Grrrrreetings fellow FA Artists, Writers, Crafters, Costumers, Fursuiters and other highly creative people.

I know everybody in this sub-genre has a second hobby of some sort. Besides creating art and writing stories which feature anthropomorphic animal characters. Some of my FA friends enjoy playing musical instruments, collecting books, caring for pets, surfing and even restoring old refrigerators. (Among other things.) My second hobby besides creating art and enjoying the "Social aspects" on this site is building plastic models. Now I must confess that I haven't slapped a kit together since shortly after I left the "Old Folks Home" in 2006, and the reason is because as I drifted from location to location, I never had a proper environment to work on such things. Also, the places where I lived were never mine, and I feared spilling paint or filling the room with toxic fumes would not set well with the landlords and other tenants.

Now things have changed a lot concerning model building in these past twenty years or more. With the advent of more environmentally friendly, acrylic paints, non-ozone layer disrupting airbrush propellants, and even some kits with their parts molded in different colors, the hobby has become a bit more health conscious, especially for those living in small apartments. I've even had read accounts from a friend who enjoys building science fiction related models, and the greatest complaint he has about his hobby is having someplace to show off the miniature starships in his collection. I have considered making my former upstairs bedroom into a "Hobby room," or perhaps reorganizing the workbench in the small garage for me to work on. The only problem with the latter is that the space gets so uncomfortably hot in the summer, and ventilation is poor.

I'm certain someone has said something like, "You can take the hobbyist out of his room, but you can never take the hobby out of the model builder." or something like that. Even though at one time I had a collection of well over 500 model kits that I intended to build, I ended up surrendering the majority of the kits to other model kit collectors for "Gas and grocery money." I have mused with some of my friends that I still have a line on my "Bucket List" to attend a model kit collectors show, "To visit my old collections." The only thing that's keeping me from crossing off that line is simple logistics. Since the auto accident in 2023 I have lost the nerve to drive, and the buses or trains don't quite go to Buena Park.

The house of my younger days still stands, and I often fantasize about visiting it just to see what the family who has resided there for these past twenty years or more have done with my old room. I often wonder if the paint stains, scratches on the floor and "Furniture Ghosts" of where the bed, bookshelves and my "Creative center" once stood are still there or have been removed during a major remodeling. I'll never know for certain truthfully, because I have reservations about how the current residents would react if a sixty-eight-year-old man showed up on their doorstep and asks, "Can I look inside your home at my old room?"

"Peace."