Linkage, Pt. 7

• This fun tool came up with this sentence: pickles are a fine way to start the Day. by visiting the word of- God In. English
• Similarly, this one turned three very famous words into Master to him and Esteem (the latter came from including Asian languages)
• Ahh...this reminds me of the good ol' days and my dabblings in Bryce 3D...
• Perhaps boring to some, I find a map of American dialects very interesting.
• Handy resource for you globetrotters out there.
• While we're on a translator kick, 3VEN U CAN TOK LIEK A 12 Y3AR OLD111!! LOL
• If your hand falls asleep while you're driving or sitting in an odd position, rock your head from side to side. And other helpful hints from Men's Health.
• Fun with Applets (and science)
• "A teenage girl with an extreme nut allergy has died after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich hours earlier," and other very unfortunate, very pretty-looking, interestingly displayed news articles.
• Apparently, babies come from mailboxes.

3 things, provided I can remember them all.

1. Tonight we had another thanksgiving dinner at home so we could have leftovers. I was in charge of the mashed potatos. Mmm mmm mmm. Yay for lunch tomorrow.

2. I watched Millions tonight, and I loved the look of it. Very bright and quirky. Funny, though, how when I watch movies with heavy english accents I practically need subtitles for the first few minutes before my brain adjusts.

3. Dang it. I knew this would happen.

I'm not sure, but it could have something to do with not wanting to go back to work on monday? (I actually typed "school"...heh)

But maybe I'll pretend I was going to say that Chris and Brian stopped by today unexpectedly. It was nice to see them again, but it reminded me that I feel bad that they're always the ones to drop by my house instead of it being the other way around. (It's less odd, though, to drop by a friend's house if you're already with other friends than it is if you're alone, because then you look more like you're imposing and have less of an excuse to get out of their hair if they're busy, since you look like you don't have anything else to be doing. Plus no one lives 'round here anymore anyway. They were just here for T-day.)

Sigh, I guess...

maybe some sort of vaguely-actually-thanksgiving related thing is in order. We went up Thanksgiving day after the race to my aunt and uncle's (but I call her 'uncle', too, which causes some confusion) house in San Marino. Actually, first we went to my grandparents' in Pasadena, where we sat around for a while wishing we hadn't gotten ready so fast. However, on a side note, that house is so amazing. I want that house. Unfortunately I can't afford it, but I think my cousins (the rich financial consultant ones) might buy it someday, which is good. It started out being the gatekeeper's house (when the entire hill above their house was one giant property), and they've expanded it over the years. It's got a basement you enter into through a tiny door with a little iron gated room in it and everything. It's so cool.

Anyway, as I was saying. At my aunt and uncle's there was the obligatory kiss hello to everyone in the room (all thirty or so of them). The cheek-kiss started because one branch of the family is from Argentina, and it kind of caught on. It's kind of awkward when I have to say hi or bye to my aloof male cousins, though, because I barely talk to them, making a kiss and hug really weird. Sometimes I avoid greeting my cousins altogether because I figure most of them don't really want to be hugging me. (I'm not really close with most of them, though I like all of them, because no one's my age, plus I'm really shy at family functions so I don't talk to many people unless I'm approached.) We milled around for a while and then finally sat down to eat. I just found out that the official age for moving from the kids' to the adults' table(s) is 21, even though one of my cousins has been sitting there since she was 12. I really would rather be at the kids' table (they have more interesting conversation), but I had no choice. Someone makes a seating arrangement every year, and the name tags were written by yours truly over ten years ago after I took a calligraphy class in summerschool. The napkin rings were authentic antique Egyptian toe rings (!) that my grandmother bought from a museum shop 50 years ago. (They're big rings that fit over your big toe, with a bar that goes under the rest of your toes, and were worn by male dancers. They're really cool looking, big and round and kinda Thai-looking.) We also get ornaments every year from my grandmother. This year the girls got shoes and the boys got elephants.

Dinner was good. PS--I prefer non-canned cranberry sauce...the canned stuff tastes like metal. My half-greek-cousins' grandmother makes really really good cranberry stuff with orange peel bits in it. mmmmMMMmm. I always try to take only a tiny bit of everything, but there were so many things to get it turned out to be a lot anyway. Turkey, mashed potatos, gravy, yams, peas with pearl onions, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mushroom casserole...it all makes for a very colorful plate.

