Sanford Stadium in Miniature

Having some time on my hands, I downed a fifth of whiskey, got my Roy Neary on, and painstakingly built a scaled model of Sanford Stadium in my living room, complete with 80,000+ tiny fans. Sure, it took a while to trim those wee hedges and hide all the microscopic flasks under the bleachers, but it looks good, no?

click to embiggen

Kidding. Actually, I just engaged in some "tilt shift miniature faking," but it would have been fun to build an entire stadium, right?

The most fascinating thing in the world...

...is this:


Or at least it is to the kids. In case you couldn't tell from the pic, it's one of those plastic pull tabs typically featured on beverage cartons. Since I drink a fluid fuck-ton of coffee with half and half, I always have these things around. And it's not like they make a lot of noise when you pull one off, but the cats come running from another room when they hear it being removed. (Much the same way we did in college when we heard the pop top on a brewski).

I don't understand the obsession with them. They don't move. They haven't been baked in an opium den with catnip. They don't flash and sparkle. But they remain, by far, the favorite "toy." And I've tried other things. Doorknob hangy things with feathers. Rolling balls with bells. Mice shaped toys stuffed with herbs. But they know what they like, and dammit, that's what it is. They're cheap (or no cost, depending on how you look at it), however, the only downside is that they don't play well with the vacuum cleaner. They're easy enough to avoid when vacuuming, though, so it's a small price to pay for the eternal gratitude and constant joy they seem to bring.

So let's hear it for plastic pull tabs, the most fascinating toy known to man. Or cat.

Just for the "awwwww" factor:

Sparkly skies, from the deck

Kind of a low key 4th for me. Of course, most things for me are rather "low key" right now. I live very close to a local lake, which my office overlooks, where they do the annual 4th of July fireworks. I enjoy fireworks (from a distance, that is. I'm not to keen on shooting them off myself in the backyard, as I A. hate loud, sudden noises, like firecrackers and children, and B. like to type, so I want to keep all of my fingers), but don't really enjoy crowds, so I figured that if I could see the show from my apartment, then that was enough of a celebration for me. Plus, I was 2 feet from stepping back into the welcome chill of the air conditioning, 10 feet from mixing another cocktail and 12 feet from using a bathroom that wasn't portable. (I wanted to take a quick picture of the majestic row of purple port-a-lets they had lined up in a local parking lot for the shindig, but never got around to it. They couldn't do red, white and blue? Has anyone ever seen a purple port-a-let? Was Prince playing, and no one told me?)

Anyway, it was a nice show, and I got to enjoy it from the privacy and comfort of my own casa. I tried to take a couple of pictures, which you see below, but they didn't turn out too well. I was a little slow on the draw, for one, so I captured all the "sizzle" at the lowest point, and I didn't have the camera on the right setting. I just bought a new digital camera, and couldn't recall the proper set up for taking pictures outside. Turns out there is one for "scenes," and even within that menu, one specifically for "fireworks show." Uh, as you can tell, I never made it to that menu, but you can see some nice detail of the brick on the side of the deck. Needless to say, the show was much better than what was represented here.

Happy 4th, everyone. Freedom! Liberty! No taxation without representation! (Oh....wait....).