One thing definitely in the “pro” column for our move is Bruce’s new team at work, a really good bunch of guys with good senses of humor. Google has micro-kitchens in each building with a ridiculous assortment of snacks and drinks. They offer some healthy stuff — mostly bowls of fruit, each with J. Peterman Catalog-worthy descriptions. Here’s an example.
For a while now, Bruce has wanted to do a papier mache fruit with some resemblance to his colleague Todd’s head and leave it in a basket in the micro-kitchen. It finally happened a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t have many pictures of the construction, but it was a typical papier mache project in that he started with a balloon, which he tried to be roughly the size of Todd’s head. Oh, and here’s Todd. (Bruce tacked up a picture of him in the garage for inspiration.)
The early stages were not without mishaps. Namely, in trying to quick dry a couple layers, he put the balloons in the oven on a low temp. Seemed reasonable. But the balloon expanded in the heat and started ripping the newspaper. Lesson learned.
Otherwise, I think it went pretty smoothly. By the time I started taking pictures, he had already spray-painted them orange.
He added some green to make them less uniform and add some rustic fruitiness.
He added black to one of the stems …
… but everyone liked it better without that effect, so he stopped.
The other step was the mock description card. Bruce wrote the text and I formatted it to look like the sample he’d brought home.
He took the fruit, the card and a basket over to his office in the evening and set it all up.
By the time he got in the next morning, word of the new fruit in the micro-kitchen had traveled quickly and everyone immediately knew the culprit.