Five on Friday #89

EINS

It's been approximately a thousand days since I've done one of these posts.  That said, having Disney posts scheduled for a few weeks brought me joy and bad habits of laziness, but alas, they are in the past.  I did get some Shit Teh German Said posts scheduled, and by some, I mean 2 posts.  What else is coming up?  Uhh, Alyssa's blogging thing.  I'm going to try to write more of those posts, even though they take brain power.

I'm in serious blogging-planner mode because I've even been thinking about my December year review posts.  Germany reviews are still on the plate as well, although I have some regret about not writing up the activities as we did them/when I came back because I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of stuff now.  Le siiiigh.

ZWEI

Teh German has set a goal for us to have some House projects complete by early December, before his aunt arrives.  I felt like this was reasonable.  One of our big projects was to create a photo collage of all the photos I took of House while it was being built and put them over the Germ-erican flag that Teh German got before he left Germany.  When he lived at The Closet, it hung over the bed and I only ever saw it 3 times before it came down and got packed away. 

In March, Teh German came up with this photo idea and I agreed.  We hit a bump in the road about a month ago after a failed trip to Lowe's to buy the ingredients (ok fine, materials) to build a frame.  We had no idea how to build a frame, or what to build it of.  It was a crisis in Lowe's that led to 24 hours of silent treatment between us.  A week or so after that, we decided to go by Michael's to check out the custom framing situation.  That coincidentally was the last day of their 70% of custom frames sale.  We ordered a frame for the flag and then we had to wait on it to come in.  I also ordered my shadowbox for my Disney medals on that same day.

Due to the hurricane, our order was a few days delayed, but we weren't worried.  I picked the frame up earlier this week when they called.  Photos have been printed for a while.  Teh MD-AR had a Shutterfly credit so I just gave her dollars for an order when I noticed that prints were 50% off.  The only ingredient we didn't have was something to hold the photos in place, which we picked up when I went to get my medal's shadowbox the next night. 

With all the ingredients, we were finally able to start and finish our flag project!

We were able to quickly agree on what photos we wanted and it was fun to look through the photos and remember House visits and selfies.  We arranged the flag and pinned it down, then we arranged the photos and confirmed our work.  The hard part was tacking the photos down.  If you zoom in on the photo of the back of the frame, you'll see a whole bunch of pins sticking up out of the back.  Yeah, that was a hazard.  I bled once when Teh German stabbed me in the finger with a pin because I was an idiot and had my finger in the wrong place.  I laughed it off.  Once I got it to stop bleeding, we kept pinning.  FYI, pushing pins through 1/2 photos and the foam board backing is more effort than you'd think it would be.  Also, it hurts your widdle fingers.  I was so relieved when we finished with the pins, we hugged AND high fived. 

After getting the flag and photos on, we had to peel the contact paper from the acrylic (glass would have been too expensive/heavy).  Teh German didn't want to scratch it so after getting one side of it peeled off while it was laying on the island, I had to hold the acrylic while he peeled the other side of the contact paper off.  He didn't want to scratch it on the island and I didn't want to lay it on the couch and it gather all the lint/dust/dog hair.  Eventually, with the acrylic unwrapped, we laid it on the photos and flipped it into the frame and got it secured.

When we observed our finished work, one of the photos had fallen and had to be fixed.  We undid the back and ended up taking the acrylic off and I set about putting in several more pins to remedy any loose photos.  Pins added, we got the acrylic back on and the tabs back down.  When we observed it the 2nd time, there was another photo that had moved out of place.  This time we were able to knock it back down into place for the most part.  Then we just reiterated that the flag isn't perfect and the photos aren't perfect and we aren't perfect and we called the project complete.  Ok, I called the project complete, Teh German reminded me the frame wasn't on the wall yet.  Truthfully, I know he'll want to get it up on the wall asap, so I'm not concerned about that part.  We put the hardware on the frame and stood it against the wall to look at it.  DONE.

