Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Good morning crew,

Being a homeowner (vs. a condo owner) has definitely motivated me to decorate more. Last year for Halloween I put out of few spiders and hung a plastic skeleton by the front door, but this year I have a really ambitious plan.

I got the idea to decorate the front lawn like a graveyard! I have seen other houses do this and I think it looks really creepy (if it's done right).

But when I went to the Halloween store to buy decorations I was scandalized by their prices! For one 19-inch polystyrene tombstone they wanted 20 bucks! $20 for what is probably about 75 cents worth of material. And what kind of a graveyard has one gravestone in it? I would need at least four.

But then I had (what I thought was) a brilliant idea.

Last year when I built my workbench in the garage (you can read about that adventure here) I ended up with 20 or 30 extra square feet of plywood due to a cutting error. I figured with a couple cans of spray paint and a little effort I could create 2, maybe even 3 headstones out of that material with a bare minimum of cost and effort.

But I might have gotten a little carried away in the planning stage. With the wife in tow we went to the home improvement store and bought a few cans of spray paint, and I decided I needed some primer too, and I had to buy a paintbrush to do some detail work and create a little texture.

I also had to buy some extra lumber so I could create stakes to plant the tombstones in the lawn. After that it was off to the crafts store to pick up a some stencils to make some lettering.

By the end of the day I had two shopping bags full of supplies and I hadn't even touched the plywood yet.

The next day, after borrowing a Sawzall from my brother, I got out my tape measure and a pencil and set to designing my tombstone.

I decided to do a sort of Celtic cross design, which while arguably cooler than a boring old semicircle, required a lot more cutting. It took me about two hours to create the shape, and since the entire piece was larger than the width of my workbench, I had to do all of this work on top of a folding card table in the middle of the garage.

It wasn't until after I was done creating the shape that I realized I had drilled several starter holes through the plywood AND through my card table.

So after about 8 hours of effort (spread over two days), $40 in materials plus one $40 folding card table ruined, I have saved zero dollars by creating one plywood tombstone... which still needs to be painted.

I think originally the wife was going to participate by doing her own project, like 'his' and 'hers' tombstones, but after observing the process I think she is going let me build the rest of them...no matter what kind of threats or promises I make.

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click GopherArchives

***
"It's Columbus Day. In honor of Christopher Columbus, I went to a grocery store and got lost looking for spices." -Seth Meyers

***
"A California mom is being sued because her son told everyone at school that Santa Claus isn't real. Yeah. What makes the story even worse is that her son goes to UCLA. He's a physics major." -Conan O'Brien

***
"There's an event company that specializes in fake weddings. The idea is that many young people don't want to get married but they do want a wedding, so the company puts on a fake ceremony and a fake reception. I can't imagine writing 'Will attend' on an RSVP for a fake wedding. There are already weddings for people who don't want to get married - they're called weddings." -Jimmy Kimmel

***
Wayne, a friend of mine, owns an auto-repair business. One day a woman called to inquire when he could work on her car. "I'm not busy now," he replied. "bring it right in."

A short time later, the woman pulled into the service bay, stopping her small car perfectly over the wide, deep grease pit.

"Wow!" Remarked Wayne. "That's great driving. Your wheels only have a couple of inches to spare on each side of the pit."

She looked blankly at him and asked, "What pit?"


*-------------- Guaranteed to Roll Your Eyes --------------*
Two buffalo were standing on the range when a passing tourist said, "Those are the mangiest, scroungiest, most moth-eaten, miserable beasts I have ever seen."

One of the buffalo turned to the other and said, "You know, I think I just heard a discouraging word."