Obama, Part I

This morning I went to an Obama rally. I have never been to a political rally before, and I have to admit it was fun. The Governor (Rendell) spoke well and passionately, and by the time it was all done I had decided to follow through on my plans to paint a big Obama sign in my yard. I had planned on the doing the "Hope" poster, but it seemed to hard. It hit me while at the rally (seeing so many posters) that I could just do the Obama logo. When I got back to my desk and was reading my email, I was really suprised and sturck by the coincidence to see email from KM with a link to a news story about a woman in Austin who did exactly what I was thinking about. So I replied (and I replied to all, so quite a few people got this) and said I was going to take the afternoon off, go home, and paint my yard.

I went to the Evil W and bought paint. I was torn. What is a nice green liberal to do? Drive a 45 mile round trip to go to some other big box in the nearest town, or go to the Evil W that's a mile away? I chose nearby, so that I could get to it faster.

When I got home, J was there eating lunch, so we ate together and then we realized the hideous black stuff we'd seen on the door was actually all over the back of my coat, which was hung in the closet. So it took me another hour to clean what we figured out was gobs and gobs of flat-bed trailer grease (it has to do with the Halloween Parade the night before, which is an entirely different story). It was all over the door, on the floor a little, and all over three coats in the coat closet.

So it was 2:30 before I got outside on this beautiful crisp Fall day in Pennsylvania. Beautiful beautiful day. First I had to to rake and pick up sticks.

Then I made a circle maker. It's a t-ball tee with a 12-foot length of twice tied to it. The idea is that I tie the other end to a spray can, then walk the can around at full length of the twice to get a perfect (or near perfect) circle. I moved it and changed the string length to get the arcs for the other part of the design.

Then I filled in all the white. I used all 6 cans of white, and could have used a few more to get better coverage. I may still do that, since I have to go get more paint anyway.

I started filling in the red. I had 4 cans of red and used three just to fill in one of the red areas, so it's back to Evil W for me tommorow.

Next up, when I can get back to this tommorow around 3:30, is to fill in the rest of the red, then do the blue, then decide if I want to do the text for "Obama '08". My hand is sore from spraying. KM told me about a thing you can use to hold down the sprayer in spray cans that is used to mark fields and such. I am not sure where I can get one in town but I am going to look. When I am done, I am going to hang a super-bright shop lamp in the tree and shine it down so it is visible in the dark. Then I'll just hope that I don't get egged.