My uncle gave the traditional half-drunk toast about how lucky our family is, and then I talked to Laura about anthropology and archaeology. After dinner my mom made us play The Newlywed Game with couples, siblings, and parent-children. It was funny. I learned that the first thing that Ramiro found attractive about my cousin Gabi (whose son Sebastian is now 1 year old and soo cute) was that she knew what brie cheese was. How sweet is that?

We spent the night at my grandparents' house (Kina and I slept in the guest bedroom attached to the garage) and the next morning I woke up bright and early to go face the crowds. I came out empty-handed but my dad got everything we needed to network my grandparents' computers and printer. Later that day I got to ride on my cousin's Razor-brand mini-motorbike-style-electric-scooter (like a mini vespa) and then we all went to see Harry Potter in a really big, nice, and comfortable theater. Then we got frozen yogurt (me: chocolate with raspberries mixed in), wandered down Colorado Blvd, and headed home. Went out dancing, successfully avoided a certain person about half the time, danced with the amazing DJ Peter (because Emi's friends made him ask me), went to Denny's, got home, crashed. Woke up, got paid 40 dollars to go to my grandparents' beach house to let in the people who were delivering their new bedframe. Felt useful because I replaced the batteries in their smoke detectors (which had been beepfully complaining the whole time). It was gorgeous in Dana Point, too...the harbor was clear, the sky blue, very very warm, cool breeze...nice.
So that's been my Thanksgiving weekend so far. I have a lot I'd still like to get done, so let's hope that can still happen.

I am so sad right now because we don't have any thanksgiving leftovers at home. :( However, I have been eating pumpkin pie for every meal, and that's okay, because any negative health effects are being countered by the immense sense of self-satisfaction derived from knowing that I made it myself.

Uh huh.

Thanksgiving: A Recap

In summary:

The pie turned out very oishii. I'm glad. And turkey sandwiches after thanksgiving are one of my favorite things in the world.

*********

I saw harribotter tonight, finally. I had an expert in each ear telling me all the nuances I couldn't otherwise pick up on as a non-reader, but even without that I think I still would have felt it was excellent. I think that if I could have one wish in the entire world, it would be that there was such thing as magic. Then the rest would fall into place, I think.

*********

Going swing dancing. Catch you later.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yum!

I just got back from the turkey trot.  For someone completely out of shape and an anti-runner, a time of just over 38:18 for a 5K is not so bad.  At least I beat Kina's 10K time of 44 something (how someone runs 5+ consecutive 7 minute miles is beyond me...how the super runners do it even faster is just insane). I haven't run that since senior year of high school. I was supposed to run it junior year when I was off in the fall, but I got sick. (Sorry, Eric.) That also means that I haven't run it since I've owned an iPod. I must say, it made the whole thing much more enjoyable. (Especially when some Ministry of Sound thing came on at the end and propelled me to the finish line with its synthesized driving glory.)

The pies came out last night after I'd gone to bed, so I took pictures this morning before the run.


Mine is in the foreground.  So I was thinking, let's pretend we're taking the SAT again.  Verbal.  Answer the following:

Apatosaurus:Apple Pie::__________:Pumpkin Pie

Finally I decided that while not nearly as cool as a dinosaur, an elephant would do quite nicely.  Then I found a round cookie cutter and decided to make it an "African Desertscape" with a giant moon hovering above said elephant like they do in the movies.  Then I decided to add a little star for effect.  Now it's a little over the top, I think, but hey, I like the night sky and there's nothing wrong with elephants, so so be it.  My mom opted for something a bit more traditional.

  
The little dots are from air bubbles that rose out of the fork punctures we made on the bottom of the crust.  My pie was also the victim of some knife-poking my mom did to test its "readiness".

I'm going to shower now, and then we're all heading north, to my aunt's house in San Marino, where some of my cousins will talk about partying, others will share some smalltalk, my uncles and dad will go play on the computer, I will have to talk about my job, and inevitably I will find someplace quiet to hide where I won't have to talk to too many people.

Tonight we're spending the night up there.  I may still try to go insane at some of the black friday sales (that AD box set is so tempting), because as long as I have my book and ipod I think I can brave the flying elbows and long lines.  We'll see.  Depends if someone's willing to face the traffic and drop me off.

Over and out.  Happy turkey day.

Bakey bakey

In a few minutes our pies will be out of the oven. We made pumpkin pie from real pumpkins, not from cans. There are three of them. They smell good. One is "mine" because I made the crust. Here is photographic proof that this did in fact happen. (Mine is on the bottom.)



