Shannon is getting ready to make her third donation to Locks of Love. She is getting her hair cut on Thursday. We went to Brookside Park and documented what she looked like now. There will be an after coming up at some point.
This is where Shannon found a stray cat a couple weeks ago. A cat that almost became friends with Franklin.
More of the cat tale.
She is getting something like 12-13 inches taken off. I’m excited to see how this turns out.
One of my vacation projects was to attempt to bring as much of my stuff together as made sense and downsize as much stuff as I could.
I was able to accomplish some downsizing. I think my major accomplish was getting my old Hoosier Kitchen Cabinet out of storage. I knew it was slightly damaged when it went into storage, but it looks like it declined even further.
When I was explaining the existence of this “Hoosier” to Shannon she became excited. You could even say jealous. She even had a recommendation as to a person that would be able to fix it and return it to its former glory.
Shannon’s dad picked it up on Friday. I’ll be excited to see what it looks like when he gets done with it.
Friday was an interesting day.
Of course there was the high of it being Free Gyro Day, but the rest of the work day went rather uneventful.
It was near 5:30, the time I was going to run out of hours and check out for the week, when my phone rang. This was a bit of a surprise and it caused my dart throw to completely miss the paper with the raccoon on it that has been put up as a makeshift dartboard in the hardware area.
I answered the phone and it was Shannon.
She asked if I was interested in taking a ride in the Ames Party Bus.
This was an interesting development because I had engaged in a few conversations with Becky earlier in the day about how she could put the rebuilt starter in the bus by herself. She had asked me what she should use as a jack to hold the starter in place while she tightened the bolts.
My answer had been simple: “Shannon.”
“Really.”
“She tells me how tough she is all the time.”
I don’t know if it was really my advice that she followed, but after Shannon got off work they managed to put the starter in and the bus started.
Below are some pictures of the adventure.
After the cruise around town, I headed to a special FNSC. It was special because Jay had made caramel apples.
It was also special because it was a perfect night for sitting around the fire bowl until 1:30 in the morning.
Unfortunately that left me a bit tired for the trip to Kalona the next day.
Becky is starting up her own business. I’m in the process of creating a website for this new business.
You should check out that website:
I have a collection of photos from the Party Bus restoration process.
So if you have a large party, you should hit up the website and book the Ames Party Bus.
Last Sunday I had some unexpected free time when I got fired from a friend’s photo project.
That is right I got:
On the positive side, this freed up my Sunday afternoon.
I made the use of my time by taking some flower pictures.
I also was able to witness some Ames Party Bus painting. I have more pictures of this, but even posting the one picture that I’m posting is kind of violating an agreement I made.
I made use of my unexpected freed up future.
My big plan for Saturday was to journey down to Des Moines to watch Jen compete in the Des Moines Regatta. I have never been to such an event, so it was going to be a new experience.
I started my day by going to Ames to drop off a roll of real black and white film at Walden Photo. It seems to be more and more difficult to find a place to get real black and white film developed. I think it is down to Walden Photo and Pyle in Ames. I took this roll of film to Walden Photo. We’ll see how that turns out.
While I was downtown I stopped at the Downtown Farmer’s Market briefly to talk to Shannon. She was making soap there. While I was there I picked up a jar of jalapeno jelly. I already have about 6 or 7 jars of jelly that I don’t eat because I don’t eat breakfast, but I have high hopes that I will use this jelly on crackers.
I met Jay back in Boone and we headed down to Des Moines to meet Sara and Derrick for lunch. We ate at the Hessen Haus. It was somewhat of a disappointment. Fortunately, due to the poorness of the Hessen Haus, a plan was hatched for a future FNSC. That is exciting!
After watching Iowa lose to Northwestern, we hopped into the Mustang convertible that was being used as our form of conveyance and went to Prospect Park to watch the Des Moines Regatta.
Once we got to the park, we had a brief wait on some rocks for Jen’s team to come up the river.
It didn’t take long for us to see Jen’s boat come around the bend.
I’m not going to try to using rowing lingo, but one of the members of the team missed the regatta because before they were supposed to get into the water, their knee was run over by a van. They had a member from the ISU rowing crew sit in with them.
