Ok everyone, Joel's birthday is a little less than a week away, so I figured I'd go ahead and make a thread so we can brainstorm some ideas for what we should do.
I know some people suggested flowers before. From what I've seen, we'd be looking at a total of $45 minimum for flowers (most of them seem to be around $70 or $80 though), not including delivery fees. Of course, the more people we get to pitch in, the less we all have to pay. Any other ideas are welcome though :)
As a less-girly/more practical option than flowers, I'd like to suggest Edible Arrangements. There are three locations in Austin, so we should be covered no matter where the new office is, exactly. The prices are all over the place, but the cheaper ones are around $45, too, so it wouldn't be so much of a price difference, I don't think.
If whoever is willing to chip in a few dollars could post here saying so, just so we've got a ballpark on what kind of money we've actually got, that would be much appreciated.
I like the Edible Arrangements idea! He'll have to guard it with his life so the other guys won't steal form him XD
Whatever we decide on, I will certainly pitch in some money. AND if we could get that address (bribe someone...say, "we're getting Joel a present...if you give us the address, we'll send you a present on your birthday, too!") we could send him cards, drawings, and funny little things like that as well on our own.
I really like the Edible Arrangements idea too, and I love the one in your second link! I really want some chocolate covered strawberries now... (one thing that I have to ask though, does Joel like strawberries? It's a silly question, I know, because who doesn't like strawberries?? But I worry too much when I'm giving food as a gift, so feel free to ignore it)
And I'm able to chip in about $20 at the most (I'm so broke right now )
I don't know that we even need to give away that we're getting Joel a gift to get the address lol, I think we can just say we want to send something to the office. By the way, could whoever ends up getting the address share it with me? I have some plushes to send them in a couple months (hopefully... I'm really behind on those too )
I'd also like to add that we should still definitely take pictures of ourselves with the Joel masks and post them as our profile pictures again. Masks can be found in this thread by the way
And yeah I know it's sort of short notice to try and get the money together, so another thing we'll need to look into is for someone who is willing to front the money and let us pay them back as soon as we can because it'll be near impossible to get all of this money sent to one place before the middle of the week. As long as everyone is completely committed to paying the person back, then it should be no problem. I'd offer to do it myself, but my bank account is basically at $0 right now (stupid college textbooks ), but I do have some cash that I can send out as soon as someone steps up to help out :)
I can chip in some money. $10 is really more my price range but if we really really need to, I can chip in $20. I have a sexy new debit card now, I can has paypal.
i can definitely chip in $20. please let me know who i'm sending this to and is cash ok? might mean you have to convert it to U.S dollars since i'm all the way from Australia
i was think we should all send in something from each of our prospective areas i know we are famous for kangeroos, koalas, platypuses i wondered if each state of America has its only little thing.. idk what do you guys think?
oh and outta curiosity are the tshirts still coming out soon? from the competition we had a few weeks ago?
I really like the idea, but I think it might be a bit expensive for some of us (I know I certainly can't afford it right now that's why I like the idea of a group gift thingy) but you're more than welcome to send something if you want :)
And you'd have to ask Vadadaca about the shirts. I know she's working on them, so hopefully by the end of next month maybe?(not 100% sure, you'd have to ask her) I know that sounds like a long time, but money seems to be kind of tight for most people right now... Don't worry though, we haven't forgotten about them and we'll get them out to you guys as soon as we can!
-Edit- Oh, and about money, you could send cash, but it's not exactly the safest way to send something. And as far as converting it to USD, I think some places will charge for that to be done. Could you maybe do a cashier's check? (I'm not sure how that would work sending it overseas, but it would be a lot safer than cash and shouldn't need to be converted like cash would be)
And lots of money! Thanks guys, for all your (pledged, anyway) contributions. As for pooling the money, I was planning on paying it myself, and I thought PayPal would be best/easiest since we're all over the place.
And I was concerned about strawberries, too (some people are allergic, and all, and I don't like them, personally...), but there's lots of arrangements with multiple fruits, so I thought one of those might be good. (They're arranged prettily, too, like this one where they're cut to look like flowers.) It seems like we have about $100 dollars to work with, too, so we can even get a bigger one!
AS for the tshirts, I am working on assembling them. I got some of the supplies today, gonna look for what I couldn't find during the week and then get to working on them. Sorry it's taking so long, but I promise they are still coming!
I can def chip in some money. I'm not sure what we're doing for getting it to whoever is in charge because I'm being really lazy and not actually reading all the posts in here. (Sorry.) Just let me know and I'm down for whatever you want to do.
Also, are we taking new pictures or should I rock the same one from last year?
I'm definitely taking a new picture, so feel free to take one too if you want :) I'm actually thinking about starting a thread in the group so we can collect everyone's Joel mask pictures together (I don't know why, it just seems like a good idea at the moment, then again I'm tired and have a migraine and can barely type, so who knows what I'll think of the idea tomorrow :P)
Drink something with a lot of caffeine in it. It'll help. And Excedrin. Lots of Excedrin. Not enough to overdose, cause that would suck, but enough so you won't feel anything for a while.
Okay, more link-spamming, but I'm liking this one. We could get the largest size within our budget (I figured my contribution would be paying for the delivery, which is $12), and it's got a little of pretty much everything: chocolate apples, chocolate bananas, and chocolate oranges, as well as cantaloupe, strawberries, honeydew, grapes, and pineapple. There HAS to be something he likes in there, right?
Alright...I sent Matt Hullum a message asking if he could give me the address... If I don't hear form him in the next 2 days, I'll ask Luke McKay. I'm sure I can bribe the info out of Luke with some vodka XD. The new address MIGHT be listed. I'll check on that as well.
EDIT: I keep getting 619 Congress Ave, Austin, TX, 78701 as the address. I, however, do NOT know the previous office address (the one they have been in for the last couple of years)
EDIT #2: Ok...scratch that. Congress Ave looks like the old place. Google maps street view shows the Pita Pit where Joel bought Diaper Cat. *LOL*
I'm drinking tea at the moment, so there's some caffeine. Unfortunately I don't have any excedrin because I left it all at my apartment at school (I'm back home for the weekend for work). I think I might just go to sleep soon because that'll definitely help it. If there's one thing I can find that I like about getting really bad headaches, it's that when I sleep to get rid of it (the most effective cure I've found) I feel fucking awesome when I wake up
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