You know that crazy old lady that lives down the street that takes in stray cats? I’m that guy except instead of cats its arcade games. And I’m not that old (the crazy part is still up for debate).

The weekend before last, Mason and I repaired dad’s trailer. From sitting outside, the wooden planks had rotted. I briefly considered converting the 8’x16′ trailer’s wooden planks to metal, but the $1,200+ estimate quickly changed my mind. What I would like to do some day is convert the trailer’s wooden planks to those plastic composite ones, but even that would cost $500+. Instead, we opted for a shorter-term (but much more economically feasible) solution — we covered the currently existing wood with sheets of particle board (not MDF, but the big chunks). After Home Depot cut the wood to size for us, we took everything back to Dad’s front yard where Mason stained both sides of each piece of wood before we screwed the sheets into place. Dad paid for the materials and even gave Mason five bucks for his efforts. (Kids work cheap; I highly suggest making a few before beginning any “labor” (no pun intended) intensive projects.)

So last weekend, Mason, dad and I christened the trailer with a trip to Tulsa to pick up a couple of cabinets. One of them was a generic JAMMA cabinet — nothing to get excited about. The other one is missing most of its guts and will end up being a long restore, but the cabinet itself may excite a few readers …