That’s right, I’m a playee.  I get played!

I am one of 104 Instructables contributors that was selected to be a card in a deck of a game. You use statistics like the number of contributions, views, comments, etc. to compete against other cards. They are available for purchase to help support a booth at the UK Maker’s Faire. Read about the game creation here. I already bought two!

here’s an actual email conversation with a friend that also goes to the dump to salvage regularly…

• Z:   i sometimes watch TV shows on the computer.  (don’t judge me!)  i’m catching up on The Office right now and in this scene Michael Scott and Dwight Schrutte are at the dump looking for something accidentally thrown away.  Dwight said “this place has gone to hell.”  And all i could think was how we felt with the desolation at the dump last weekend!
• S:   i’m not judging!  i love the office.  funny funny.  did they find it?
• Z:   Nope.  They (re)found their respect for each other though.  Which, of course, is what going to the dump is all about.
• S:   deep, so deep!
• Z:   That’s what she said.  Sorry.  Couldn’t help it.  It was just too appropriate.

You probably have to have watched The Office to truly appreciate the “that’s what she said” comment.  Since Michael Scott says it throughout the show.  But me explaining it kind of ruins it.

I’m in the Seattle airport part way on a trip half way around the world.  For about the fourth time in just over a year.

What the heck am i doing?

In January and February of last year i was in Peru and Ecuador.  Then two trips to China in the time since.

Now I’ll be in South Africa on Saturday.  I have a 12 hour layover there.  Pepper and Jordan will be meeting me there and then we’ll fly to Harare, Zimbabwe together.

I like my friend Orin’s stance on travel – no regrets about spending money to travel.  He’s right.  And I’ve got a honeymoon trip to Central America that we’re planning.

Anyway – this trip.  We’re meeting Brooke (a friend of pepper’s from the school in China) who has been working outside of Harare for a year.  In the last 10 years, Zimbabwe has transformed from the “breadbasket of Africa” to a country of corruption, runaway inflation, and food and fuel shortages.

Sounds like an adventure!  We’ll be visiting Victoria falls, going to a park where we can ride elephants and walk with lions, and seeing a bit of Botswana and Zambia along the way.

It is just a quick trip – but i’m sure it will be great.  It is a new continent for me, a few countries (I should be setting foot in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, and Senegal)  and we have a new camera for the family to document our adventure – a Nikon D90.  Expect some far superior photos!

On Saturday i found three cymbals at the thrift store.  I decided with a little effort that they could be turned into a passive rain-music maker.  Check out the brief instructions here.

I use a few services for listening to online radio.  977music.com is one of them.  Just now, listening to their 80′s channel they played Bring Me Edelweiss by Edelweiss.  Yes, it is form 1989… But i can almost guarantee that i’m one of precious few to have ever owned an Edelweiss CD.

A mysterious tube arrived in my mail a few weeks ago.  I popped off one end and found perforated poster pages… it was my copy of Rainy Day Activities by Wild Pansy Press.  This is the third publication that i have had a project published in and the first book that required some assembly!

The sheets had to be folded along the perforations and then stacked together and bound.

The book premiered at Crunchtime 2010 in the UK.

Last year we ordered some new gymnastics mats at work.  We also ordered a few pieces of equipment from the same company and the springboard was boxed up and used some scrap mat padding to protect the item in shipping.

I took the scraps home instead of throwing them out and all winter a strip of it sat at the foot of my computer desk for me to put my stocking feet on to insulate from the floor.  I traced the pattern of a pair of my flip-flops onto them and then cut out soles quite a while ago.

It took an Instructables contest to get me going on finishing up the project though.  I used seat belt webbing salvaged from cars at the dump and a curved needle with thick thread to sew together these comfortable and very cushony indoor sandals.

It is definitely not a surprise that i love using the flexible circuit sheets from inside computer keyboards.  I have made wallets and sleeves for CDs or DVDs with them and even a checkbook cover.  I noticed that Pepper uses these transparent envelopes to haul student essays and tests as well as to keep travel documents together.  I decided a while ago to make large transparent envelopes for her out of the circuit sheets.

It just so happened that Instructables was holding a contest that this project would work nicely in also!

If money grew on trees and for some reason it was still valuable i’d do a few things with all the fat stacks of cash that i would sustainably harvest.

1. Retire?  I love my job.  Heck, today i lost track of time and was late leaving work to meet my Girl scout cookie hook-up.  I guess i’d retire from 8-5 (plus some nights and weekends) work and do whatever the heck i wanted.
2. Travel.  More.  I get to travel a bit already.  But that’s because i wondered if i’d look back at an older age and wish that i did some more adventurous travel when i was younger.  Because i know i’m going to want to just do cruises to exotic places later.
3. Be generous.  Maybe give out emergency loans or scholarships or build playgrounds in middle-class neighborhoods.  I have always felt a little dissed because of those “at-risk youth”and their “lower class” neighborhoods dominated by “minorities.”  Not jealous mind you.  Just dissed for not being extraordinary either.  Where is the program for the straight C student that just is?
4. Cross breed my money tree with a tree that grows golden delicious apples.  I like them.
5. Make it so i didn’t spend money.  Like making major energy efficiency changes…
6. Go back to school.  I liked college.  But i’m afraid to try distance ed classes.  I’m just not sure that i’m the right kind of person to motivate myself.
7. Have someone do my laundry, dishes, and general cleaning.  I guess now i’m really letting all this money get to my head!
8. Give gifts to people randomly.
9. Become insanely protective about my money tree.
10. Bury my money in big mason jars below my money tree.  Maybe i should bury it in something more permeable than glass though – perhaps that’s what money trees need for fertilizer.

Oh – and maybe one more thing.  Buy a really good metal detector.  Because looking for old coins and lost jewelry just seems like a good way to make some money, have fun and get some fresh air and exercise.

A few years ago i picked up a set of 6 multifunction LED light bars. They can be set to hold a single color or to rotate through colors at variable speeds or even to activate to music. I had mounted them under the kitchen counter temporarily but didn’t like how the cord to plug them in showed. A few weeks ago i mounted them in the cabinets of the dining room. Five are mounted above the shelves and one is mounted in the bottom of the center cabinet under-lighting the liquor bottles.

I am thinking of ordering tempered glass shelves to allow the light to filter to the bottom of all of the cabinets. I found a place to order them online but will wait for some feedback on how it looks. 10 shelves would come to about $200.

I drilled holes between the cabinets and ran all the wires to the bottom of the center one. I drilled a hole in the back wall of the center cabinet and cut the end off the power cord which i then ran down to the outlet in the wall just below. I wired the power directly to the outlet terminals. The only drawback is that there is a power inverter that is constantly drawing power right now. I will next wire a switch to interrupt the power feed to the inverter and use it for the power button. The control unit has a power button but it is between the inverter and the lights. While I’m at it i might re wire buttons from the controls so i can change the mode and pause the color and then have identical buttons mounted below the center cabinet or in the bottom below the bottles. Naturally i’m thinking that some nice vintage 60′s or 70′s metal buttons would be best.