Travels with FatCatAir

Monday February 05, 2007

Neon!

So I had this plan to get my wife a neon sign for Christmas. We'd talked about getting some neon sign/artwork in the past but never got around to figuring out what we wanted or who would do it. Well I decided to do the FatCatAir logo in neon. So back in early November I got in touch with several sign makers trying to get an estimate on what it would cost. After weeks of pestering I finally got an estimate. It was at the high end of my limit so I told my wife that the present I was getting was for both of us so don't get me anything. She was only too happy to oblige. 

Well after it taking so long to get an estimate it was pretty clear that I wouldn't get the sign for Christmas anyway. The estimate was it would be ready the first week of January. Well you know how estimates go. It didn't make it. In fact it didn't even make January unless last Friday was really January 33rd. So Friday afternoon I got a call that it was finally ready. So I quick drove over to the sign maker. The sign is 3 feet by 3 feet. I was pretty sure it would fit in the back of my Civic, at least until I got there. As it turned out it fit by about 1 inch. I was driving pretty carefully on Friday.

So Friday evening was the great unveiling. I had my wife go into the 1st floor bedroom and I turned off the lights except for the sign. Then my niece (who already knew what was coming) guided my wife out from the bedroom with her eyes covered and then the sign was revealed. She was pretty impressed. She was also sorry she never thought to do it herself. So without further ado here's a photo of the sign.

The cat isn't holding an airplane like in the real logo for two reasons. First the airplane would be so crude in neon (at this size) that it would mostly look like a blob. Second the current logo shows a plane that resembles my Tiger but once the Velocity is complete and FatCatAir switches its "fleet" to the new airplane, the logo will have to be updated. So my plan was to have my wife make a smal airplane in stained glass that we could attach to the sign. When the Velocity is done she'll just make a new version.