altivo

From the local county newspaper:

The biggest ride at the Lake in the Hills Summer Sunset Festival didn't require a wristband or tickets. All that was needed was plenty of room, a crowd, and a few good watermelons.

The 22-foot-tall, watermelon-hurling trebuchet was hard to miss Saturday at Sunset Park. The only entrant in the Melon Propellin' competition, the catapult-like device sent the bulbous fruits flying up to 390 feet.

"If it breaks on the first try, we're sorry," said Shelby Hauck, who with coworkers and fellow plumbers Ben Keirl and Mark O'Connor founded team "Drainsurgeons" while commuting between jobs at work.

The device required eight people to build and took more than three months of planning and construction before it was ready to throw a melon skyward...

But no doubt these people would call fursuiting, gaming, and other furry pursuits a "waste of time," "childish," and "pointless."

In other news, back to work today. It took most of the day to find any of my desktop. It was supposed to rain today, so it didn't, and was perversely bright and pleasant in contrast to yesterday, the holiday, when it was not supposed to rain but did so all afternoon and all night last night. Oh, and we don't waste watermelons by chucking them through the air and cheering when they splatter. We eat them, which I find much more pleasant.