what do we do with the trebuchet now? Let it sit in one of our garages? Break it down into pieces and reuse the wood in another building project? Now that its been rained on, its nearly unusable and actually really hard to take apart--luckily the paint stayed on or it would have been a nasty mess. Acrylic'll never let you down! (Unless your trying to scrub it out of our clothes later...whoops!)

Check it out here! It was pretty difficult editing and making this as the physics bears are not so great with technology. We worked really hard on it and for first-timers to the video making scene it could have been way worse. Enjoy!

I wish our trebuchet worked like it was supposed to. Cliche, but so true. I think today the biggest challenge was consistency. Every other trial was fired backwards, another, so far forwards that it flew over the target. One thing I would have worked on more? The sling. Everything was perfect except for the pouch, sling and hook thing. Cheers to a day sadly spent!

It was snowing. It really sucked. Do you know how your hands swell up and turn red from the onset of frostburn and when you run it under a tap even under cold water, it's really painful? I did that 4 times today. We did pseudo-calibrations yesterday, however it was even colder and darker and altogether horribler, so we did it today from 4pm until 7pm. Notice the dark videos where the ball a just barely perceptible, yeah it was a long evening. We made it up to 30m anyway. Yay-ish! It works! I sincerely hope that our minor tweaks will help us win a couple bonus marks, for style maybe, for distance, eh. Our trebuchet works, yet I still wish we had more time to work on it. It took so long to build it that there was very little time to see how it worked and make lots of adjustments and just make it better. A week to build a trebuchet? I don't know. It's functional, but not the best.

We only really bought a bucket which we broke during the testing, but it was a sad sad time. We spent a considerable amount of time drilling holes into it to make sure it was stable when swinging, threading the cord in a convoluted and equal weight distributing way and it was all undone with a tug of the release mechanism. I'm pretty glad that the swing-pouch thing worked but that counter weight is getting horrendous. We'll either make a bucket or we'll have to buy another one. Another long day.
On the bright side, we did get a picture of Kim running for the button. However the light was already changing for our side and it was pretty useless. Nonetheless:

Oh wait! That is what I'm going to write about! (And the grammer may be a bit terrible, but it's late, and I might as well write this now while it's fresh in the mind than later, so excuse any spelling errors, punctuation missing and phrasing issues). Except this is about the project, not my life (although with all the time spent on this trebuchet, it might as well be my life at this moment), but I will write about eating a lot, so forgive me for being such a glutton.
So, I thought I'd list what we did in chronological order (the time frames may be rather skewed however--ie. add an -ish to the end of all times listed). This corresponds to building day 3, by the way. I could probably write most of this in that page, but that's more for our teacher marking us on the building process and documentation (it is necessary). This is for fun! (and brownie marks :) [hopefully]). Here we go! The day replay (sort of, what I could remember of it, at least, and from my point of view, and therefore completely biased, full of my thoughts rather than general observations[looking for that click here]):

3:50--We left school.

4:00--We go to Kim's house and haul all the supplies from the trunk into the house.

4:30--We go to Rona (for the 5th time! We should've asked for a work space there, or made the trebuchet in a corner of the shop, just have that equipment and materials in easy reach) We pass the salty guy on the phone and wave (back again? he thinks. us: and again and again and again...). There was a new guy at the chop shop. Less personable, I'm afraid. Plus he charged us. Honestly, we got charged $2 to get the piece of wood cut! Rip off!  So we went to the car, through the super secret sidedoor labelled "Contractor" entrance...and we didn't have to pay.(There was actually no cash register there so we walked out) Of course the salty dude (I really need to ask him for his name, blog post remind me!) was at the counter, probably figured we were just getting stuff cut which we were but it was free the last 4(?) times. He asked for photos when we are finished (Maybe I should write that on the trebuchet. All the people who want a picture of the it by the end. If only I had the names...). Tempting fate, (why not? we do it everyday anyways, working with all those power tools and everything) we went back to the chop shop to get the rest of our wood cut. (Beauty of "convenient" entrances, they make criminals out of all of us) Once that was done, he asked us for the school project and with our affirmation said that we didn't have to pay! Really? (I'm not sure what he thought we were doing...fixing up our house?)

