Right now I am sitting in my "Lair" (my isolated home office with no sunlight) in beautiful, silent bliss.

Yesterday, I installed some sound dampening insulation between me and the rest of the house. This stuff is incredible. If one of the kids drops something heavy directly above my head, I'll hear the vibration through the floor joists, but apart from that I'm cut off from the rest of the house. When we finish the rest of the basement, this is what we are going to use.

As a side note, I learned something interesting reading Lindsay's Blog entry for yesterday. Apparently, my new title is "safety conscious do-it-yourself-er" on account of my fancy safety glasses (which our preschooler went wobbly over...). This was a surprise to me because I had thought of myself as more of a "point and pay" kind of a guy - apparently I was wrong. ;-)

Here are some stats on the insulation for the sound-geeks out there:

ASTM C 423
CO-EFFICIENTS AT FREQUENCIES
0.52 - 125 Hz
0.96 - 250 Hz
1.18 - 500 Hz
1.07 - 1000 Hz
1.05 - 2000 Hz
1.05 - 4000 Hz
1.05 - NRC

From http://www.bobgolds.com/AbsorptionCoefficients.htm

0.00 = no absorption.
0.50 = 50% absorption.
1.00 = 100% absorption.

Measurements are done according to a standard test method such as ASTM C423 or ISO. "In some cases, the measured sound absorption coefficient is greater than 1.00. As recommended by the test method, these values are reported as measured and not adjusted.""Differences in coefficients of less than 0.15 are not significant."