The second time I tried to give blood I passed out. Set the table a little bit more....I think I was 18 years old, newly graduated, and having a summer of concerts preparing to move to Eugene. I'd given blood once in high school and had been recruited to go to a Mormon church and let the life juices flow for the Red Cross. Oddly, I was out pretty quickly. They made me eat some cookies and gave me a sticker that said "I tried." I still proudly display that sticker on a guitar case even though it has seen better days. Today is one of those days where I need an "I tried" sticker to cheer myself up.
     I left work today stating that I was gonna go see "Hell" and was excited to see the Salem, Oregon doom band play really loud. In the meantime I was coming home, listening to records, and trying to catch up on weeks of comic books. First, I notice that my roommate is officially getting all his stuff out and leaving. I proceed to have a non verbal existential crisis based on needing a new roommate and not having friends, and dreading the Craigslist experience again. Then I get a weird phone call uninviting me from band practice tomorrow. Finally, I get the gumption to leave the house.
    Please understand that this is a very new occurance for me. For years now my social life has consisted of going to the bar a block from my house and drinking beers, and maybe (just maybe) actually talking to a real person. My yearlong relationship has recently ended, and a major cause of local traumatic stress has moved away. So, I oddly have been experimenting with leaving the house and going to shows more often. This has mostly consisted of going to random metal shows and usually lasting a band or two before I either get bored, anxiety filled, or I just plain can't stand the music.
    So tonight I went to see "Hell." In the end, I'm pretty sure I didn't see "Hell" at all. Or maybe I just saw my own personal Hell. Apparently, Hobo Chic is a fashion style. Look kind of dirty and unbathed, and then have short skirts and garters or the like. Also, as someone that quit smoking a year and 3 months ago, everyone was sucking down and looked extremely unhappy about and it made me really sad to remember how happy smoking made me until I realized how much better I feel without them. Then some band started doing some uneventful grind music that caused me to turn around some 3 minutes later and wander back to my car listening to a favorite professional wrestling podcast.
    Driving home I considered going somewhere else, but by then the anxiety had taken over and coming home to watch Wrestling and drink some riesling was about the only option. I really feel sad about all of this, mostly because "I tried."

I had planned to make a bunch of Where Is Kobe Bryant's Head Today? posts...but my camera on my phone just died. More Owl photos soon.

Where is Kobe Bryant's Head Today?

Kobe's head is being stabbed by a scuba diver!

Big Show posing in front of our handiwork. This is how it stands as of today. We need more plywood for the walls. Plywood for the wings. Shingles for the outside. What do you think?

In all the plywood we had sitting around...we only had one piece big enough to cover one wall. We were joking about how usually you cover the side where you can look into other people's backyard first. Wouldn't want to see sunbathing we aren't supposed to see. We didn't worry much about it.

Big Show and I had a big discussion about how big the third section should be. It is going to be the head of the owl. We finally decided to just double the height of the first floor with the second two sections. When we did that. We just decided to make it so the third "floor" would just be another box on top.

We totally Water Sealed the top. Screw Tarps! We'll have to come up with a good way to get the water not to just sit on the parts that are not covered. Maybe by now you're saying...."hmmm...I can actually see that turning into a giant owl."

It was a nice day so I took the trip to Home Depot. The total frat boy who helped me put a flag on the 2x4s sticking out the back of my truck says "Man...such a nice day to work on stuff." I said "Oh...I have no idea if I'm building anything today." "Why not?" said the dude with his hat on broken. "Because I'm building a giant owl..." Blank Stares....

I'm pretty sure this was days after Osama Bin Laden had been captured. I went to Home Depot and got a ton of 2x4s. The older lady at the check out counter started telling me about all the people who worked at Home Depot making extreme comments about Bin Laden. "I'm glad he's not on the Earth...but we did just kill a man." I think I was pretty delirious and just started rambling about all the people who had died in the Mid-West during the tornadoes. Then rambling about NASA and going to the moon and how it relates to Hurricane Katrina. It all makes sense in my head....I think I freaked the lady out.

I'm sure at the end of the day I sat smiling. Glaring.

Side angle picture. Proves we went a little overboard on studs. My roommates friend came over and looked at the owl. I guess he was an engineer that built stuff for Burning Man or something. I think he thought we were crazy just for using so much stuff. Who cares! This isn't supposed to be a hippy owl. It's supposed to be a solid owl.

We did a bunch of work this day. Got a roof and nailed it in. It was that day that one of the neighbor ladies asked me "What are you building?" When I replied "A giant owl" twice....she seemed confused. I finally said "an adult clubhouse." She laughed and said "I thought it was a hookah shack." I wanted to yell something about not smoking the pots. I got super excited and started work on the second floor...

There he is! The debut appearance of The Big Show. We had a long conversation about how to start the second floor of the owl. We might have gone a little overkill on studs...but hey....it works! We both sat on it and quickly got excited about putting a roof on it. I'm pretty sure this was the day we took 2 trips to Home Depot.

I love this picture. When I'd show people on my phone they would be totally confused. I'm sure this is when the neighbors started to get confused also. Oh I forgot to say earlier that my parents asked me "what is under that tarp in the backyard?" I said "Ummm...I'm building a giant owl." I explained why...which I'm not quite sure if I explained what it is in reference to...and then said it's really like a big adult clubhouse. My dad yelled in the background "I'll bring down some extra plywood I have sitting around." This is when it really felt like we had accomplished something...

This is like the giant owl equivalent to the close up shot of an emo girl on facebook or myspace. Odd angle....showing "the inside in a different light."

So yeah. We started putting up lots of like angled beams to make sure everything would be secure. Then of course it started raining again. We tried to get a really big tarp to cover the whole thing but it didn't really work. Brian Senior made a joke about using Thompson's Water Seal about this time. Because you can put it on everything. Like that old Chris Rock joke about putting 'Tussin on broken arms.

Alternate angle of the last post. I think we got this up and said "oh crap...we should have gotten a bunch of more 10 foot 2x4s." We love taking trips to Home Depot. More on that later...

After probably a few months we got back to work. We found out that some of our 2x4s weren't long enough so we had to get some 10 foot ones. Kinda crazy how fast some of this stuff works. We have no blue prints. We just make it up as we go.

Oops. Time Travel. This was before we put down plywood for the floor. The picture was just in the wrong folder.

It rains alot in Oregon. My co-conspirator The Big Show (who you'll probably see in some pictures coming up) would seem to make plans to do a bunch of stuff...and then it would rain...so we'd get drunk instead. So here is the base covered in a tarp and the walls beginning to take shape. Like magic.