December 29, 2011

December 29, 2011

My bruised cheekbone is still sore, but most of the purple color has moved down to my jaw.  When we got on the bus at 8:30 this morning, a lady said, “You look worse today.”  I said, “Thanks, that makes me feel good.”

The bus took us to Azusa where five of the floats were being decorated.  Leslie, who has worked on floats for 34 years, gave us a really good tour with a lot of information about the process of designing and building the floats.

There are 47,000 roses for just one of their floats, and one of our jobs was to fill small plastic tubes with water.  The roses will be put into the tubes on Sunday and stuck into the foam that has been sprayed on the floor of the float.  Some of us clipped the purple petals off statice plants.  These will be glued to the floats to look like purple paint.  There were buckets and buckets of statice stalks.

We learned that it takes 7 or 8 hours to move the floats to the staging area.  That will be done Sunday night.

As I was roaming around the construction area, I saw the University of Oregon football float.  The one for the other team was there, but I didn’t pay too much attention to it.  See, I have my priorities in line!

We returned to the campground in time for naps before Happy Hour and a catered dinner.  The food was excellent.  When we got back to the MH a nurse who is attending this gathering came to take the stitches out of my face.  That was great because our schedule is so busy we weren’t sure how we would accomplish it.