Tomorrow morning I am run/walking in the Turkey Trot, 5K version. Theoretically it's for a good cause, but really I'm just doing it so I feel less guilty about eating tomorrow evening.

To those of you who are already in the 24th, Happy Thanksgiving.

(I am sad, because this year we're not doing our own turkey at home, which means NO TURKEY SANDWICHES!!! :( I think I'm going to force my mom to cook a turkey breast over the weekend just so we can pretend we have leftovers. I think I may even prefer the turkey in sandwich form to its on-a-plate-with-gravy form.)

I will post a picture of my pie when it is finished because I am proud of it. :)

(My mom says she's good at baking pies because when she was little she got pneumonia and stayed home alone for most of a summer while her mom went to work, so she took all the times she'd watched her mom bake pies and learned to bake her own. Her reason? "I baked a lot because I wanted to eat pie, but no one would bake one for me. So I would make a custard pie, eat it, and hide the pan under my bed so my mom wouldn't find out. I was kind of piggy.")

Today at the grocery store I bought a DVD of Metropolis (the 1927 silent film by Fritz Lang, a still from which inspired Tezuka Osamu to write the awesome anime film of the same name) that ALSO had the movie "Things To Come" written by HG Wells, and since it was $5 I felt compelled to buy it. Even if both films are terrible (which I doubt), I will have paid $2.50 apiece for vintage junk, which is fine with me. I had to buy it because of Metropolis, though. Even though it's a different story altogether. Five dollars. Seriously.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

Tuesday Update

-Today at work I learned about focus groups and that I'm not qualified to moderate one. WooOOooo.

-I also learned that merely participating in a multiclient study (not as a subject) costs upwards of 15,000 dollars.

-My dad bought his first XBox game--Medal of Honor (he already played through the PC version)

-the In'N Out kid called me Ma'am today and I almost kicked his face in. *ahem* Really, though, I admire those guys. I've never seen six people shoved into a little box crank out excellent burgers so fast.

-I just finished gutting the little pie pumpkins we'll be using to make the pumpkin pies. My mom is mad that I insisted we make the filling from scratch, especially since "all the experts agree--canned tastes just as good as fresh!." Ah well. What's the point of learning to bake a pumpkin pie if I don't learn all the pieces?

I just went to a city council meeting

because my 9th grade english teacher and 12th grade gov teacher were getting awards. It was the first time I'd seen our new city hall, which is nice. Our new mayor is the mom of a kid I went to school with. I learned that I am 5 years older than the official "citification" of Mission Viejo, which happens to be the safest city in California, thank you very much.

Linkage, Pt.3

• Ooooooops....
• prettier pictures
• intellesting...
• unparalleled beauty
• ew.
• almost tempted to try this....

but THIS is amazing. and it enabled me to turn a sloppy sketch into this:


(that horizontal line on the right was a mistake but there was no way to erase and it kind of adds a little bit of balance)

Linkage, Pt.2

• cheat sheet
• again, no offense, chris. : ) I just...stumbleupon this stuff, you know? and it's funny.
• actually kind of cool
• I had no idea there was more than one group of seven
• THE HISTORY OF EVERYTHING
• but we already have a game about being a lawyer
• apparently I have a 1 in 24 chance of dying of external causes (and a 1 in 397,784 chance of dying due to ignition or melting of nightwear--not a good enough reason to make me want to sleep naked)
• creeeeeeeeeeeepy
• reminds me of the bunny suicides I saw (again) yesterday
• who doesn't like quizzes
• really interesting chart on religion and sexual ethics...tsk tsk those catholics are like hellfire all the way
• easier than you'd think
• HA HA

Linkage, Pt.1

or, What Happens When I Install StumbleUpon On My Work Computer And Play During My Lunchbreak

• pretty pictures
• fun latin
• ascii matrix
• no offense, chris
• super fun!!!!!

Tonight we're going to LA (in 15 minutes, actually) to hear kina play at the battle of the cans (canned food drive + battle of the bands, you vote with cans, most cans wins) at 'SC. Good times.

I like vendor demos. I'm excited to equip my future apartment with the latest and greatest in home networking technology.

