I don't often join in Kelly's craft projects, and it's even rarer for her to join in one of mine. But that's what happened last week when my company held a gingerbread house contest, and Kelly pitched in to help the team that I signed up for.

We decided to make a "north pole branch" of our Sarasota office. We reduced our building down to a 54" model and covered it with candy, frosting, and lights, complete with a gator and bobcat in the back yard.

















The prize wasn't as sweet as the last time we won, but it was still nice to be named first place after a lot of hours to assemble it all.


Four Replies to Gingerbread Office

Steve West | December 22, 2010
Those pushpin lights are very clever. Well done! I wanna be Elf of the Month.

Matthew Preston | December 23, 2010
WOW, just wow! I am beyond impressed.

Matthew Preston | December 23, 2010
And now for my joke response:

You should put the gator on his back because he froze to death.

Jackie Mason | December 24, 2010
[hidden by author request]


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Retrospection

If I recall the dates correctly, yesterday would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday. She lived to just shy of her 89th, despite a lifetime of chain smoking. I remember her as a sweet, generous woman who liked to laugh and teach me life's simple pleasures; a typical afternoon for us was playing crazy eights and baking cinnamon rolls. Go »

Spiders on Drugs

Thanks, Aaron. (link) Go »

Game Over

On paper, Game Over doesn't look promising: A vulgar, video-game-themed cartoon series on UPN that only lasted five episodes. But I rented it anyway, and somehow it managed to be entertaining and smarter than it needed to be, but maybe that was just the low expectations kicking in. I think the key to the show is that it actually respected its characters and cared for them as a family unit, instead of using them as empty vessels for punchlines (latter-year The SImpsons) or treating them with unmistakable contempt (Family Guy). Go »

Abe, Honest

During my visit to Springfield last weekend, Kelly and I went to a historical reenactment on the outskirts of town. Every small city that can do so builds shrines to its homegrown celebrity, but Springfield takes worship of Abraham Lincoln to new levels of ridiculousness. Besides the museum with the ordinary tools used by Lincoln during his early twenties, the historical community had the actual buildings he slept in and worked in. Go »

Random News

Russian reporter murdered by the state. When I observed to a Bulgarian friend that Russia seems to be sinking back into its old fascist state by breaking one inviolable law at a time, he remarked that it always was that way and always will be that way. Whatever things we may dislike about our Congress or President, thank goodness they don't murder us for saying so. Go »

R.I.P. Mom

You were so still in your bed when I could finally sit down beside you, a few hours after the facility notified me that you had died. I hadn't seen you be that peaceful in years, your eyes not scanning the room for clues, your hands not turning over each object in front of you for endlessly repeated examination. I whispered to you the most urgent and most precious things I had to say, the secrets and atonements and wishes foremost on my mind. Go »