Pick UR Own

Ever had a burning desire to get up early on a holiday, drive into the country, and then pick apples off of trees – apples that you then have to pay for instead of getting paid to pick them?……We don’t either, but that’s exactly what we did last week.

Why did we do it? Because if we didn’t help pick the apples then Janice said we wouldn’t be able to eat any of the apple cobbler she was going to make that night. Actually, it turned out to be kinda fun…a little bit. When we got to the farm the first thing we got to do is pet a couple of dogs that were eating husks of corn. Then we got baskets and walked to the apple trees. Jimy had no idea what he was doing. He thought the more ripe the apple was the better the apple, and was picking the worst apples you’ve ever seen. Eventually we had to ask him to stop helping.

Eventually we picked 2 whole baskets of apples! The hardest part was climbing up the trees to get to them though, and when we were finished we sure were tired. Falling out of the tree a couple of times wasn’t fun either. Another thing we found out is that there’s a bunch of different kinds of apples. I can’t remember all the apple names now, but I think we were picking Jonathan apples.

Neither JImy or I want to be migrant farm workers when we grow up, but we sure were feeling good about the day when we were eating that apple cobbler with vanilla ice cream later that night!

Our Haiku – Volume 9

Black dots in the sky,
grow larger as they whistle.
People hide in fear.
-Jacky

Making a Ukulele – Part 3

Well, it took us a while, but we’ve finally gotten back to working on our ukulele kit. As you may recall, the next step was to sand the neck even with the fingerboard, and to mark off the bridge placement.

Sanding the neck was the easy part. The only issue was that after sanding the neck even it left flat spots on the sides of the neck. No big deal, we just had to round off the flat spots with sandpaper, although this did take us awhile.

Marking off the bridge placement was more difficult. Following the instructions in the kit, and taking the advice of the forum folks at ezfolk.com, we measured and marked where the bridge will be glued to the body. According to what we read on the forum, the directions with the kit are incorrect. You can go here to get the correct measurements, at least we hope they’re correct!

Next, we taped thread into the 1st and 4th string positions on the bridge and the nut, and lined the threads evenly across the sound hole. A word of caution on this step, don’t drink “special wine” before trying to line up the threads.

The final step was marking around the bridge with a pencil, and then covering that area with a piece of tape. This was done so that Grandma wouldn’t accidentally paint where we need to glue the bridge to the ukulele body.

We took it over to Grandma’s on Sunday, and she said she’d have it back to us in a couple of weeks!

The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins

What was Mr. Spock thinking of?

(Caution – this video may give small children nightmares)

General Laziness

Well, Jimy and I are both in a summer time slump I guess. Here’s the list of things we had planned to accomplish this summer.

1. Lay down the vocal track for our “America’s Got Talent” song.
2. Post a Haiku update.
3. Clean our room.
4. Go to a Washington Nationals game.
   
5. Position and glue the bridge to our ukulele so we can send it to Grandma’s to have her paint it.
6. Expose the evil amongst us as we promised on 3/17/2006.
7. Resolve Middle East peace.
8. Change toothpaste brands.
9. Post about Jacky’s Reid Fleming comic books.
10. Learn how to juggle.

As you can see, our completion ratio is not that good. We need to get off our lazy butts and get some things accomplished!

One thing we did do recently was help out our friend Ed by recording a soundtrack for his latest eyespot.com cell phone video. Click the image below to see the video and listen to our work!

Making a Ukulele – Part 2

Now that we have the neck glued on to our ukulele, it’s time to get serious. Next up, glue the position dots in the fingerboard and glue the fingerboard to the neck. As we started this, we realized that the pre-drilled holes were way to small for the position dots to fit in, so we would have to borrow Ed’s cordless drill and enlarge the holes. This also required us to also borrow Ed’s micrometer, which he agreed to lend us after we assured him we wouldn’t break it like some of the other stuff we’ve borrowed from him.

After we enlarged the pre-drilled holes, and glued in the position dots, we dilegently sanded down the position dots to be flush to the fingerboard as the instructions said. However, this also sanded off the finish that was on the fingerboard, so I guess we’ll have to evenly sand the finish off of all the frets.

Here’s a photo of Jimy posing like Vanna White next to the finished fingerboard!

The next step was to apply the wood glue and secure the fingerboard to the ukulele’s neck. The instructions showed using pieces of wood and rubberbands to do this, but we decided to use c-clamps. After it was clamped, we just needed to wait for it to dry overnight. Jimy was so excited that I knew he would have a hard time getting to sleep.

Well…its the next morning, and Jimy and I removed the clamps and tape to check out how the glueing went. It looks pretty good, just a little off center! Hope that doesn’t mess it up to much. We can always sand the top of the finger board even before we glue the nut on though.

The next thing to do is sand the neck even with the fingerboard and mark out where the bridge will be glued, then its off to Grandma’s to get the “custom” paint job!

Oh…and Ed, the micrometer lock wheel was already broken before we used it.

Making a Ukulele – Part 1

Zelda came down with a sore throat, so we haven’t been able to lay down the vocal tracks to our rendition of Afternoon Delight yet, so we decided to take advantage of the time and do something we’ve always wanted to do — build our own ukulele!!!

We broke open our piggy bank and sent $22.95 to Grizzly.com for an awesome build-it-yourself ukulele kit.

After a trip to the store for some glue and stuff, we got started right away on building it. So far we’ve got it sanded and the neck glued on. It already looks great!

Grandma doesn’t know it yet, but we’re going to have her paint a cool hula dancer and palm tree on it before we put the finish on.

We’ll update here as we continue building our dream uke!

Our America’s Got Talent Act

Jimy, Zelda and I have entered the America’s Got Talent contest, and our audition is coming up real soon. We’re going to perform one of the best songs ever recorded, “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band!

We just laid down the instrumental track for the song, and you can get a sneak listen to it by clicking the link below.

Afternoon Delight

We’re going to work on the vocal track this week. I don’t see how we can’t win the contest.

Our Haiku – Volume 8

The darkness descends,
a bright light beckons ahead.
Drifting to the light.
-Jimy

What Ever Happened To Quality TV?

They just don't put great shows like this on TV anymore…