a very jesse christmas: a photo essay

A tradition that I hold very near and dear to my heart every year (and by every year, I mean twice in college and then not again until today) is wrapping doors for Christmas. How festive is that? Every time you open your door, it is like opening a present. A big, unexciting present. Oh yay, you got me the things I didn't clean up from yesterday. How did you know?

So, today, I set out to buy some wrapping paper (one of two necessary ingredients, the other being a door) and, several hours later, got to work. The endeavor was, what's the word, stressful. Let's start at the end and work our way backwards. Here is the final result:

See? Blurry and far away and in a small frame, it is quite lovely. Those are Christmas lights, by the way, not a [insert funny thing]. I couldn't actually come up with something funny. I had: black chocolate cake with sprinkles; Jackson Pollock painting; 99 multicolored luftballoons; clown panties; that gum wall from that one picture on the internet. Also, if I were a better blogger, I would have linked that last word to the actual picture. Let's see if I can find it. Oh, here it is. Yeah, that's gross.

Also, on that post-it is a frog I drew. For work. No lie.

There were four issues with this project.

Issue #1: the tape dispenser.

Long gone was that little plastic thingy that separates "tape dispenser" from "plastic bowl with a roll of tape in it." Improvised solution proved to be a failure:

 
So, the plan of standing on a chair, holding the entire roll of paper which I have begun to wrap around the top third of the door, trying to rip off a piece of tape from the tape dispenser plastic bowl with a roll of tape in it turned out to be a poor one. In cahoots with Issue #1 was Issue #1.2: the phone interviewee, with whom I had earlier left a message, calling back...

...which led to Issue #1.3: trying to remove the stray piece of tape that flopped onto the already set paper while the phone was ringing.

Issue #1.3 remains unresolved, largely due to Issue #2.

Issue #2: general incompetence.

Photo Unavailable. 

Issue #3: doorknobs of irregular shape (i.e., not round). 

Doorknobs are part of the door-wrapping process that give it that extra bit of fun. Smarter folk than I could probably mathematically figure out where on the paper to cut a correctly shaped hole in which to insert the doorknob. I went with the "wrap over it and deal with it later" philosophy. Much like the "I'll go to sleep now and finish studying in the morning" philosophy and the "I'm going to the gym later so I am going to eat a bunch of pizza now" philosophy, it ended with both disappointment and the need to cut an amorphous hole in a large piece of paper. It also ultimately ended with some patchwork. 

...and...

The major effect of Issue #3 will probably be seen in the near future, as the little patches flake off when the door is opened and closed. Issues 1 through 3 had all been dealt with when we arrived at Issue #4. 

Issue #4: not enough paper. 

The final wrapping layer resulted in this: 

So, I came up with this solution:

Done! Good thing I bought two rolls of paper!


So, God bless us, every one.




















Bonus content! The descending quality of hinge lineup:

Top!

Middle!

Bottom piece I cut while sitting in my office chair rather than get up!

Merry Christmas!
PS - I tweet now! Tweet me! @tweetjessehall