Thar She Blows!

This post comes at the request of one of the readers of this blog. Funny thing is, I didn't think anyone read it! I mean, I was talking about it last night, then I get a comment from a certain someone wanting me to post again. How nice.

So, Trick or Trunkin' has come and gone. We had a great year, that is certain. We had 84 kids registered, and of that amount, we had 56 who were not form Norway. Add to that the stragglers who did not register and we estimate that we had close to 100 kids, with most coming from the community. That is AWESOME. We have been putting some effort into outreach with the kids. We had a carnival in August, and passed out flyers for it the week before. Its a pretty low income area, and we hope to do some good. Anyway, the kids who came to the carnival registered, we got their addresses and sent them invitations to our Trick or Trunkin. It worked well, along with flyers in bags of candy passed out by our college group days before. God seems to be working with this, and that is something to be a part of.

However, there was a side issue with Trick or Trunkin that deserves its space. Every year we have a trunk decoration contest...and I wanted to win it. We were 3 year veterans at this point, and I just needed to step up. We may have been the cinderella in the 2003 season and surprised the crowd by taking second place with "Fall Fantasy", complete with hay bale...but c'mon, anyone who was there in 2004 saw the sophomore slump that was "Winter Fantasy". We mailed that effort in, just not enough pushing of ourselves to do better. It definitely left a bitter taste in my mouth. Add to that the fact that last year, I volunteered for cleanup and you can just imagine what a bummer of an evening that was. Coming out of that dissapointment, on the way home that evening, I thought about what we would do next year. *Light Bulb* "Hey" sez I, "how about we turn our van into the whale that ate Jonah, and I will be Jonah in the trunk, handing out candy". Pandemonium is the best word to describe what went on. Everyone was into it, it was going to be ROSSUUMMM!

Flash forward to about 4 weeks before the event. I had been in thoughts on the design and knew the basics of what I would need. Lisa and I were at Lattas for some decorations for her office when I saw the perfect posterpaper "skin" for our whale. I mean, you would have thought that Chrylser has actually manufactured the poster, it was a great match. We bought 20 sheets and I felt pretty excited. Then I started thinking about the time involved, "No sweat" I told myself. HA, that was ironic, as I put forth more than a bit of sweat into this project.

Now, it is cleanup week inthe village (yes, I actually live in an official village). I had been fretting about the amount of cardboard I would need for a project this immense, and was very fortunate to see several large pieces which originally held storm doors on someone's porch for disposal. I asked and recieved the whole lot. I am so ahead of the game at this point (about 10 days away). Well, I set them out front only to get rained on. That was clever, everyone knows how strong cardboard is once it got wet. However, no worries, I salvaged enough. On Sunday, a week before, I began on the tail of the whale. Hmm, that took a bit more effort than first thought, lots of measuring, re-measuring, etc. By afternoon's end, I had a perfect tail and fluke cardboard skeleton just waiting on skin. Now, at this point, a week earlier, you are thinking that I am gonna get this stuff out of the way early. Ah, you must not know me very well, cause I be a procrastinator. Yes, after that initial burst, nothing happened until Thursday. That evening, I covered the tail in its "skin" and saw that this might look good. Friday evening I began the measuring process for the head. WOW, this is gonna be big. I finished about all of the skeleton that night, late, getting irritated about how long it was taking. You see this is the game. I put it off, then, when I finally start, I get mad at the project for taking longer than I wanted to allow it. Lets just say that, on Saturday night, I spent the time covering it in the poster board skin and that lasted til 3:30 a.m. But wait, I get to set the clock back an hour...its only 2:30 a.m. YEAH, that makes a heck of a difference! Not really, but I used it to psych myself up!

So Sunday afternoon, I finished it, and stowed it to hit the parking lot that evening (I think I finished everything about a 1/2 hour before we had to leave. Finally, set up time. As I was setting it up, I got quite a bit of oohs and aahs, that was what I was looking for in the first place, right? "Yeah, I know, it's good...hey, someone has to win, right". Right about now, you are thinking, "Man, this guy has quite a bit of...umm...tendencies". I know, I know. I like things like this, but I rationalize it by saying that everything is a craft, just on a bigger scale. Building a house, its just a really large craft project...yeah, keep telling yourself that. All the while, people are coming up to Lisa and saying, "You guys did a good job on that", and she is saying, "No, not me, all Rob". That's right, all me! So, after two complete rolls of packing tape, 1.75 rolls of duct tape, about 23 sheets of poster board and a lot of cardboard, the whale lived...and yeah, I got first place. A strong performance from the third year vet. The next day, Lisa is like, "Next year we could do this" and I am like, "Hey now, we are honorary judges next year who cannot win...we are NOT putting effort into something that won't get properly recognized...SHEESH!"

2007, you better watch out, cause here we come!

The whale in all its glory!