On Sunday I went down to Hy-Vee Hall to help man the Little White Lye Soap booth at The Women’s Life Expo.
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Little White Lye Soap Booth
Before Sunday I had helped Shannon set her 1 day sales record at the Webster City Farmer’s Market.
After 1 day of the Expo, the record still stood.
Then came Sunday. We managed to shatter the record into a trillion pieces. Now I can’t take full credit for the record being shattered. I only talked to a handful of customer’s and none of them actually bought any soap, but I must be bringing something to the team. I have helped break the record twice. It must be something intangible. Something that you can’t quite place a finger on. Because of its ethereal nature, it can’t be replicated. I wish there was a word for it.
For reasons that are not clear to me, this new sales record is also shared with Becky. She wasn’t even in the building. Something to do with merchandising. That is okay, I guess, I can share the glory. As long as my name goes on the Sales Record Plaque first.
Don’t forget that if you are running low on Little White Lye Soap, you can pick some up at the Ames Downtown Farmer’s Market this Saturday. My understanding is that there will be a soapmaking demonstration going on. You’ll regret missing that.
Friday night was the big Jay home cooked meal extravaganza. Willy choose not to join his brothers for this meal. Even though a week earlier he begged me not to go to the Ames on the Half Shell Appreciation Party because he needed a home cooked meal.
Although I was moved by his pleas, I had already made a commitment to attend the party and I was looking forward to getting the sweet AOTHS calendar that Shannon had designed.
Because I could only make an appearance at FNSC on that Friday Jay and Willy held a weenie roast in Willy’s garage. I stayed at the weenie roast log enough to eat a couple dogs and clean the gutters of Willy’s garage because… well if you know Willy, you know why.
Let us just say that because the gutters were clogged, rainwater was pouring out of the gutter and nearly falling onto the grill.
“What are we going to do about this?” was the question of the night. So I grabbed Willy’s ladder and unclogged his gutter and the weenie roast was saved.
I don’t like to brag, but the word hero was mentioned a couple times.
Jay rescheduled his home cooked meal for the next Friday. Willy decided he “needed” something else more than he needed the home cooked meal. He needed to race.
Well below is a very poor camera phone picture of what Wily missed.
You will have to trust me that it tasted much better than this picture makes it look.
Another highlight of the night was Auxiliary Member Jesse Howard’s presence. Plus Kelly, Kalista, Saydie and Taylan all became full Auxiliary Members. So despite the fact that Willy shafted his brethren, it was a successful evening.
Yesterday Shannon was interviewed on the Preston Daniels Show about Little White Lye Soap on 99.1.
In case you missed this show, you can download the interview and listen to it by clicking on the link below:
Don’t forget to visit littlewhitelyesoap.com and order yourself up a few bars of soap.
This year I took a different route selecting pictures for the Photo Contest. I put together 20 pictures and then had certain people select and name 1 picture from that list. I then entered those pictures.
I liked the way this process worked out. I will do it again in the future, with only a slight tweak here and there.
These are the pictures that were entered:
This picture was selected by Shannon. The picture was part of my experimentation with light painting. This is an experiment that I need to start back up again. The name comes from the flower being in the spotlight.
This picture was selected by Teresa. This picture was taken at the State Fair.
This picture was selected by Jay. This picture was taken of wooden praying hands outside of a Baptist church in Paducah, Kentucky.
This picture was selected by my Mom. This picture was taken north of Boone. I actually named this picture. It comes from the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “Nature is saturated with deity.”
I picked this picture because one person I asked to pick a picture never made a choice. I really can’t remember what I named this picture, but it might have been named after the classic 80s kung fu flick Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon. It is also possible that I named it “Jay LeRoy”. This picture was taken while I was sitting on my back on the sidewalk in front of the basilica in Dyersville. There has been a glow effect thrown onto this picture.
I also picked this picture because I needed to switch out another picture that didn’t print very well. This picture was originally in color, but I switched it to black and white because I wanted to enter more than 1 black and white picture. The name of this picture comes from the Samuel Johnson quote: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” This picture was taken at ground zero of the Ames fireworks show. This picture did get 3rd Place in the Black and White division. One more ribbon for the trunk.
I am currently taking application for photo selectors for next year.