Paper Cuts

My inner Martha Stewart got a chance to come out and play the other week when I attempted to build a satellite dish out of paper. The impetus for the arts and crafts session was to remedy my home wireless reception. Which was turning out to be not much reception at all.

Upon finding out that I'd somehow landed a project to be edited at home, I cleared out the storage room behind our garage to use as my studio. Bought shelves for the boxes that would need to move elsewhere. Bought some decent speakers, a desk and a chair. And because the garage isn't connected to the house, but is not too far away, I assumed that the wireless signal would have no problem reaching me back there. Wrong.

I spent a few days with erratic wifi signal before I started looking online for a solution. I didn't want to spend the money on a wifi booster, but even more I didn't want to deal with Best Buy or wait for a shipment, so I searched the internet until I found a homemade solution: A satellite dish made out of paper.

The website contained detailed instructions for printing the satellite pieces from your home printer, cutting on the lines and folding specific areas together, pasting some aluminum foil on the back, and dropping it onto the antenna of the router. Simple.

Except I neglected to read the part about printing it on card stock. So I thought of the next best thing and attempted to paste the pieces onto card stock. Nevermind the fact that I could have just printed it over again onto some card stock, my inertia was rolling too fast to do the sensible thing.

I got out the x-acto knife and cutting board and started cutting the cardstock along the lines of the paper. So far so good. Slice along this line, slice along that. Along one of the longer lines, the slicing was going pretty fast, and the knife ran off the cutting board, off the table, and into my leg. Stabbed me right in the upper thigh.

Because the kiddies and the wife were already asleep, I had to keep the pain noises to a minimum. And because of the ridiculousness of the situation - me sitting in the kitchen bleeding while executing an arts and crafts wifi satellite - I had to keep the laughing to a muffled chuckle. I found a bandage, and soon I found the wifi reception bars in my studio at full strength. Success.