5:30--We went to Mcdonald's (of course). We had the regular (by now) and sat for a dinner-before-dinner (albeit consuming more calories in this meal than we would in a day, and not keeping the hunger at bay quite as long. Ah well, McDonald's fries can only be so perfect.).

6:00--At Kim's we drilled holes and Kim went psycho driller play-acting with the drill as if it were an M16 or something (we fear for her sanity) and we played with (used safely and responsibly) our new toy (very dangerous WMD), the power sander. We strung the counter weight up and worked on the sling and pouch thing that the tennis ball rests in. There some pictures of Kim and Srishti learning to "knit" (*cough* "sew") where they were attaching a lacrosse head to a piece of fabric. (I'll try to remember to put them up with this post, but I'll probably forget. Here's to useless reminders!)

7:30--We decided to head outdoors to test out the trebuchet. Obviously it wasn't completely, well complete, but it was tennis ball chuckable. So we loaded it up and released (photo evidence to come!) it towards the lamp-lit street...and flew backwards, hit Kim's car and landed in the bushes. Figured out, the stiching on the head was coming off and there was no tape for a quick fix so we headed over to Kim's boyfriend's house for tape.

8:10--On the road. I actually know it's this exact time b/c there's an actual photo taken from my car dash proclaiming this to be true (give or take 5min). To get to Kim's BF's house there was a lot of left turns, and Kim got out of the car on the red to go and hit the the crosswalk button (photo on the way). Really, they were the worst backseat drivers I've had. Yellow? Go! Go! Let's not wait! I think this has been a most memorable driving day (Wow, that's a really bad sentence. But you get the gist, whoever you are).

8:30--We get back and load up the trebuchet and the ball continues to fly backwards. Make plans for tomorrow and clean up.

8:45--Srishti and I vamoose. I drive her home and go home too.

10:00-10:30--Writing this blog post and update website.

What an extrodinarily long day. I spent 12 hours at Kim's house building the base of the trebuchet, but at least it's out of the way. Well, we went back to Rona's. And we met the old british dude who told us we were making the biggest trebuchet he's ever seen. Go figure! Turns out, the british guy, who cut our wood for us at the chop shop--for free!( Thank you so much! (Those cuts would've thrown us over our budget since every cut is a dollar!) )--is also a organic chemistry professeur at a local college, and I got into a whole discussion with him about what sort of sciences and maths would be neccessary in college even though they aren't required. Quadruple thank you now--since we've had to run back there four times to get our wood cut--and hopefully we will once again remeber to bring you pictures of our trebuchet. I don't know who you are however in the spirit of these blog post nows I will identify you now by the moniker of "Chop shop guy". I'm sorry you didn't give us your name, we didn't ask, nor did you ask for ours so we didn't have to go through the whole rigamarole of pleasantries and introductions, but we'll see you again (and I'm writing like you'll  see this though you probably won't) sooner rather than later (Monday, actually). Cheerio for now! (Is that politically correct? I hope so.)

Thank you for your help. You never gave us your name. We didn't ask for one. You said you wanted to see a picture of our trebuchet when we're done. Hopefully, this post will somehow remind us to do so if we happen to forget and also happen to stumble and reread this post. You most likely will never see this but, once again thank you!

Hey there! After spending a good 2 hours arguing, I mean discussing like all 
rational human beings. We got hungry. So we had our "chauffeur" run out and grab some Mcdonalds fries. Honestly, I can just imagine years from now with Mcdonlds there in the background. Snapshot 1: As kids playing in the jungle gym our parents relieved to have us out of their hair for a while. The
overseers commiserating over their communal tiredness. Snapshot 2: Hanging at Mickey Ds with friends. Birthdays. After movies. Lunch (though not everyday! Gotta watch the waistline!). Snapshot 3: as featured to the left,
sitting on the floor munching on fries attempting to prevent low blood
sugar as going without feeding usually makes a person quite testy.

Ok. So we handed in the first draft of our proposal on Wednesday and will be resubmitting it tomorrow. The due date is set for November 26. About a week away. Enough time to make a trebuchet and test it? We'll see.