I'm sitting here, avoiding testing for a moment as I sip my water and fight my headache, trying to think up an early cheerful holiday memory for this fine holiday season.
Mmm, the Shadow cat under the tree, got that one.
There is the simple image of my Grandparent's christmas tree, every year pretty much the same. A natural tree caked with white artificial snow top and bottom, inside and out, so it is like a tree in a plastic coating. What a bizarre way to treat a tree!
Later, they graduated to white plastic trees, to save the trouble of coating a real tree.
But really, no specific Christmas holiday memories are coming to me. Maybe I'll think of one later.
I have a Halloween memory, though.
My aunt was putting on a Halloween party. I was thirteen and a bunch of adult-type people I didn't know were milling around outside doing adult party-type stuff. Whatever.
The really neat thing, though, was I got the go-ahead to do stuff to spiff up the decor. I had a gearmotor laying around... and a rubber mold of my hand that I had made earlier that year... hmmm.
I combined the gearmotor with the rubber hand, dug a hole in a quiet corner of the yard, and wired it up. The result? The hand clawing at the earth, trying to escape it's musty grave.
Dodi (my aunt) later told me that, for the people who saw the prop, it was a hit! Yay me!
That prop, the first one I ever built, is now documented in my Animatronics book.