By the time we finished, I was exhausted so I said I wanted to wait until we had daylight to hang the frame so that way we can see what we're doing and also put it in the best place.  Additionally, we have several other items to hang, so when we hang this, I'm going to try to rope Teh German into hanging the other things at the same time.  2 birds, 1 stone, and such..

You'll have to wait for us to get the frame on the wall for a final photo!  AKA, I didn't take a photo of the final product when we checked it.  Exhausted was not a strong enough word to describe my level of tired.  My under eye bags had bags, I was so tired.

I'm glad this project was knocked out.  It has been a big thing on Teh German's list for a long time.  I think this means that now he'll move on to garage organizing.  I'm super pumped about this because while the garage isn't a disaster, it's mostly organized chaos.

DREI

From the phone:

Do you see how excited I am in the photo above?  Yeah.  I was.  And then I looked closely at the frame and my stupidly high OCD standards were not met.  The middle bib is falling, the medals on the right have WAY more space than on the left.  The bibs were not supposed to be centered to begin with, which is part of the spacing problem.  Also, the medals on the right have the velcro on the side instead of at the very top, which is weird.  While I like the look of how close together the medals on the left are, they aren't going to make the frame smaller so we might as well space them out a bit since there's so much extra room on the right side.

Essentially, this was a lesson in, I should have done it myself because I'm overly picky.

Me: It's a greyhound!
Teh German: No it isn't.
Me: Yes it is!
Teh MD-AR and Teh Soccer Mom were consulted and they say yes, it is a greyhound with the frog on his head.

Uhhhhhhh. no.

Alt caps made me LOOOOOOL.  My last name was the same way.
It brought me so much 1999 joy.

I accidentally sent Teh Advising Sister this boob shot trying to show off my villains lanyard.
We got a good lol from it.

Phil and Meri went on a field trip yesterday!

Meri rocks the wind blown look.

I'm pretty sure this is the most hipster I've ever been.
I just needed some thick black frames to pair with it.

PS.  This is part of my halloween costume.
No, I am not a hipster.

VIER

From the internet:

-I've admitted on Teh Blog at least once that History of the English Language was my favorite class when I was in college.  I wish I could have taken it over and over again and that there were levels of the class so I could learn all the things.  That said, I have a huge interest in the evolution of language, particularly English since that's what I understand and use.  Language is evolving now at a much faster rate than almost anytime (other than maybe when print became a thing which created a need for standardization) because of the internet and the ease at which we can access information and communicate with each other.  That said, our communication is also changing and the formality of print is loosening it's belt and more things are acceptable now: emojis, hashtags, not following "the rules", or even better, applying the rules of other language standardization (German capitalization of nouns, British use of punctuation outside of quotation marks).  Anyways, this article about the evolution of language on the internet brought me great joy.

-Buzzfeed showed me how old I am this week.  Kthx.

-This post by Steph about propagating rape culture.

-Making friends has been a theme in my life for the past few weeks and after a conversation with Teh German this week, I now understand why more than ever.  So this XKCD comic was fitting.

via

-I'm trying to talk myself down, but this line of Lisa Frank clothing is screaming at me.

-We Teh German eats a lot of nut balls.  These 9 recipes are tempting for me because recently I've considered trying to eat less sweets.

FÜNF

10 things that made me happy this week:

1. Meri and Phil's joy at going on a car ride.
2. Figuring out what we're going to be for Halloween and happening to get to the store when they are having a sale.
3. Finishing the Germ-erica flag project.
4. Getting to sleep in tomorrow.
5. Positive feedback on blog posts that I don't feel 100% confident about.
6. Silly little things that have made me smile.  Puns/jokes with Teh German, other blogger's posts about Disney.
7. Teh German telling me his secrets.
8. My toeS not hurting AS bad.
9. Knowing Teh MD-AR will be here next week at this time!
10. Wearing a hoodie to work today.  FALLLLLLLLLL!!!

Happy Friday, Gentle Readers.

Linking up with these ladies since it's FFFFRRRRRRIIIIIIDDDDAAAAYYYY!!!!!!!!!

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