After a long hard night of grocery shopping, Dollhouse watching, and beer brewing, Krythe and I returned to the apartment. Around 1:00 am, Krythe recalled that it was now officially Pi Day, and we decided to go to House of Pies at 3:14 am to celebrate with pancakes, coffee, and most importantly of all, pie.

When we got there, the place was packed. It was probably the busiest I’ve ever seen a restaurant at three in the morning, and it was pretty diverse, too. Cops and stoners, cowboys and urbanites, teachers and students. Pi day couldn’t be THAT popular, could it? Probably not. The clubs just closed, the drunks were done driving, those 3:00 am munchies were hitting, and the rodeo was in town.

After a minute or two, we got a table in the smaller side room near what turned out to not be a pretty average group of five (the outspoken Mac geek, the socially irrepressible and obnoxious guy, the tell-it-like-it-is blonde, the possibly drunk flirtatious extrovert, and of course, the token black man). When we first sat down, they were talking about something I can’t recall, other than that I wouldn’t repeat it if I remembered.

They were fairly entertaining, and so Krythe and I didn’t really talk much for a while, aside from ordering pancakes, drinks, and pie. That’s when it happened. I accidentally made eye contact with the obnoxious one, and he drug is in in that awkward way that loud obnoxious strangers do when they notice you paying attention to them.

Now the flirtatious extrovert turns around and starts talking to us, even though the Mac geek doesn’t seem too happy about it. Mostly harmless stuff, like what we do, where we go to school. She starts laughing in an “oh crap” kind of way. She teaches at one of the local colleges. Interesting. She asks me what I want to do when I “grow up” and I mention that I’m interested in wine making and beer brewing. Something about Saint Arnold’s brewery comes up, and then she asks the question of the night: how old are you?

Now she’s embarrassed. After turning red and turning around, the group starts talking about me and how I’m like, “14 years old” (which isn’t true for those who don’t know me). Krythe and I eat our food, and I ignore requests from the obnoxious guy to, “whip it out so we can measure it”, because apparently if it’s big and I’m young it shouldn’t matter.

As the group is leaving, the flirtatious extrovert turns around again, looks at Krythe, and says, “make him grow up!” before grabbing onto the unhappy looking Mac geek and walking out the door. We soon got our pies, took one bite each, and admitted defeat at the hands of our food.

As we left the still packed bubble of diversity, I wondered to myself if the flirtatious extrovert would wake up in the morning and think, “oh, crap, what did I do last night”, or would she remember that young guy she mistakenly hit on? Could it ever be – a teacher and me? Extremely unlikely.

Too bad. She was cute.

Some of you may be wondering why I built a dinosaur out of cardboard. For those of you willing to just accept it for what it is, I thank you. The rest of you will probably never see the fun in it, and I’m sorry.

The first time I saw a cardboard dinosaur, I knew I would build one on my own some day. I don’t remember the name of the guy who did it, but it was built at an event called First Night Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs some time between 1998 and 2000. I don’t have any pictures of his, but I can assure you it was more impressive than mine, towering inside one of the downtown YMCA’s gyms.

The method for building this beast is quite simple, and I may have over done it a bit with the PVC pipe and duct tape (though to get it to stand up if it’s floppy, it is necessary to use some sort of stabilizing device, like hanging it from the ceiling). Because the PVC pipe “base skeleton” was all built with trial and error, and there’s no real right way to support it, I’m not including that in the instructions.

Andrew’s Five Steps to Dinosaur Building

1. Buy a small wooden skeleton set that you would like to make life size or larger.

   

2. Go dumpster diving for large sheets of cardboard. Or if you don’t feel comfortable swimming in trash on a hot summer day, you could try asking stores that sell refrigerators and other large objects for boxes, or even looking for free boxes on the free section of craigslist.

3. Acquire an overhead projector, or build something similar. I got lucky because my mom is a teacher, and the principal said we could borrow it for the afternoon.

4. Once you’ve marked where your projector is placed to prevent movement and scale changes, attach your cardboard to the wall, project your pieces onto it, and trace their shadows with markers. Also, find some way to label your pieces, because I forgot to, and I don’t think the ribs and vertebrae made it to their proper places.

   

5. Cut them out and assemble! Note that cutting shapes out of cardboard with a box cutter isn’t fun, so if you have a skill saw or something, this is a good time to get it out (and maybe even build the dinosaur out of wood)!

   

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a giant cardboard dinosaur. It’s up to you to decide how best to put it to use. Mine made stops at a few parties as a decoration before it went to the warehouse in the office I work at. If you build your own, I’d like to hear about it. Also, I’m not responsible if you injure yourself somehow in the process of cutting cardboard or jumping into dumpsters. Thanks.