Eagles and Freedom and Elections and Office Supplies

Remember when I mentioned an eagle made of Post-It Notes yesterday? I decided in honor of election day and our freedom and all that stuff I'd go ahead and make one. I'm pretty happy with the way it came out:

It's made entirely from Post-It Notes and Highlighters and Sharpies and other Name Brand Products. I am not quite certain what its prey is. Some options:

• The Styrofoam-and-folder-tab field mouse I mentioned yesterday
• The Daschpoopard from last week (but would you want to eat a toilet paper roll?)
• Sarah Palin. I'm really, really hoping it's Palin the eagle is after. That means when her ticket loses today she will disappear from the face of the planet. She will never become the Face of the Republican party and we'll never have to hear her say "Joe Six Pack", "Maverick", "Hockey Mom", or "You Betcha" ever again.
• Although I do like the impressions that Tina Fey does of Palin on SNL. How about a sketch where she gets picked up by a giant eagle made of offices supplies? I'll pitch it to Tina.

In other news: My camera is seriously on the fritz. (On the fritz? What is the fritz, anyways? Is it a street? An animal? A monthly hormonal cycle?) See the pictures below, which are supposed to show you how beautiful plain and simple preserved leaves are:

The first set of leaves looks diseased and second set looks like it was scanned by a computer with some sort of emotional issue. Try to look past those problems and see the beauty of nature. Try harder!
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My mom and I took a trip to town and parked the car and picked leaves last Saturday. Yes, we actually spent part of a day picking leaves. For fun. I am currently in the process of using silica gel to dry the leaves out. Silica gel is that stuff that comes in the little white package when you buy a new purse that says "DO NOT EAT!" Don't worry, I've only eaten a little of it. Tastes like Coconut. (My cat, not the hard-shelled fruit.)
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After the leaves stay in the gel, which is really a dry powder, for a couple days I put some incredibly poisonous-smelling stuff on them and it brings out their original color. I'm not quite sure what Mom and I will do with the leaves once I'm done preserving all of them, but they look gorgeous just sitting on a paper towel, so I doubt we could make anything less than beautiful out of them.
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Oh, also I wanted to say that yesterday my boss asked me to look through resumes for people to fill my position. They got hundreds of applicants. It is very, very weird looking through them, trying to figure out if they'd be good at this job and if I even care.
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Go Vote if you live in the United States and are going to vote the way I want you to!