Job's Done (in the WC peon voice)

I met the president of Mali today.
We're standing next to the Butterfly, which was presentable!! Barely. Wow, it took a long of work and some serious cunning/refusal to accept reality to pull it off on time. After not being able to remove the mold on Monday, I nearly lost hope. Then, when we successfully pulled the mirrors off the mold, I was sure everything would be fine: Then, when we got around to gluing up new mirrors on the mold I was sure we'd fail miserably. We almost did. See here, we make a mix of white wood glue and crumbled styrofoam.

The idea is to make a little mountain on each one.

And after placing the plywood backing on it

and weighing it down, the idea is that we'll have a nice lightweight backing. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to manage the (*somewhat chaotic* due to ti,e sensitivity of fast drying glue) situation completely, and a couple glue/styrofoam mixes had too much glue, which leaked down onto the mold and under the mirrors, meaning that when we pulled the mirror wing off the mold, some mirrors refused to follow

Leaving us with one ugly, cripple wing less than 24 hours before the Salon.

Enter the refusal to accept what seemed like a hopless situation. It oculd be called 'moving into salvage mode'. We pried off the mirrors which were glued to the mold and glued them back on the wing in a helter skelter interpolation of the angles best described as eyeballing. It did the trick insofar as all the mirrors were there and more or less oriented properly.

By nightfall, we had finished the structural modifications and it was time to transport. I spent until 3AM washing mirrors and painting the machine while doing an anti mosquito dance.

However, the president didn't do much more than a brief pass-by photo-op for the Butterfly.

The Helios, on the other hand:

Was much more attention grabbing, what with the flaming stick and all. ATT as he is known, admitted to being impressed and congratulated us on our work. After learning our plans of sharing the techniques and ideas associated with Solar Fire through workshops, training etc he said we must absolutely get in touch with his minister of training and professions. We also suggested a further, more personal demonstration at some point in the near future, since regrettably we had nothing cooking, he seemed agreeable to the idea and so we'll follow the required protocol and try to set that up.

Am pretty wrecked after the 19hour work session yesterday, only 3.5 hours sleep and a long day standing in the sun exposing today so I'm going to go sleep. I'm getting soft I tell ya. Back on the Cuban mission we did that for like a week straight.