she's
actual
size

A few days ago I had a brilliant idea.

We're trying to do this wedding thing on the cheap, so I've been looking for ways to do cool things without spending a lot of money. (And then I can walk around the reception saying, "See that ice sculpture? I saved ice chips for eight months until I had enough to make a castle... If I'd had someone make it that would have been $250, but it was free! Want some Rainer beer?") Anyway, whenever I get a feww CD-ROM in the mail (from AOL or Juno or someone) I unwrap it, throw it on the coffee table, and use it for a coaster. (Shiny side up, of course.)

A month or so ago I got a nice orange-scented candle, and I didn't have a candle holder to put it in. So I just sat it on one of the CDs and lit it. Well, it looked really cool. Later Min commented how neat the candle's reflection looked in the shiny surface of the CD.

The gears started turning, and I had the brilliant idea to use candles sitting on CDs for centerpieces at the reception. Maybe curl a little ivy or something around a group of them on each table, and voila! Instant decorations for almost free!

Of course, I wasn't sure if I had enough CDs to cover all the tables. Then I started thinking, "Well, I'll need more than one CD for each table." So I knew I had to recruit help in collecting CDs. I made a little sign and hung it up at work, asking people to bring in any of those free CDs they get in the mail that they aren't going to use.

Ask and ye shall receive.

I have a feeling that this is what happens if you ask for zuchinni in late summer. (People have been known to bring in bushels of zuchinni and abandon them on people's doorsteps, just to get rid of them.) I now have a very large number of AOL disks. Apparently, people have been stock piling them.

Maybe CDs are such a new technology thing that people don't want to throw them away. "One of these days I'll find a use for them," they think. "I just can't throw them away." And then the stacks of silvery disks pile up on desks and shelves until a naive soul such as myself blithely asks for them... And promptly gets buried.

I'm not going to call mercy yet. Right now I only have an extremely large number of CDs. I want to wait until I have an utterly ungodly number of CDs. I just hope the floor doesn't cave in underneath me, drowning me in a flood of plastic circles.

Not AWOL

I'll be out of town until Monday afternoon or evening, so no updates until then. Sammy is graduating from medical school, and if I'm not there she'll kill me. Besides, it'll be a good excuse to get drunk and act the fool.

Be good while I'm gone.