My hands are tired, but the project is done.

I've been working on an origami project for my co-worker and his girlfriend for their wedding. I had made up a bunch of samples for them, but what they selected turned out to be a massive project. Mette Rings - they will be using these on the wine bottles they are giving away at the reception.

Each Mette ring requires 18 units made from square paper of the same size. And they requested 100 rings. 100 x 18 = 1,800 units. And the wedding is at the end of February. In making my samples I determined that I could fold one unit in about 30 seconds - so, plenty of time for those, but it was harder to factor in getting the paper ready and putting the units together. I broke this down into phases to stay on track.

Phase 0 - Material Acquisition. I pulled from my own paper stockpile, a craft store, and Staples. I also bought extra blades for my paper cutter and 3 bottles of glue.

Phase 1 - Paper Cutting. I wore out two blades for my paper cutter, but got all 1800 units cut in about 4 days.

Phase 2 - Unit Folding. I started carrying around stacks of paper with me and a knapsack to hold the completed units. To the movies, to the birth of my niece. Any downtime was spent folding. I did too many in one day and had to put my hands in the snow to numb them. My parents - who are pretty good folders themselves - helped while we were at the hospital in the waiting room. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

Phase 3 - Ring Construction. I had all the colors sorted out into boxes and bags - then with movies playing on the TV, I sorted out 2 white, 1 red, 2 white, 1 black, etc. until I had 18, then I put together 2 sets and then put those together. I put them in stacks of ten to keep track of them.

Phase 4 - Structural Integrity. To prevent the rings from flying apart when handled, I coated each side with glue. (I've tried gluing the units while putting them together and it's tedious - even for me). Each side had to dry before I do the other - took a lot of time and a lot of space.

I finished up last evening and boxed them up to bring into work. Took me about two and a half weeks for the whole project. My co-worker has promised to get some good photos for me.

In other news... my work phone stopped working yesterday. We're gearing up to move to a new office in the building and I thought this was a precursor - but no, it's just broke. I had the office manager make the call to repair yesterday afternoon before I left - we'll see how it goes. It's pretty quiet here - but my voicemail (which I can still check via my computer) is filling up.

It's a girl!

I got the call on Wednesday that my sister had gone into labor - not quite a week early. I got on the road as soon as I could, but my cell phone rang a little after 5 PM to let me know that I was suddenly an uncle!

Yea!

Little Corbyn Renee was born at 5:02 PM, 01/20/2010.

21 inches, 8 lbs 1 oz.

My sister had a rough time with the labor, but she and baby are both doing fine and are home. Corbyn is still getting used to the world and her sleep schedule is apparently a little out of tune. But I'm happy to report she's made the transition from sticky poop to smelly poop - which is apparently very important.

I'm pretty sure she's the cutest baby ever, but I'll admit to maybe being a little biased. :)

My news is not so interesting

The rest of my holiday break was pretty uneventful, but one of my co-workers had news. We met up for breakfast the day before we headed back to work and he and his girl friend gave me some news. She's pregnant and they are getting married. So, in 2010 they are planning...

1. A wedding in February

2. Building a house and moving

3. Having a baby in August

4. And my co-worker is planning on taking classes towards a degree.

They've been doing a flurry of planning since they found out and he proposed. Any one of those things would be a lot of work to organize - but all at once, so to speak, is quite impressive. Or crazy. Or both.

In other news, my room-mate and I managed to injury ourselves playing Wii. I was getting bored with the bowling and tennis and so we tried a few rounds of boxing. The next couple of days after that I was sore in my chest and arms - he had that plus shoulders. (Mine were okay since they were conditioned from my swimming). We're both better now, but there were a lot of "we're old" comments for a while.

I went and gave blood on Monday and as I went in I noticed that they had the double-red machines set up. I've done that before and while it took a little longer I actually felt better after the donation. The staff didn't comment on this while I was doing the history until I asked if that was going to be a regular thing. They didn't know but said it might be cause it was a special "O" blood drive. Which I have. I got taken over to another table for a regular donation. One of the double-red areas opened up and the guy after me in line got taken to that area. I didn't know about this in advance and don't know if I needed an appointment. Felt a little dissed, actually.

When they did the needle stick, the tech warned me that it would be a "pinch" - and it was more painful than usual. Enough to make me hiss though my teeth - though I didn't cry or anything. The tech said, with a little bit of a snide tone, "Don't like that part?" I replied, "Well, it's not a pinch".

"It's a big pinch" she replied and I didn't comment as my next remark would have involved some swearing.

I think I've ranted before that telling someone it's going to "pinch" when they shove a big needle into your vein is just bullshit. A pinch is something completely different. Granted, I don't think they should say, "I'm going to shove a harpoon into your arm, hold still," but maybe a "here we go" comment would be enough warning and not involve lying.

Anyway, the donation went fine and though I was tired afterwards I recovered okay. Next time I make an appointment I'll have to see about getting on the double-red list. And for the record, yes, it's a smaller needle.

That evening, my room-mate needed my help in taking the lights off the tree and I think wanted me to carry the boxes to the basement. I told him I would do that - but not until the 5 hours of no heavy lifting after giving blood had passed. He took the boxes down himself.

Finally, I've been working on a large scale origami project using packaging paper. 30 inches on a side squares. Except I ran into some 'replicating failure " issues.

See, I was working from a long roll of paper and to get my squares I would fold the end down to the side and get a right triangle - then cut along that new line and get a new edge. Doing so introduces the chance that my new edge may not be 100% and since I kept doing this, the errors built up. I got my 12 squares out of the roll and as I started to fold I found several were not really squares. A couple of those were close enough to make work, but about 5 sheets were unusable. All the good ones are folded, but I'll need to get more paper and cut some more squares. The end result is going to be a giant star with multiple points - the number of those depends on how much paper I use.

I'm going to hit the pool again today and my sister has asked that I do an extra lap for her since she would really like the weight reducing feeling that a pool creates.