I’ll be using this anytime anyone questions any of my opinions or decisions going forward.

The handle was finished over the weekend, made out of pear wood.

The best decision I made during this process was to make a rough draft out of other scrap wood. That let me make sure my thinking was right on some things and that I needed to do other things differently.

I’ll make some different choices next time but this works well and is just what I needed. So I grew my woodworking skill set, learned a few lessons and saved myself a bit of cash. All worthy goals and accomplishments.

Which activities make you lose track of time?

I could sand a woodworking project for hours and think five minutes has gone by. “Just let me finish this part” I’ll say to myself and suddenly it’s tomorrow.

The change then necessitated further adjustments, primarily that the mouse’s optical eye wasn’t working on the glass desktop. So a mousepad was needed, but I’ve never really liked what I’ve used in the past.

So I decided to come up with something myself.

The picture below shows the solution, which after going through a few more complicated options was pretty simple.

• 9″x6″ piece of plywood as the main part of the mousepad
• 2.5″x6″ piece of plywood as a wrist support
• Both of them covered with a fabric remnant

The two pieces are not attached to each other, as I thought it would work better if the wrist support were a bit flexible or even removed altogether if I wanted to.

To help my new mousepad – as well as the keyboard – stay still on the desk I took a Craftsman non-slip drawer liner that was sitting in the garage and cut it down to size. This was also after I’d considered some of the desktop mats for sale at various stores, all of which seemed too expensive and none of which seemed like what I wanted.

The entire project then cost $0 out of pocket since we already had the drawer liner, plywood and fabric remnant around the house. And once I finally decided what I wanted it took about 45 minutes to put together.

Most importantly, it works. If I choose to do something different in the future regret levels will be low (possibly non-existent) because I didn’t spend anything on brand new items that may or may not have been exactly what I needed. And doing it myself allowed me to customize it as I saw fit instead of having to settle for whatever limited options were available at retailers.

A little time, creativity and patience along with a lot of not wanting to spend a lot of money allowed me to come up with my own solution and was a whole lot more fun.