Paper Dinosaur Fail Etc

Yesterday I went to a Young Maker's meeting for my Young Makers' group. It's a kind of a competition, but there are no rules! You can make anything, pretty much anything at all and it qualifies. In fact our teen group was split into two separate groups. One consists of Lexie, and our friends Emily and Megan and the other, mine, consists of me of course, and then my friends Brenten, Derek and Zach. The girls are planning to make a nice sized cake in the form of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. My group is fixing up a go cart and mounting a second seat as well as possibly an airsoft gun. So this was our first meeting, just our group and we decided that the motor bike we'd originally had in mind was a bit more of a project than we had anticipated and went, instead, with the go cart. I rode there with Zach and his grandpa, so it was just the four of us (It was at Brenten's house) for awhile. After some rummaging around for tools and other interesting things we weren't getting far. About that time Derek arrived and we decided to look for a new spark plug. It's quite an adventure trying to find anything in that place, let me tell you! I doubt there's anything they DON'T have in there! Derek even noticed an old Ford. We found not one, but a whole bowful of spark plugs and brought them back. Right away after he put in the new spark plug he was able to get it started. We were all a little surprised I think, but definitely quick to grasp it and Derek insisted on trying it first. He drove it around a few times and then returned and Brenten took over. Brenten went nuts on the turns, skidding around and spraying up rocks, making sharp turns and finally returning. On of the rims had come out of the tires! Derek and I approached, examining the minor damage. "Well how'd you do that?!" Derek asked. "Are you kidding?" I replied, "Did you just SEE him?" "Thaaanks for your suport, Halie." Brenten said, grinning and shaking his head. Zach didn't want to get on at all. Something tells me he doesn't plan to either - Zach is very safety oriented, especially with vehicles. And I opted out as well, for that time anyway. We found a car seat, which Brenten compliantly tried to buckle himself into - notice the "tried". Yes he was a bit big. Brenten and Zach are both awfully... I'll say "tall" but I was very tempted to put "skyscraperish"!! Derek is closer to my own height, in fact we are pretty nearly the same height, which I find ironic considering how close our birthdays are. He was born exactly two days after me. Anyways towards the end I recieved a text from my mom asking if I wanted to go to a concert with some of my other friends, the Abshiers. I was definitely excited for that so we rushed home, and I barely got in a quesadilla and changed before we were running out the door. We met them in the parking lot of a fast food place and Lex and I piled into their car. The long ride up was filled with Christian in the front seat blasting a Relient K CD. It was at a church and upon looking around we discovered the entrance was a side door to this church which led into a room. The room wasn't really small, it was just unnexpectededly small for a concert and not what we'd been expecting. It filled as we entered and we stood near the front. Couches and a few chairs lined the walls, but whenever a new band got up they shouted encouargingly to get everyone up to the front. First we watched Blood and Water, then Jacob Thomas, News From Verona, Adhara and Jaxx. We found the concert had accidentally been overbooked because they hadn't been sure which bands would show, but a lot had showed up! Claire, Maddy, Christian, Alyssa, Lexie and I went out into the parking lot for a little while as Jaxx started. It was kind of stuffy in the concert room, lots of sweaty bands now sitting in their booths lined along the walls of one half of the room, the crowd of people and of course the band up front, playing and sweating away. My favorites were probably Blood and Water and News From Verona. Adhara was interesting. It was an all girls' band but they were each wearing an extreme style, and yet managing to differ in their extremes. The drummer was wearing a black T, had dyed her hair black and shaved it short and spiked it. The singer looked like a short Avril Lavigne wannabe, her hair bleach blond with brown under and a few fake looking pink streaks and the back looked like she was wearing a bump it. Her jeans were pale and washed out and the shirt tight fitting. One guitarist was asian and she had dyed her hair an unnatural flaming red with that pinkish tint. Her guitar was bright red too. The other guitarist was the least extreme, she actually kind of reminded me a bit of myself except