What the heck is Nancy doing? SEWING!?

Well, sort of. I am sort of sewing sandbags together.


And stuffing them with empty water bottles...

And then sewing them closed.

See my makeshift needle and "thread?"

So, why, you might ask, am I sewing sandbags together and filling them with water bottles? Well, the answer is strange, but simple. I am building a boat. Dan and I are having a raft-building competition, and I am, of course, determined to win. Of course. Competition is my middle name.

We drink a lot of water here each day, and it just seems such a waste to throw out all our empty bottles. We've known for a long time that there must be good alternative uses for these things, but we've never taken the opportunity to explore further...until recently. We work on one of Saddam's many lakes, and we have to walk along a canal to get to our office. Building a water bottle boat has long been a fantasy of mine. What I mean by that is, the idea occurred to me last year, too, but I was too unmotivated to turn my pipe dream into a reality. That was before Dan decided he'd build a boat. Then I decided, "Game on!"

For a while, we thought we might build a bridge. Then I thought about building a cubicle/igloo around my desk. Then we circled right back around to "boat." Competition is fun, and we have nothing better to do with our spare time. Sad, I know.

Dan's technique is to use tape, strapping his bottles into blocks of seven. He's then going to tape those blocks together to build his raft. My technique employes the afformentioned sand bags, laced together in strings of five to form little mats. I'll then sew, I think, three of those mats together to build my bottom layer. Because I figure I'll need more buoyancy, I'll put at least two more mats on top of those three. Then I will add wood, for comfort and balance. And that's it. Right now, I have three complete mats, plus one that is stuffed but needs to be sewn shut. I'll finish that tonight.

Tomorrow, I will continue collecting empties to fill my final mat. I also need to pilfer more sandbags. Heehee. I know where to find hundreds of thousands of them. It takes a minimum of eight bottles to fill each bag, times five bags, which means I need 40 more bottles!!! I'd better get to drinking!!!

I'm not sure when the competition will take place, but it should be pretty soon. Maybe we'll make it into Stars and Stripes! Their offices are in our neighborhood, just a few trailers down. Haha. Anyhow, I'll let you know as the situation develops...

Later....Nancy