Torture
I have discovered an alternative way our military personnel can interrogate prisoners in Abu Gahrib. Instead of stripping them naked and have dogs bark at them, make them stuff gift bags for a race. Wow what fun that is.
Ali has been collecting stuff over the last 6 months to be put into gift bags that are handed out to the runners when they register. She was planning on making 300 bags. She was talking about inviting people out to our place to help stuff the bags but wound up not doing it, making the assumption that they would not want to come out to our place on a Thursday night. Well that proved to be a large tactical miscue.
Ali brought all of the stuff out that was to be put into the bags and stacked it on our kitchen island, totally filling it. I knew she had a lot of stuff to go into the bags but didn’t realize it was this much. There were 12-15 items AND 12 pamphlets/pieces of paper to go into each bag. So we started the process. Our original technique was for us both to grab a bag and walk around the island picking up one of each item and depositing it in the bag. It only took a couple trips around until I was fed up with the process. I immediately deemed it as inefficient. The problem was when you were grabbing the pamphlets/paper they were constantly sticking together so you were stopped for an extended period of time each time you added one piece of paper to the bag. So I came up with plan B. I would gather all the paper stuff in one area and be solely responsible for putting it together in one big bundle that Ali could simply grab and stuff in the bag. While I did this Ali would continue going around grabbing the other items.
This method was definitely faster but not any less monotonous. It was just taking way too long, we needed at least a half dozen people or more doing this. But we didn’t have a half dozen people so we had no choice but to just grind through the process. Making the paper packets was not fun by any means. After standing in one spot for an extended period of time putting stuff together my shitty knees were swelling and aching, so I pulled up one of the bar stools and tried doing it from a seated position. That was ok for awhile but soon trying to reach across the table with my arms extended time and time again made my shoulders burn. So for awhile I alternated between standing and sitting, using each method until the discomfort reached levels enough to make me switch. After 2 hours of paper pulling neither was working for me so I picked up all the paper and moved it to the ottoman and I sat on the sofa. Soon those angles caused my back to ache so I moved to the floor, then my ass hurt so I moved to the chair. You get the idea, it was just crazy. I threw in the towel a little after 11. After 3 hours of busting ass we only had half of the bags done. It was frustrating.
I showered and went to bed. Ali stayed up until who knows when working on more details. I took some pictures of what our kitchen looked like this morning, like I said it was pretty amazing.
Ali told me our neighbor came over and helped knock out a bunch of shit this morning which is a huge help. Tomorrow morning we have to get up insanely early in order to get to the race site by 5:30 or so. Then on Sunday we are hosting a Super Bowl party for a few of our friends. So after an exhausting Saturday we will have to turn right around and get the house cleaned up and do party prep. It will certainly be one of the busiest weekends on recent record but probably in the end, one of the most satisfying as well. Hard work is almost always looked back on with pride, right?