for the fact that she was shorter and way skinnier. She wore a lot of black and dark makeup which contrasted with her glaring white V shaped guitar. Their music wasn't even christian which struck me as odd among all the christian bands. In the parking lot a couple of the bands were chilling after they'd finished playing. News From Verona and Blood and Water especially. They were too funny, hanging out and talking to the fans, kidding around, they took turns picking up these huge orange traffic cones and yelling through them. The first time it happened one band member startled another completely by standing behind him with the larger end of the cone directed at his back and screaming through. There were was this big wall lined with humongous cement tubes that several of the band members and fans kept climbing around in. News From Verona was going to Chili's and invited us, among other fans to come along. So we waited until all of the bands had finished playing and then left, the band in their big touring van with a trailer and then two carfuls aside from ours. We all got in the car and started driving, following the three cars ahead since we didn't know where it was. We were having a great time now, talking and joking and laughing. We noticed right away, some fireworks being fired a ways away. "What are those for??" asked Claire. "I don't know!" I replied, watching tentatively. After a pause I grinned, "Oh they're for us," I said. "Yeah!" Agreed Claire, "For us going to Chili's with News From Verona!" At Chili's no one was really hungry, it was about nine PM by now and so we just had water and ordered appetizers. There wasn't enough room in the place for everyone to sit together so the band members periodicaly switched around and sat at different people's tables. Alyssa, Christian then Claire sat on one side of our six chaired table and Maddy, then Lexie, then me on the other. So whenever a band member came to sit with us they pulled a chair from another table into the walkway and sat at the head of our table! We had a great time and Claire, Christian and I competed, taking out our steak knives and cutting the small paper slips that originally held our silverware together into small shapes. Claire had started it and they began doing dinosaurs. Mine failed miserably, Claire's somewhat resmbled one, but if she asked someone who hadn't been witness or told they always guessed it was a cow. Christian's looked like a guy... Wih a tail... And mine was worst of all, misshapen and odd. The band members were really funny and kidded around with us. They were really down to earth and we had a great time. The Abshiers had already met them several times apparently. So we just chilled and had a great time and didn't leave until 11:30! Time really flew! As we left the building though we became aware of a prank Alyssa and a few others had played on the band, News From Verona. They took window pens and wrote on the windows "Come back to YC soon!!" and on the other "WE HEART JUSTIN BEIBER!" And one other joke that's hard to explain. But we got hugs all around and got in our car and as we were pulling out we kind of stalled to see their reactions. Then one of the guys ran out and jumped in front of our car that wasn't moving very fast due to our stalling. We stopped and he ran over to my side of the car, flings open the door and hugs me, the climbs in over me and hugs everyone else in the car! Christian held his hand up from the front seat for a high five and the guy said "Oh come on Christian! Give a real hug! Don't be a wimp! HA! You tried to get away with just a high five!" and hugged him. Then we burst out, unable to hold in our laughs any longer. "Did you see your van? Go look at your van!!!" I jumped out of the car, into the street and he quickly followed at a run. "OUR VAN? WHAT DID YOU DO TO OUR VAN??! YOU DORKS!!! And he ran over. He stood in front of the less offending side, reading "Come back to YC soon!!!" And smiled. "Look at the other side!" shouted Christian, grinning back evilly. He ran to the other side, out of sight and we heard clearly "AUUGH! OH! Ohhh ho ho! NICE." He walked back out into view shaking his head at us. We left laughing hysterically. The drive home was so much shorter and about halfway Claire and Maddy, unable to take another replay of the Relient K CD, revealed to their brother the two giant CD cases beside his seat and he obligingly put on a Disciple CD instead, after a playful threaten to put on another Relient K CD that was in the case. We pulled up to an Applebee's where my mom was somewhere around midnight and my mom drove us home. I fell into bed, glancing at my clock to see the 1 AM. We'd driven into our driveway at about 12:50. Wowza!! It was a reeeeally great time!