalie suit just have a hope of waking up unbruised.

But sometimes I wake up and I haven't been hit yet. I invoke the powers of slitherin and slide out on to the floor, and then sorta crawl out of the room. This is, of course, fraught with danger, because our floorboards have been tuned. Even though there's carpet on top, you can still hear the notes. And the wife...has hearing far too good for someone her age. But the other night I got through the traps and padded on down to The Haven to ponder The Problem with Seating.

Let's say a room is 10 feet x 10 feet. A loveseat or recliner against a wall has one positioned 7 feet away. This is no good, one is too far to see all the little details that make aquarists shriek with glee. Also, most seating is 21-24 inches high. Add in my torso length to the nose and that's another 30 inches. So my optimum viewing height is 51-54 inches high. If I am 7 feet away, I cannot comfortably see in to tanks that are stacked too high, or too low. Because I don't just want to have fish. I want to watch fish. I want to come home, sit down in front of a tank, and watch what is happening in these worlds I have created. And I don't mind saying that I might like to put on some Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd or 5 hours of psychedelic space rock, smoke a little...I mean...take a physician-approved mood enhancer and relaxifier and fall into these little worlds I want to build. So the seating issue is a thing for me to solve. <insert dramatic doomsday crescendo here> The struggle...is real.

My original plan was to have 5 tanks...a 50g in the center and twin 36g's stacked on each side, with 12in vertical space between the 36's. Its not going to work based on the seating, unless I am content to lay down on one side or the other to see the bottom tanks, which I am not. So I got to thinking. What if two of the 36s were on the same level as the 50, and two were stacked higher. I could sit in a chair on wheels in front of the 3 tanks and roll from one to the other. But what to do with the top tanks that are 30 inches higher? I would need a chair that could rise up...waaaay up. So high up I'd need a step-stool with a handrail to get in it, and maybe a ticket-taker as well because I'm sure some jackwad government official would qualify it as a damn ride. Ok but really, the seat would need to be about 36 inches up.

I have looked at office and gaming chairs for big and tall people. I have looked at barber/salon chairs, which, I did not know, do not come with wheels because apparently that industry does not require consumer mobility for the service to be delivered. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I remember old Sal Peters saying to me, "Don't move or I'll cut the top of yer ear off, you half-wit." I just cant seem to find a seat that has a support structure that can rise from 20-36 inches. It could be electric. It could be pneumatic or hydraulic. It doesn't have to recline, but a little bit of tilt is needed. It does need to be able to be moved. It could be a lot of things, but right now, I can't even find a reality where such a thing might be.

I know I am grandma's special little boy, but I can't possibly be so special that I am the only one who has struggled with this. So...what is your solution to the Problem with Seating?
 
I like your writing style as it's very entertaining. As for the wife, stop being a snow flake. When the elbow strikes, strike back! Blame the counter attack on a simple knee jerk reaction "I'm sorry honey, it wasn't my fault." And stick to that story if authorities get involved.
As for the seating, I'm afraid my interior design skills never really developed. My 'fishroom' is merely a corner of the unheated basement and the aquarium stands are former workbenches. The entire area is often not far from crime scene tape and my domestic manager keeps reminding me that my space needs to stop encroaching on the laundry area.
I use a simple automotive roller seat that comes in handy for many lower tasks. However, I don't really wile away the hours gazing into tanks but they are mostly colony breeding or grow out tanks. The 60g planted display tank is in the living room in a corner and the furniture is really positioned for viewing the 55" TV although my recliner is such that I can stretch back and look to my left and the tank is a mere 2-3' feet away.
So I guess you're on your own for the seating that best suits you. :)
 
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Good ones.
Paragraphs, not problems.
I do hope you figure it out.
Some sort of wheels seem required, and maybe a long rope, a ceiling to wall to wall to ceiling again pulley system, and
some sort of braking mechanism....
 
You need to make friends with Captain Janeway and have her gift you "the chair". Mounted on wheels you can move around the fishroom by entering the desired coordinates. Height and azimuth can be controlled from either chair arm (whichever is not holding the drink), and I bet it even gives you a massage!

Edit: Forgot the picture!
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Happy day...my son said that this sort of demand was a precursor to the seats from the movie, Wall-E. I had an easier time getting the trapeze rigged above the bed than finding a chair with a 36-inch telescoping post. Does no one get stoned and sit in front of their fish tanks any more? How could it be that I always the only one?

@AbbeysDad about ten years ago an orthopaedist recommended that I use an ace bandage to wrap tennis ball in my hand. I didn't have one, on account of me not having a dog. But I had a scratched-up softball that a coward failed to claim from my car, so I used that. It was a one night stand sort of thing with that ball wrapped into my hand. Such a fuss it caused, though. A few years later there was an interesting sort of payback. We were vacationing in Venice and what with the jet lag and all, my wife had a few glasses of wine and washed that down with an Ambien, because hypnotics go oh-so-well with alcohol. Sort of a modern day quaalude, perhaps Some time later I was violently woken up to the vision of my wife standing above me on the bed, shouting "take these glasses and your Kindle and get the **** out!" And so it is in delicate moments like that where one realizes that, sometimes, capitulation is key to survival. Besides, it would have been bad all around if she whacked her head on the ceiling fan.
 
?
Good ones.
Paragraphs, not problems.
I do hope you figure it out.
Some sort of wheels seem required, and maybe a long rope, a ceiling to wall to wall to ceiling again pulley system, and
some sort of braking mechanism....
I think the long rope is more colloquially called a noose, and the braking mechanism is built in.
 
I'm afraid I don't have the experience to advise on seating in a single room. My 4 tanks are more distributed and I have strategically placed perches near to each of them. This allows a better focus as there is so much going on in the tanks I could never watch 5 of them so I pick one at a time.

But from experience I can confirm that disposable foam earplugs are wonderful. I buy them in batches of 500 for motorcycling but they are also popular with machinery operators. These simple but effective devices have saved my wife countless bruises from my own elbows and knees after lights out.
 
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Happy day...perhaps you would, you know, give us a bit of a show on a trapeze above a bed with this music? Help us get into the spirit of the thing, really become a method-poster type of...type of...type? Fun side note...the Grateful Dead periodically played circus music during their set breaks.
 
Happy day...perhaps you would, you know, give us a bit of a show on a trapeze above a bed with this music? Help us get into the spirit of the thing, really become a method-poster type of...type of...type? Fun side note...the Grateful Dead periodically played circus music during their set breaks.
I don't know what a method-poster is but I looked it up. https://libguides.ecu.edu/c.php?g=637469&p=4462042

That info may come in handy someday for a research project presentation, unfortunately I don't have any research data on trapeze-related methods.

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