I have started work on a new batch of tombstones for the Halloween display this year.

They are made from building insulation foam. I broke down and bought a foam cutter from Hobby Lobby for $20, and am GLAD I did. I have a few others to cut, then I will set about gluing the supports to the backs, and then painting.

The cross design, is based off one I saw on the web. I was going to try to freehand it, but couldn’t get it to look right. So I sat down with my graphics program, and realized what I wanted was just a series of circles that were cut at various points. About 3 minutes later I had a pattern printed, traced to cardboard and cut out. Then it was just a matter of flipping and/or rotating the pattern 90 degrees to make the full design.

Yes, it’s June… Yes, I’m thinking about Halloween…

I’m thinkign this year, as a bit of a change up… why not do a pirate themed display…

I coudl possibly turn the porch into a pirate ship…

the skeletons are all easliy dressable as pirates….

i could possibly even turn the lawnmower into a dinghy…  make some cannons… make a fake ship front to stand up in front of the hedges…  make a crows nest for the roof of the porch… use whit painters tarp in place of the black plastic i use for light blocking for the ghost…. give the ghost a ships wheel…  I could possibly even turn the ghost 90 degrees to make it look correct, even if i dont it might work… I have the ramp to use for “walking the plank” or at least as a boarding ramp… God knows I have enough pirate stuff…   I could slap a bandanna and eye patch on the puppet and replace one hand with a hook…   I may have to sketch this out and see what it looks like…  It might be fun, and put a bit of new life into the display…

hmm…

Anyone have any thoughts?

Saturday was St. Patric’s day, but you knew that. Saturday was the big Seelie Court St. Patrick’s Day Concert in Richmond. You knew that if you have been reading the blog. What you don’t know fomr the blog is how much fun the show was.

I was planning on getting to Richmond around 1:30 or so and would have made it, but I decided that I really needed a new belt for my Utiliikilt so I stopped in a K-Mart. While in the K-Mart I discovered that they were running a 50% of sale of all clearance items in the Mens department. I found polo shirts my size, that I liked (no easy feat there) marked down to $3.00. That was before the 50% off. I also found a few pairs of shorts, both denim, and kaki, for $1.00 before the discount. Including my belt, and one shirt that I really liked that wasn’t on sale I spent $98. You can imagine the amount of clothes I now need to wash and find a place for.

I arrived in Richmond (No, not VA, IL… ) around two o’clock, and checked into my hotel room. Once there I changed into the Utilikilt, and headed over to Doyles pub. Shortly after I arrived Juli, John and Ray showed up too. So we all went in together, and stood around for a bit. I knew Jon and company should have been there by that point but we didn’t see them. Finally Jessica Arrived and pointed out that Jon and crew were on the other side of the building unloading directly to the basement. None of us had realized there was an outside door to the basement. After a quick equipment unload John McCarthy and I went upstairs to uhhh… check the quality of the Guinness.

After a couple hours of sitting and talking at the bar it was almost time for the show, I headed down staris, and caught the attention of the waitress to get some food really quick. The Reuben sandwich and fries were quite tasty. I finished up just in time for the show to start. By this time there was quite a crowd gathered in the basement and everyone seemed excited to be there.

The show was probably one of the best Seelie Court shows I’ve ever attended. They performed 4 sets, and each set just seemed to build the excitement from the previous set. The audience all kept joining in singing and dancing and having a good time. We even drowned out the bagpiper upstairs.  It was one heck of a good time.  Dean, Maggie, Gina, and Christi were there from Bounding main and joind in on a few songs, and the entire 4th set.

I can’t wait until the next show. Although it’s going to be hard to top this one.

Happy Belated Birthday to shantyman Gregg!

Happy Not so belated Birthday to Molly!

Palley seemed pleased by her digital camera, and actually seemed to have fun taking pictures with it.  Micheal loved the shirt I got him, and put it on almost immediately after opening everything.  It even looks good on him.   Sonja seemed disinterested in the $50 gift card, “oh a gift card”.  Oh well,  it’s something she can use for her medicine.

Palley got me, a shirt, a pair of pants, my yearly proof set of coins, and a silver set to make up for not getting them last year, and a bunch of socks.  Sonja, and Micheal got me nothing, no surprise, I’m not going to let myself get all that bothered by it.  Anything they would have gotten would likely have just been more things to pile up in the house.

Karl and Gabi blew me away with their gift last night, and I am still just dumbfounded by it.   Thank you both. I consider myself very lucky to have so many truly loving friends in my life.  Thank you all.

Merry Christmas to all…

My weekend follows below, read on if you are interested.

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Here’s a completely insane idea that I want to see if anyone else is crazy like me…

I was speaking with

about getting into the holiday spirit, and this is a thought we had:

Get together on Saturday, December 23rd
Watch old Christmas movies
Enjoy holiday snacks (Christmas cookies, Chex mix, cocoa, etc.)
Go Christmas caroling

Yep…I said caroling.

