No, it's not turned into a bondage festival.  Although sometimes you feel a little beat up and spent afterwards
I will be back Monday evening, hopefully with some cool pictures and news of the garage kit world.
I imagine anyone reading this is likely going as well, but if you cannot attend, this is from another board:



[url=http://wonderfest08.paulystuff.com] WonderFest on the Web 2008 has gone live. Coverage of the festivities starts Friday, the 18th, and updates will occur throughout the weekend. Links to past WoW are live, if you want to whet your appetite with stuff from the past couple of years...

Check it out, and if you're not going, enjoy your weekend.  Be it watching the new Batman flick, enjoying the weather, bowling, lazer tag, or throwing washers in a hole in the ground

Thought I'd share what David sent for me to paint, the winner of the drawing.


It's been an entire week of goodies showing up on my doorstep.  Including my own copy of a kit of The Man Who Laughs and something else that demanded my attention.
I was going to spend the day Saturday painting up the Vampira statue I stripped previously to bring to Wonderfest, but I decided to work on this instead.
Since it's the only other thing I'm taking with me (and my recent AFM kit) I'll just leave with this picture.



(I love this guy!)

Two kits of The Lizard done for some gentlemen in Ireland.  Hope they like them!



This one's a little dark, I guess.






I've got a couple things I've painted up in a rush for Wonderfest.  So prepare for some crappy 4 hour long paint jobs, haha!

David Morrison!

Right on, you deserve it!  I'll send you my address. 




Congratulations! 
I'm curious to see what you send me.  I guess now I'll be the one in suspense   I'll post more about the winner later.  In the meantime, I want to thank everyone who chipped in, it's much appreciated. We were able to raise $583, which is pretty great!  That will totally be worth me painting something for, (well we'll see, hahaha) and people will continue to be able to replace all the things they need.  I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

But not quite Independence Day.

As of now, we've raised $470.  That far exceeds my initial expectations, however I'd like now to see it go over $500.  We're close as it is, and I'm sure we'll make at least that.  Some people have jumped in with some suprisignly generous amounts, and after what I saw the other day... man people can really use this money.
I didn't want to take pictures myself and appear as as a gawker, but I snagged this one elsewhere online.


Just blocks and block of that, everything that was in all these houses thrown out.  Actually most of what I saw was piled much higher than that.  I think by now they're tearing out the walls and appliances, windows... Such as in the  house I was in.  Everything ruined, even the floors I'm afraid. And the smell is quite incredibly bad.  Like if you've ever torn a shower out, and gotten a whiff of that damp nastyness under there, it's like that but wrap it in an armpit and top it with a turd.



These fellows should hopefully be done by the end of the week as well.  I'm actually not looking forward to cutting out hundreds of little pieces of paper with names on them.  Should have thought of another way!
There's got to be a simple program for it, but that would take all the fun out of it.

If you're here on the blog, you know that 24,000 of my fellow citizens have been rendered homeless as they're homes were flooded last week.  As they now return, those who are lucky enough to have their homes considered safe to re-enter, find incredible loss.  Many have lost nearly everything they have.





All around me there are cool fund-raisers and people coming together to help out.  At work all of our managers will be bald by the end of next week!

I thought I'd have my hand at it, and see if I could raise some money myself.  If these pictures aren't guilt-tripping you into donating some cash (hey, it's tough times for everyone) I'll give you another reason.

For Every Dollar you donate, you will get an entry in a drawing, and that winner can send me any figure kit or bust and I'll build and paint it.  (You can always strip it later )

All I ask is you pay for shipping!  Hey, I'm taking a chance here someone is going to send me a full size Predator or something ridiculous, hahaha.  And since I'm asking you to pay for shipping, I'm not putting any regional restrictions, this is open to anyone who wants to participate.

All of this money will go directly to the flood victims.  I have any number of resources available to me through work, and otherwise to make this donation.  I will even possibly video the drawing to make sure it's entirely random, if I had a web-cam I would do it live   But I think my reputation is such that you can trust me.  And I did exclude myself from entering...

But keep in mind, if you use paypal (which I'm assuming the majority of you will) they take a chunk out, but I think it's still cheaper than a stamp, so make it $1.25 or something. 8)

If you wish to throw a few bucks in an envelope, email me and I can send you my postal address.

I'll keep posting in this entry to let you know how much we're making, and if it exceeds my expectations I might consider some other ways to cheaply sell myself, who knows!  Maybe  I'll even let you know if someone's making a large donation too, so if you want to even things out....  But I won't tell you who it is! >8)


Ok, I guess it's time for the details.

Paypal donations can be made to:
zombi@mchsi.com

Make sure you enter flood, or flood money, so I can keep it sorted, and include your name.  Or you can shoot me an email at either that same address, or info@garagekitzombie.com

I will keep accepting donations until July 4th at midnight (the 5th).  By 12:00 Noon Central Time on the 5th, I will post the winner.

To those of you that frequent other boards, pass this around!  I've got a post on The Clubhouse, and I'll be posting on the Amazing Figure Modeler Board, but other than that I can't think of other places to post.  The Statue Forum would be great, but I don't think they allow solicitors.    So if you can't donate monetarily, mess up the odds for those who are by spreading this as far as you can think of! >8)

Thanks for all the interest already, before I even made it official.  I hope that this is successful, and I can't wait to see what I get to paint!

Keep watching this space!

Just a quick little update.  Starting to paint the two Lizard kits, here is a really un-flattering picture.



I'm going to mix in some colors into the green, to break him up a little, but I'm not sure how far to go.  I don't want to just paint him like some regular lizard, then I suppose he wouldn't look like The Lizard.  But I can't just paint him green, or at least a solid green.
That's all for now, just wanted a kit-related update. And also, if you're into super-heroes and think what I've done so far is awful, or if I should really really just paint him green, let me know!

This morning there was a call out for sand baggers on KCRG.com, "Needed Immediately"
There was a good turnout, and a good sense of community.
I took a few pictures, but I handed my camera off to a kid and asked him if he could take some pictures for me.  He happily obliged, and he did a great job! (His mom helped too.) Those pictures are obvious (the ones with me in them, haha), and if you don't know who I am, I'll let you guess which one is me.

Getting instructions



Pretty ingenius how they were getting the sand in the bags.



This kid was great, as a matter of fact there were a bunch of children there that were kicking ass!






Then we chain-ganged the bags into a loader






I knew it couldn't have been the McDonald's that smelled that good.  Someone brought out a grill and some food for everyone.  Lots of businesses are donating sandwiches, water, whatever they can to help the effort.


Junior Garage Kit Zombie Blogger.
(Thanks little dude.)

Finally got a chance to get out and see things for myself today.  It's a little humbling, and freaky.  The National guard was out, and the river is so high now the closest I could get was mostly residential areas.
However, a friend was considerably more resourceful than I, and got on his bicycle and took some great pictures from the interstate.  Almost got himself arrested in the process.
















While I was watching the water creep into the housing areas, these are the shots I mentioned before. They really help show the extent and scope of it all.
Photos courtesy of Shannon Blazek
(way to go, man)



Railroad bridge to Quaker Oats is out.  It looks like they tried to weigh it down with cars to keep if from getting rushed away.
(No Crunch Berries for you!)















I suppose that's enough bandwidth for now. Tomorrow the river is supposed to peak.