Happy Halloween! (Yeah, original title, I know)

Had a great time at the Halloween Party last night. Ralph won two prizes for his costume: Most Humorous, and Best Costume. For all you Teeming Millions dying to know what we dressed as, it was Frau Blucher (whiiiinnny!) and Igor. The practice brain we made last week was sort of kinda accidentally left out & was sooooo moldy yesterday. Ralph was going to use it anyway, but when he saw the new brain I made for today's haunted house he changed his mind (thank goodness) and took the new one.

Got home about midnight, and there was NOWHERE to park anywhere on our street. Not wanting to walk a block home that late we ended up parking on the lawn. Luckily we did not get a ticket. The neighbors up the block were having a biiiiig party that was still going strong at 4:00 am.

Anyway, here are some photos from the party. First up, Ralph and me in our costumes. The candelabra was a pain to find; we looked for two days & only one person knew what the heck we were talking about when we asked for a candelabra, and that shop only had the large standing floor-style ones. I did a product search on Crate & Barrel which had 419 hits, not one of which was actually a candelabra.




The brain we took to the party. The coloring on this one came out really well, IMHO. We used 2 boxes of peach Jello, 9 oz evaporated milk, and some food coloring (about 5 drops red, 5 drops green, and 7 drops blue) to get this shade.


Our lovely hostess SS as Katherine Hepburn in "The African Queen," and our friend JO in her "ST: TNG" costume. I liked the juxtaposition of past & future in the one shot.


A close-up shot of Ralph's google eyes. They were the hit of the party! One of the kids loved them so much that Ralph gave them to him, which earned Ralph a hug from the child. Better him than me, LOL!


One of the Halloween decorations at the party, a very nice statuette of Jack Skellington.

What the. . . ??

OK. Would someone PLEASE explain to the nectarine tree that it is not springtime? I mean, seriously, blossoms in October is just a bit much. It hasn't even dropped its leaves for the fall yet, and here it is putting forth blooms. Yup, all three of today's pictures were taken yesterday. What a crazy tree.

As you've probably guessed from the lack of posts, not a whole lot has been happening. Ralph & I have finally decided on our Halloween costumes & spent much of the weekend gathering/purchasing the items we need. Oddly enough, the parts I thought would be the easiest to find ended up being the hardest, and the things we thought would be hard to find were no trouble at all. I'm not saying what we're going to be--you'll have to tune in after Halloween & find out then. I will say that I believe we have a very good chance of winning Best Costume for the second year in a row.



I've had a fairly boring if productive morning. One load of laundry is hung up & another is ready for the dryer. I've got some handwashables soaking in the kitchen. Dishes are done, got my hair cut, put gas in the car, and picked up a few items at the grocery store for tonight's dinner (veggies to put in the chicken & dumplings). Not too bad a start to the day, really. My hair is a little shorter than I like it to be. I'm not too chuffed about that, though. I mean, it's just hair & will grow back pretty quickly.

Ralph & I made a practice brain yesterday for the haunted house. We definitely learned a couple things: for example, when the instructions recommend using watermelon Jello, do not substitute raspberry. The colors are NOT the same. Also, when you wrap the towel around the mold to keep it level, make sure the mold is actually level when you do so or your brain will be lopsided. Still, it looks quite gruesome as-is and if the one for Halloween comes out looking like this one it would be acceptable.



Back in the home improvement sector, it looks like we might have yet another leak. This time it appears to be either the water heater or the pipes leading from it. When I pulled my big roasting pan out of the cabinet that's below the water heater this morning, it had about 2" of water in it. There is also a moldy patch on the "ceiling" of the cabinet. Not good. After all the work Ralph did fixing the bathroom we really don't need another water-related home repair. Or even a non-water-related home repair.

Well, I've got some more housework to attend to. Guess I'd best get to it.

Surrounded by dogs

So we've had a little bit of thunder to go with our rain this morning. I now have one dog lying partly under the computer table, one dog standing next to me with her head in my lap, the third dog lying on the other side of me, and a cat stalking around, growling & yowling & upsetting the dogs more than the thunder did. I am almost completely surrounded by unhappy canines & I don't think I could squeeze past them to get out of this chair if I tried.

