The Post-Halloween Tradition Continues

Here it is, a month later, and here's the post-Halloween destruction video!!! For this year, I had the idea to get a big round pumpkin, cut it (almost) in half, then paint it up like a pokeball. Then, I had a much smaller pumpkin that I was going to carve the likeness of Charmander into, hopefully to make his tail into the candle part. Alas, I ran out of time, so that didn't end up happening. Oh well, it smashed up nicely!!!

This year I had two cameras rolling, so here you're getting two different views.

The other pumpkins I'd bought never got carved, either. A big, time consuming part of carving them is hollowing them out, so that is a big part of the reason they didn't get carved. We left them out on the porch railing.

Apparently, if you wait long enough, they hollow themselves out!!! One of the neighborhood squirrels gnawed a hole in the side of one, and took all the seeds out!!! Afterwards we threw it down, too. I cut a hole in the side of the next one to cut down on the gnaw time.

What if...

What if instead of Nathan Fillion being cast as Malcolm Reynolds, they went with Patrick Stewart instead???

Ain't My First Dodecahedron

They did the design contest at my work that they have had the last couple years again. I had an idea to make a water dish for the cat with a pump that would activate a water stream when the cat would approach. I picked up a drill motor driven pump (because the actual full on pumps are pretty spendy) with the idea of using an old drill with a bad chuck I have. A couple weeks before, I finally got to trying putting things together, and found out it doesn't have the juice to get the water flowing with that one. OK, time for plan B...

As is well documented here, I've made a couple dodecahedrons. Making them is fairly easy, relatively speaking. Since we're kind of working on making the basement into a nerd cave, and all the light fixtures have bare bulbs, I had the idea to make up an acrylic dodecahedron. It took some doing, but the results are pretty cool!!! I'm thinking of trying a light sand blast to see if I can give it a frosted effect, as well as adding the numbers to the faces to give it a real D-12 look.

So, how did the competition stack up this year??? Considerably less so than last year!!! There was one other entrant!!!

They made up a board with the company name made of various things we sell.

My company doesn't like us saying stuff about 'em, positive of negative, on social media sites, so I don't make mention of them, and thusly I don't have a full shot of the other project, just a few of the characters.

With only two entrants, I figured my odds were better than last year. I was a lock for first or second place, I thought!!! A minor minus, they're doing a bit of construction (you can compare last year's shots with this year and see the carnage in the background) so the break room they held it in doesn't get much traffic these days from our department.

The next week they congratulated me, I got first place!!! I went to see the HR girl who was running it for my prize. She had a bag of hair products, some $10 gift cards, a pair of passes to Knotts Berry Farm (which, unposted as of yet, we've been to twice this year!!!) and this: A signed Dodgers jersey!!! She didn't know who'd signed it, but I figured it was pretty cool, and possibly worth some money (not that I'm planning on selling it). Also, I could make up a display frame for it and put it up in the basement to possibly counteract some of the geek!!!

Just one thing left to do, figure out who's signature that is!!!