Hanging with Mr. K

So this blog entry isn't really about me, its about my roommate's bf James doing something that Austin would have absolutely loved. I wrote earlier about our trip to the Bham Highland Games and the blessing of the ale. Well we were all pretty inspired by that, but none so much as James who decided that he just had to build one of the "firkins" or wooden barrel's that he saw there. The only problem was that he had no idea how to actually build a wooden barrel and so he did the only thing that made sense in a situation like this, he called my dad. Now my dad is not actually a cooper (the term for a person who builds barrels apparently) but he has some mad woodworking skills that all my male friends seem to find impressive and Austin was no exception.

For those of you who were fortunate enough to take AP Calc with Mr. Boogar at Marina, you know all about the awesome project that he assigns over Christmas break where you have to spend all your free time assembling tiny pieces to create some object that matches a bunch of crazy calculations that you did first. Clearly, I remember a lot about it. My partner for this project was Kiersten and Austin's was Cole (big shocker, right?). Because Kiersten and I are awesome, we decided to take on the challenge of making our project out of wood. This worried the boys who couldn't stand that thought that ours would be better and so they decided that they would do the same. The only problem was that none of us actually had any woodworking abilities so my father was fortunate enough to be asked to help. Kiersten and I made two footballs with stands, an amazing one for USC and a not-so-amazing one for UCLA. The boys went a very different route and decided to make a wooden ship. With all of the goofing off and bonding they did with my dad, this meant they spent pretty much our entire Christmas break in my garage. Their project turned out amazing and to finish it off they christened it "the Mister K" and even attached a flag with my dad's face on both sides. It could even be raised and lowered with a pulley. Talk about showing off!

It didn't take long for James to realize the same thing that Austin did, that my dad was pretty awesome. He gave "Greg" a call, set up a play date, and did whatever it is that they do in the man cave. The whole situation just reminded me so much of Austin and Cole working with my dad during high school that I had to share. The barrel should be complete after tomorrow so James better start thinking up his next wood project!

 

It's no pan flute but it's pretty cool I guess.