Signed up with another temp agency yesterday. They've got a position or two in mind to set up interviews for me, so we'll see how that goes. I'm liking the part-time work right now, but a full-time paycheck can't be sneezed at.

Speaking of sneezing, I forgot to mention something that I at least found funny. When Ralph & I were at the swap meet a couple weeks ago, a woman there sneezed. She very courteously turned her head away from the crowd and sneezed down towards the ground--directly onto her child's head. Yeah, I know, I've got a warped sense of humor.

The winners have been announced for the scavenger hunt! After seeing everyone else's postings I didn't think I was going to get anything, so imagine my surprise when my cop photo took runner-up for most humorous! Of course, I promised the officer I wouldn't post the photo anywhere except on the scavenger hunt thread so you get a picture of my critter at the vet's office instead. The prize was a free pattern from a designer named Luchita, and I chose a cute little lion handpuppet. I'm thinking of making three in different colors to give to QL, OL, and SL. I think QL is still young enough to enjoy a handpuppet. With my current queue I doubt they'll be done in time for Christmas but there's no reason why I can't send them out sometime in February as a "just because" gift.

Did I mention that Dad had some minor surgery last week? The battery was dead on his pacemaker/defibrillator & the unit had to be replaced. We had a heck of a time finding the place; he was first instructed to go to the cardiac specialty office, and they told him no you need to go to the main hospital on the next block. I dropped him off there & parked. When I came back he said they'd told him to go out & to the right to the outpatient surgery. Nothing there. We went back & asked some cops that were by the ambulance area and apparently Dad was supposed to go *left* out the door. The cops pointed the way & said to go in the second door. Got in there--Dad was quite out of breath at this point--started to sign in, and the nurse said, "I can't find your appointment; is this for cardio?" When we said yes she said, "Oh, you need the next lobby over. Go through those doors & take the elevator to the third floor." (This meant the cops should have told us to go in the first door, not the second.) We do that & the nurse up there asked if we'd gone in the main hospital doors (opposite side of the building) and checked in there first. After giving her looks of shocked dismay, we told her how much of a runaround we'd already been through (and by this time we were 30 minutes late for his appointment). Luckily she took pity on us, had Dad sit in the waiting room, and sent someone to go get all his paperwork from the front. Anyway, long story short (too late!) from that point all went smoothly & he is back home, tired but doing OK.

We've started putting up the haunted house for Halloween. We're not doing anything really big this year; just a single room that the kids will walk past rather than through. We're going with a Halloween kitchen/dining room theme this year & will have things like Jell-o brains, rats, a plateful of octopi (see, I *knew* there was a reason for me to have made so many of those!), and MH2 said she might bring a kitty litter cake (decorative AND edible). No gory dismembered body parts, although we do have some eyeballs that we'll be using. They're more comic than gory, having been part of some spooky straws that Taco Bell gave out in a promotion about 15 years ago.

Well, that's about it for now. Hopefully something interesting will happen soon & I'll have a better post :-)

Tea Party Day

I can't believe I almost forgot! Today is Mad Hatter Tea Party Day, which actually occurs twice a year. The dates are October 6 & June 10, based on the "In this style 10/6" tag on the Mad Hatter's Hat. I even brought a tea bag & muffin to work so I could have a little "party" for my afternoon snack, then forgot about it until Lizard mentioned the date on her Facebook status. Anywho, here are photos of my "party," a warm fig muffin paired with a cup of decaf tea. I even used my Cheshire Cat thermochromatic mug; the cat "vanishes" when the mug is filled with hot liquid. And yes, I know there are crumbs on the tablecloth. Just deal with it :-)

A little of this, a little of that

Today's photos are all part of the Photo Scavenger Hunt in which I am participating. The mission: to knit a critter, then on any one day from Oct 3 through Oct 9 you take photos with the critter in a variety of places/situations. One photo can fit more than one category. Each participant posts ten photos to try & get the highest point count. So far I'm the only one to post, which is odd since the timeframe is half over, and have 51 points. Hey, maybe no one else will enter & I'll get all the prizes.

