Catching up

Sunday morning I rode my bike to the grocery store. I loves my bikey. Sunday evening I went to open mike with the Odien boys. I had fun with them but the open mike was stinky...literally! The guy sitting next to me reeked of cigarettes and alcohol. I couldn't stand it. I had to get up and go stand in the back. Most of the performers that night kind of sucked. What didn't suck were three kids who were students of a guy who teaches classical guitar. The kids were awesome.

Yesterday Stacey gave me a fun project. Their softball league is having an opening ceremonies event where each team brings some kind of gift basket and they raffle them off as a fundraiser. The baskets are judged on coolness and the best one will win jackets for their team. The team mom for Brendan's team had been on Survivor so she thought a Survivor Barbeque basket would be fun. She bought a small kettle barbeque, some tools, a beach chair, charcoal, tiki torches, Survivor t-shirts, snacks, a fishing pole, a lantern and some other islandy trinkets. Stacey and Audra poked around in the barnyard and came up with this really great old wooden box. It's pretty well trashed but perfect for the Survivor gift basket. We cleaned it up, added wheels on the bottom to make transporting it easier and stenciled SURVIVOR on the sides. It was a great start. This box looked like a crate that washed up on a beach somewhere.

Stacey had brought islandy trinkets to decorate it with. There was some fish net, plastic crabs and a big tiki mask. The barbeque box and beach chair fit perfectly into the wooden box. I stuck the tiki torches in the corners and draped the fishnet between them. I affixed the tiki mask to some stakes and screwed it to the box so it was high between the torches. I scanned one of the t-shirts and the barbeque box. I cut out the photo of the barbeque and burned the edges and stuck it on the crate. Then I cut out the t-shirt scans and glued them on like they were shipping labels. Then I arranged the rest of the stuff on the box.

Man, if this thing doesn't win we'll know the contest is rigged. It looked AWESOME, dude! I took some photos with my phone. I need a kid to help me download them and post one here. Stacey had to leave so I did most of it myself. I had so much fun with it! I haven't really done anything creative since Jim died so this was great therapy.

Yesterday was HazMat day. Yahoo! They took all the oil and dangerous chemicals and car batteries. Yay! The chutney barrel that was full of spent oil is no longer blocking my back gate. Dede had taken Dad up to San Luis Obispo so he wouldn't be here when the HazMat guys were working. Drew was here to help for much of the day. It's a huge relief getting that taken care of.

Happy Birthday, BABoR!