I spent much of the day setting up the new office, rewiring the fax line and making sure there were adequate electrical plugs for my computer and lava lamp. As of Monday, my business partner joins me full-time, and we're still putting the finishing touches on our shared office. It's been quite a few years since I've really shared a room of any kind with another person. As a rule, I'm irrationally defensive of my personal space, and dislike any intrusion or implicit denial of privacy. It's no accident that I was so fanatic about photography during most of my adolescence -- the darkroom offered a quiet, solitary haven where I could refuse to open the door to anyone because of an alleged risk of exposing film. My earliest memories of shared spaces involve pieces of string running down the middle of the room I inhabited with my sister, and the complicated land-use treaties that preserved an uneasy truce between us for much of our young lives.

Even in college, I managed to avoid having a roommate for all but one semester. I was lucky in that regard, and when luck failed and it appeared certain they would force me to live with some stranger, I would be so thoroughly unpleasant that my potential roomie would slink away and look for easier pickings. For one semester, the gods punished me for my Covetous insistence on solo digs by placing me with a man who had just left his former job as a clown in the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus to go back to college. My life quickly became an endless series of staged pratfalls, unimpressive magic tricks, and repetitive lowbrow comedy routines. It would appear that you can take the boy out of the clown show, but you cannot, even by threats of violence, take the clown out of the boy. It was quite possibly the closest thing to Hell I have ever experienced, including that bout with Malaria.

But I have high hopes for this business arrangement, in which I specialize in website design and writing, and my partner is a writer, trainer, and analyst. Clearly, we have some differences: she is the kind of person who places her desk against the wall because she has absolutely no concern that someone might come along and see things she's working on. I am the kind of person who places everything so no one gets even close enough for a peek unless I invite them around the edge of my boatlike desk for a view. Our office arrangement reflects the personalities at play: she has her desk facing the wall next to a window, and I have my furniture placed defensively around me in the far corner, facing the back of her head. And everybody's happy.

In other news, the Seven Deadly Sins page picked up an endorsement from the Colorado Springs Independent, which featured the website in its Public Eye column. I promptly sent off an email that began with this sentence: "I was so thrilled that my humble Seven Deadly Sins was included in your column that an actual droplet of sweat managed to break through the powerful barrier of my anti-perspirant and moisten my underarm." The Colorado Springs Independent, unfazed, immediately responded that they would like to print my message as a Letter to the Editor. What kind of newspaper is this? When I worked for an obscure local newswipe, The Charlottesville-Albemarle Observer [1], my editor would have recognized the signs of an obsessed attention-seeker and forwarded the letter to the proper authorities.

At the time, the Charlottesville - Albemarle Observer was a tiny paper that managed to stay alive by reporting on local politics in such excruciating detail that readers fell asleep and forgot to cancel their subscriptions. My very first story as a real reporter was -- I swear -- the closing of the Ben Franklin store on Main Street. I didn't care in the slightest, because I was experiencing my first real taste of celebrity: my name in a byline, above the fold. It was intoxicating. Eventually I settled into a long stint as the "Enquiring Photographer" for the weekly "Street Observations" column, roaming around downtown Charlottesville and doing person-on-the-street interviews. The quality of my questions varied considerably, and our circulation probably never topped 10,000, but it was the closest thing to being a superhero that I may ever experience. Everybody knew the Enquiring Photographer, but no one knew what he looked like. I was his secret identity. When I left the paper after over three years, the column folded. I like to think it was because no one could really be the Enquiring Photographer but me, which is nice psychological cover for the fact that they probably disliked "Street Observations" and had been waiting for opportunity to cut it.

Anyway, the damage was done. I had tasted the succulent fruits of fame, and discovered a healthy appetite for more.