The photos I've posted here are: in a school (I didn't use this one as I have a better shot for that; however I'm amazed at how young the assistant principal is at my old elementary school & had to post this one because of it); next to a statue of the same type of animal in a public place; dining out (with an extra point for a vegetarian meal); and in a yarn store. That one got me extra points because it includes a toy knit by someone else. I couldn't post the best shot here, as I promised the police officer (who was quite embarrassed to be photographed with a stuffed pony) that I would *only* post it on the scavenger hunt thread.




Ralph spent the weekend working on repairing the bathroom floor, and I am very impressed with what a great job he did! I had no idea he was so handy. He says he didn't know it, either. He pulled out all the old flooring, removed the damaged wood, treated the remaining wood for mold, laid down the replacement wood, prepped it, and installed enough of the vinyl tile that he was able to install the new toilet. This last one was just in time--we spent 4 days using the potty in the trailer, which was OK as a temporary measure but it would have sucked having to go out there once last night's rain set in.



Have you ever been watching a TV show, and someone on it does or says something so wrong/stupid that you want to reach into the screen and smack 'em upside the head? I had that happen yesterday when Ralph had "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" playing on Netflix. A character is badly injured, and needs a blood transfusion. John says, "Mom is type O; that's a universal donor." The paramedic--let me repeat that, the PARAMEDIC--says, "No, he's AB. It's very rare, he needs his own blood type." John then says, "Test MY blood." And of course, he also turns out to be the very rare AB. Sigh. One, Type O *is* a universal donor; anyone can receive it. Second, a type O parent can NOT have a type AB offspring. Third, AB is a universal *recipient* and can receive a transfusion of any blood type. Mind you, I'm ignoring Rh factors and positive/negative but still for the writers to not know this basic bit of info on blood types just annoyed the bejeezus out of me.

First post of October

Got really irked at the radio news yesterday. One of the stories was about some "amazing evidence" that Columbus may not have been the first non-native to set foot on North American soil. Apparently a man on the east coast found an ancient Phoenician coin, which has historians "astounded." What a bunch of BS. Historians, paleontologists, and anthropologists have known for decades that Columbus was nowhere near the first non-native to the Americas, having been beaten to the punch by yes the Phoenicians, the Vikings, the Polynesians and others. And for that matter, the "native" Americans themselves migrated here originally. Gah.

Speaking of the radio, one of the local stations did a fun thing the other day. They called it "Alphabet Soup," and each song title began with the last letter of the previous song title. This led to some rather interesting segues, such as going from "Squeeze Box" to "Xanadu," and to the playing of songs not normally heard on a rock station such as "New York, New York," "Candy Man," "Another One Rides the Bus," and "Time Warp." People would text, e-mail, or phone in with their suggestions (the next day the DJ said they had over 3,000 people sending in song titles). I really enjoyed it and hope they do it again someday.

Ralph is tearing out the bathroom floor today. We've got some major water damage going on (the floor actually flexes if you step on certain areas) and are trying to get it taken care of before the wood gives way completely. Unfortunately we've got more leaks than we expected, from around the shower, the sink, AND the toilet. Sigh. Just what we need right now, more expenses.

Dad has to have his pacemaker replaced. Not sure on when the surgery will be; he doesn't have an appointment yet but should be hearing from the doctor soon. Dad says *he's* fine, it's the pacemaker that is having troubles.

Did something kinda silly the other day. I was wandering through a Halloween store, and they had some life-size "psycho killer" type props. I was so convinced that they were going to move when I walked past them, that when they *didn't* move I was startled & jumped a bit. Felt rather foolish, I must say.

Making good progress on the first Dark Mark scarf; I've got about 110 rows left to do which really isn't that much considering I've already done over 560 rows. Hmm, wonder how many stitches that is? 560 + 110 = 670, times 41 stitches per row = 27,470 stitches. Egads. I really should know better than to do the math, it's always a bit overwhelming to look at it that way.

Today's photo is a hibiscus that bloomed in our backyard last week. Still need to find the camera (haven't checked the Saturn yet), especially as I'll need it for the Photo Scavenger Hunt next week.