I know that’s just a couple days before Christmas, and it’s normally an insane time, but it could work. Here’s what we would need:

People willing to do it
Someone willing to host it in a neighborhood that we won’t get shot or arrested for going out and singing
Ideally, snow on the ground and a light bit of snow falling (not something we can control, I know)
Song books for the carolers (I can make those easy enough)

Is there anyone out there crazy like me who would want to do this, and better yet, be willing to host? I would offer our place, but Molly has to work on that day, so we’ll be down in Elkhorn until 6ish.

Ok, I just did a small inventory. I have 18 of the 18 gallon storage bins full of Halloween decor. Then there are the itemes to large to fit in those bins like the popup jumper, my Menards full size skeleton, the tree, and all of the tombstones. There is probably something wrong with me…

HA!!!

I finally have gotten around to experimenting with the PROP-1 board I bought back in March.   Tonight I made a trip to Radio Shack, and bought a few relays and after some pretty ugly hardware hacking (I didn’t bring my soldering iron to work today)  I managed to get one of my halloween props controlled by the PROP-1.   I had initially thoght I would be a bit more fancy about how I was going to run the triggering inside the little squacking crow but the more I mapped out the circuit in the crow the more problems I kept running into.  I finally setted on just using a reed relay and inserting it with the “test” button on the crow.  The relay coil is then powered directly from one of the outputs of the prop-1.  Now when the prop-1 sees motion from its PIR sensor it fires off a couple events, one of which is to squack the crow.   I had also planned on using the CRYDOM SSR’s to control my foggers and the pop up jumper, but when I ordered them they only had 2 in stock.  That left me with one to few relay control. So for the moment I have rigged up a DPDT relay on another output of the prop-1.   The interesting thign about this is that I coudl theoretically control the two foggers quite easil now off one pin on the PROP-1.  I setup a loop in the cotroller that is its wait state while looking for the PIR.  during this loop it counts up to a set number, and then when that number hits it toggles teh state of the relay.  This in theory, if timed right should give me the ability to have constant fog.  While one fogger re-heats the other fogger starts fogging.  I worry thoguh that this will have a few unwated side effects.  The 1st being that there will be to much fog.  The second side effect would be that the fog juice will be consumed much to fast and I will run the risk of destroying the foggers.  (Granted I got them both for $5 at the end of the season closeout  at Target but i’d rather not destroy them.)  I am considering modding the foggers to have larger tanks… or to draw from the bottles of juice directly.  The other alternative, would be to use a float switch that kills power to the foggers when the juice runs out.  I’m pretty sure thought the fog juice would gum up the switch.  I’ll have to think on that one some more.   I still have a few weeks yet.  Now its time to pac this stuff up and go home though.

Happy birthday to . Many happy returns my friend.

Today I have been feeling a little productive.  I repaired the leaky faucet in the kitchen, and replaced the old antique door knob/latch that has lately been falling apart more often than I care to repair it.     After that though I was sitting in the living room and still felt some creative juices flowing… so I got into my collection of foam pumpkins, and pulled out one and went to work on it.

The results are below:

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! I’m leaving for Quigleys in a little bit. Well actually I’m leaving to go get my hair cut first, then I’m going to head up to Quigleys. Molly and the TInker start at 3 p.m. then Seelie Court takes the stage around 7 p.m. I’m not exactly sure when I’ll show up there, I do have other errands to run as well.

Happy Purim to those of you who observe the holiday.

[begin rant]

Well, I’ve been thinking about it and decided I would be remiss in my confirmed bachelor status if I did not post some message grumbling about Hallmarktines Day. Once again another year has passed by on this “holiday” where I was made to listen to all the sappy lovey dovey tripe spewed by all the students at the college. To make matters worse it was someones brilliant idea to stick me out in public with a laptop trying to convince students of the merits of using the library’s resources from home. The students could care less, all they were conscerend about was if thier significant other would put out tonight after a fancy dinners. GAG. By 11:30 a.m. I couldn’t take another student dressed in pink or red droning on about their plans for the evening. Even the rather dreary male bashing, fight the power “rap” of the dreadlock having, hyperactive, chatter box, 20 something “original woman” student could not break the loveyness of the student body. Even the one student I overheard wimpering about how she couldn’t register for face book because she didn’t have a college email address was two wrapped up in trying to pick up the guy she was complaining to to even bother taking the handout that provided the EXACT information she was whining about. To me this is a holiday that does nothing but give people another excuse to be demanding and greedy. If you love someone, heres a novel idea… Tell them… You don’t need some stupid little greeting card holiday to do it. Tell them every day. You are not guarnteed to ever see another Valentines day together. Buy them flowers just because. Buy them chocolates, not because some cherub threatens you with an arrow, buy it becasue you know the person you love will enjoy them. Give them a card for absolutly no reson, Hallmark makes those too…

Well that’s it… thats my feelings on the “holiday” in a nutshell…

If you will now excuse me, I need to go stop Lisa Simpson from giving me a pity valentine saying “I Choo Choo Choose you”…

Happy New Year CST!!! Happy 2006 to all my friends. Let’s all hope and pray for a better year.

Jen and I virtually celebrated New Years with Ty over IM. That was pretty fun. Defineitly a highlight of the evening.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL IN THE EST!!!

HAPPY 2006