I’m Here to Enighten

Part 1

I like to enlighten you people, so I am here to tell you about one of the great times in life. I hope that you all embrace these times whenever you have the opportunity. These times are times spent assembling things with other people. Anything really. As long as it comes with directions and some screws and various parts and lots of metal and/or fake wood product. Yes. That’s all you need to really make a good time. If you ask me.

Cause if you ask me any time I have ever attempted to put something together with someone I have always ended up laughing so hard I’ve usually started to cry. Well, to be fair the crying could also be the result of the mixture of frustration/annoyance/pain (tools=inevitable pain of some sort). But most of the time the crying is a result of laughing and the laughing is the result of the stupidity of two grown people who can’t follow directions.

My good lord. Could they make directions more incomprehensible? I mean really. If they could do that for me I think I might get to laugh even more.

Tonight I put together a basketball hoop with my aunt. We are two relatively intelligent humans, and you’d swear we were reading German for as much information as we were able to gather from the instruction manual (in all fairness to our intelligence, we were at one point actually reading German, because the instruction manual has many a language. For all those basketball hoops they ship over to Germany, I guess.)

“Where is AB?”
“What is AD?”
“No, AB, not AD.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a screw, it looks like this picture here.”
“They all look like that picture.”
“Well, grab one.”
“Here.”
“That one is not long enough, it doesn’t fit through BB.”
“But it’s definitely AB.”
“Well, grab DE then, it’ll fit.”
“But DE is supposed to be used over with CC in two pages.”
“Well, we’ll deal with that in two pages then, we need to deal with this right now.”
“Seems like that is going to cause problems in two pages though.”
“Seems like I’m having problems right now.”
“Fine.”
“Come tighten the screw with your thingamagigger.”
“What size one should I use?”
“I don’t know, but you should test about 25 cause all I’m doing is standing here holding an entire basketball hoop while I wait.”
“This one might work, let me try.”
“I’ll try to hold the other part, oh wait I can’t see that part.”
“I’ll get under the backboard and hold it and then you can screw with the thing while I hold it.”
“You realize you are now under a basketball hoop that I am only holding with my knees.”
“Try not to drop it on my head.”
“I can make no promises.”
“Okay, we did it, the whole thing is put together, lets stand it up.”
“Seems like I read in the instruction manual-”
“OH GOD! It just about took us both out.”
“Yeah, we have to put water in the base or it won’t stand up by itself.”
“Okay, wheel it over to the hose, we’ll fill it up.”
“Okay.”
“....................This sure does hold a lot of water.”
“......................Yep.......................”
“Okay, it’s finally full, man, that tool a good 5 minutes to fill. That thing holds a lot of water. I’m gonna turn off the water then we’ll move it over to the other side of the driveway.”
“Okay.....uh....oh.”
“What?”
“Yeah. It’s not so much moving. There is a LOT of water in there.”
“Hmmm. Maybe if we both push....”
“Yeah. No. Not moving.”
“Lets put something rolly under it. Here try to lift it just a little and we’ll put this broom stick under it.”
“Where is the broom part?”
“Dunno. Okay. Here we go. PUUUUUUUSSSSSHHHHH.”
Fifteen minutes later, after we push 12 tons a total of 5 feet:

Kid: “Uh, are you guys almost done?”
Adults: “Blank stare at child”

Part 2

In other enlightenment news I am leading a Habitat for Humanity trip to Louisiana from June 25 - July 1 to help rebuild near New Orleans. We are still looking for team members so if you or anyone you know might be interested they can get more info here: http://www.habitat.org/cd/gv/trip_desc.aspx?type=1&code=GV6067

We are trying to do some fundraising to alleviate some of the costs to volunteers, so hopefully the trip price will go down a little. Volunteers can also fundraise themselves, friends and family love to give money so that they don’t actually have to go get dirty themselves.

As some of you know, I went to Honduras last year with Habitat and found it to be an amazing experience. I’ve been feeling really drawn to the Katrina area the last few months and felt like my next trip should be in this country. It will be a great trip with great people and it will be in an area that could really use the help. We’ll also get a chance to either tour New Orleans one day or possibly go on a swamp tour, depending on what day trip we end up getting assigned. I promise it will be fun, and I also promise you will work your ass off.

Anywho, we’ve got a few spots left on the team and if any of you are interested you can go to that page or drop me a line at throwing_starfish@yahoo.com. Also if you know of any businesses or ridiculously wealthy people who might be interested in sponsoring our team (any amount will help) they can contact me directly as well.

Okay, that is the end of my spiel. I don’t do spiel really well. But I can build the hell out of a basketball hoop while laughing my ass off, so at least I’m skilled in other areas.