Double-clutch

Today Kyle taught me how to drive a manual transmission vehicle (again). So now the list of people who have tried to teach me goes (in no particular order, mostly because I forgot the order): JP, Eric, Kyle, my dad (though I don't know what car we used since god knows I wouldn't touch the mini until I didn't think I was going to destroy it), and maybe more. All in all, I've probably had 5 or 6 lessons. This time Kyle explained to me the actual mechanics of the engine and the clutch, and now the whole process makes a lot more sense to me, and I have a much better feel for it. I actually did pretty well. The only things I didn't do were go in reverse and learn to double-clutch in a downshift. (Because really that's just being fancy.) I went all around the local CC campus, full of hills and stop signs and speedbumps. But every time someone was behind me I'd get scared and stall out. Oh well. I'm still not ready to hit the streets.

Then I had a carne asada burrito.

My uncle knows the treasurer of Apple. Still don't have a chance at employment, though.

Tomorrow I have five hours of meetings.

When I was little my dad used to tuck us in and then rub his fingers together (thumb and curled forefinger) audibly right above our heads and tell us he was sprinkling flying dust on us so that we'd have flying dreams (and he told us he'd come meet us and we'd go flying together). I could have sworn I felt that dust tickling my face...

I forgot how much I like the strokes

Today I decided to accompany my mom on a trip to LA to drop off some CDs with my sister. The reason for my going was so we could stop at a rubber stamp convention on the way back and pick up some cool crafty ideas. What actually happened was that we left early in the morning, I tried in vain to fix my dad's stupid Dell at work, we went to Hermosa Beach to pick up the Michael Jackson-esque jacket we saw when we three sisters went several months ago (late birthday gift), showed up at USC way late (1:30 instead of 12ish) and didn't leave campus til 2:30. I got to meet Jeremy Fisher (and my how Hubert has grown!) and saw how skilled Hubert is at shedding.

Then we went to Santa Monica and ate lunch at 3, then got frozen yogurt at 4 at a place called Pink Berry. I am in love with Pink Berry (I have their sticker on my phone now). I have pictures but I will put them up later when I am less lazy.

Then we got stuck in traffic on the way home and didn't get back until 7. Now I am tired and kind of bummed that that is the case since we didn't even get to go to the convention. Tomorrow I may go out and practice driving standard (again) with Kyle. We shall see.

I intended to have much more free time this weekend.

I really* need to put my portfolio together.

*-as in really really.

ps-Somnambulist is one of those songs that feels like it's tearing through my chest in the crescendos. Best listened to loud or not at all. Better listened to while moving quickly. Pure adrenaline.

Ok, I found it

I want you all to see this, because it is truly beautiful. I saw photographs a month or two ago on Flickr (stumbled across them) but the video (soundtrack is amazing) is really key. Go here and watch it, please.

Grr.

On the heels of the bad news I found a video clip online that I assume came from the Season 2 Extras. It was David Cross in his Mrs. Whatever (Doubtfire ripoff) fatsuit and fake boobs ranting about how if a show that won a godzillion awards was getting bad ratings maybe it was the marketing team's fault. It's very funny in typical David Cross fashion. I wish I could show it to you, but I don't have a cheap way of hosting video.

Making iTunes download videos via del.icio.us has been a genius move on my part, because it means I get good stuff like:

-A weird Swedish (or something) music video called Hvad fanden sker her? Blip! Blop! Wee! Kitch!
-cute indie cartoons like an eye for annai
-the video of the art project they did in belgium or something in the subways by putting a mac mini and a projector on the side of a subway car and projecting video (anywhere else they would have been arrested for planting bombs I'm sure)
-old german disco how-to videos
-awesome commercials, like the dancing citroen robot a la voltron
-good SNL clips
-cool indie films
-the world of warcraft coke commercial from china
-the pink elephants clip from dumbo
-the creepy Beauty Kit short series
-music videos
-the famous clip of the blue screen of death that happened at a windows 95 press release
-cat herders
-random coding tutorials
-the really drug induced Unicorns L.A.
-a terrible music video from the 70s (that Apache song that you've all heard before even if you don't know it)
-a terrifying old cartoon by Max Fleischer called Swing you Sinners! that you may have seen a long time ago
-breakdancing battles
-cool tech demos
-cool cartoons by an indie 3d animation studio
-someone strapping a camera to the front of their ferarri and driving through paris at ten billion miles per hour (kilometers, sorry)
-the absolutely beautiful sony commercial where they dumped a trillion superballs down the streets of San Francisco
-um, someone walking through a cornfield
-a gross video of a toreador where you see the bull slowly dying from being stabbed in the heart and then the neck :(
-Strippers for Jesus
-marching bands and vikings
-kevin costner in an apple lisa ad

and the list goes on. so there you have it. some of them are amazing. others just good for a laugh. but yes, all this video content is making me giddy. I'll share it with you if you'd like, but you'll have to ask, because I'm not gonna post it. :)

Today I was productive.

