I must note, at this point, that my family has something of an unusual structure. My parents divorced in 1995, but while my mother (Kate) has been single since, my father (John) has remarried twice since. I would prefer to say as little as possible regarding his second wife, but his third seems to be something of a match. Ironically, she is a family law attorney specializing in divorce, so I really hope (for his sake) that Dad never actually manages to tick her off to any real significance. My stepmother, then -- Dad's divorce-lawyer third wife -- is named Aida and is one-quarter Egyptian.

It must also be explained that my father, when he retired recently from his job, he and Aida decided to move from their home in a subdivision in Raleigh, North Carolina to the Outer Banks -- a set of islands on the North Carolina coastline. Specifically, they wound up in the tiny town of Salvo, North Carolina, which buts up against another hamlet named Waves, which buts up against a third hamlet named Rodanthe ("rho-DAN-thee"), within which the famous romance movie "Nights in Rodanthe" takes place.

At some point in the process of helping Dad and Aida clean out their Raleigh home, I happened to notice a jewelry box of Aida's. It was made of some sort of reddish burled wood, with brass corners, hinges, clasp, and a brass design on the lid. it was quite beautiful, in other words, and when I asked about it, I was told I could have it.

At some point, months later, I took it to a friend of mine, Jody, who runs the best of the local tech shops (by a considerable margin) -- shameless plug, on that note, actually -- if you happen to be in or near the Triangle/RTP area of North Carolina, Tritech Computer Solutions is a place you should go for computer repair. Their website is http://nctritech.com/ and they are friggin' awesome.

*ahem*

Anyways, one thing Jody is masterful with is the application of a heat gun to various materials. I wanted to use the jewelry box's lid for this project, and I couldn't do that with a glass mirror inside, which is how it came. I knew it was glued in because there was no edging around it, and I knew it was glass from the sound it made when I plinked it, and I knew I didn't want shattered glass bits all the freak over my very nicely carpeted little apartment, so I went to Jody to see if he could loosen the glue with a heatgun and then thwack the glass out. It took considerable effort, and a few extra tools, but eventually we got the mirror out and I was later able to remove most of the glue with a few tricks, back at the apartment.

Then I started planning.