Goodnight. :)

things, things, always things.

-my dad is fine. thank you to everyone who wished him well. the surgery went swimmingly and he's busy lying in a hospital bed tonight. he comes home tomorrow. they gave him pressure socks that squeeze the blood back out of his legs so he won't get a blood clot. he also has an IV, so I spent a lot of time writhing in the corner. I don't really like hospitals...they smell weird and scare me. Maybe that has something to do with the reason I don't like shots (incident@3yrs).

-drinking too much soda is going to leech the calcium from your bones and give you osteoporosis. too much fruit juice has too much sugar. fake sugar always turns out to be bad for you in large quantities plus it has a bad aftertaste. what's left to drink? water, I guess, and gatorade when you exercise. oh, and milk. good health is so boring. ;)

-kina's EPs got delivered today. if I was supposed to keep that a secret...well...I don't think I was. they look terrific. sound real nice, too.

-I started work today (and left early because I felt like blah). I have a cubicle that I'm going to adorn with photographs tomorrow. my computer is running windows 2000 and the monitor is from the stone age, but at least I have high speed internet. step 1 was to change my desktop picture. I feel better already. I also beat the system and installed firefox even though I wasn't supposed to be able to. heh heh heh.

and I have an ID card on a neoprene lanyard on one of those cords that you can pull out and it snaps back. I am so cool.

-one of the greatest things in the world is the experience of eating M&Ms that are the opposite of stale. I'm not sure how else to refer to them. (fresh? who knows.) when they're stale, they're just good, but when they're perfectly crunchy they're heaven. also, I don't like nuts in my cookies or on my ice cream (most of the time), but for some reason I love peanut M&Ms.

Willy Wonka and the Great Glass Chocolate Factory

I love Roald Dahl.

But I digress.

I just watched Charlie and the blah blah (the new version), and it's interesting...

If I concentrated on seeing it as a story in and of itself, it was quite good, and visually stunning. Twisted as Tim Burton ever is. And the new Grandpa Joe (Grampa? whatever you feel like, I guess) was very good, and I like Charlie, and I always like Johnny Depp, even when he plays weirdos (he plays weirdos most of the time).

BUT, most of the time I couldn't help but constantly compare it to the first movie. It made me realize just how good of a job they did with that. All the tiny details of the story that made it magical, like Charlie's paper delivery or his mom washing clothes in that big vat that were missing in this version kind of poked at me, I suppose mostly for sentimental reasons. A few other things, like making the tiny door into the candy room anticlimactic by not showing the hall shrink or leaving out the part where Charlie and Grandpa Joe break the rules and drink the fizzy drinks that make them float towards the fan and they have to burp to get down, made me prefer the first version. I also thought the first movie was cool because of the scary bits (like the part in the tunnel, for example). The flashbacks and history lessons were an interesting addition, I thought. However, I know the point is not to live up to the original but to be its own film, and for that I respect it as a unique work.

Of course, none of this takes into account the actual story by Mr. Dahl, which I've mostly forgotten by now. It's been a while.

Anyone ever read The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More? Those were amazing...

A lit cigarette is carried at the height of a child's face

For those of you I didn't mention this to, the last time I went to japan there was an ad campaign in progress encouraging smokers to think when they smoked. Called the "Smoking Manners" campaign, it consisted of a ton of different green-on-white designs with japanese and english (always amusing translations) and little stick figure illustrations. My good friend Connor found an archive of them, and I strongly recommend you check these out. I took pictures of all the ones I saw while we were there, but I didn't do nearly as good of a job as this guy at collecting them.


Note the little helicopter. I don't know.

Old People

Today I visited the Alzheimer's home down the street for the first time when I had to go place my vote for various California-related things. It's actually quite charming. They have an old juke box and lots of little rooms and it's very very nice. However, it was also really severely depressing. I had to walk past several dozen of them to get to the polling place and I tried to smile at them but most weren't looking at me, and the ones who did told me with their eyes "I know the only reason you're visiting here is to vote." They were both cute and depressing. I felt happy to see such a nice place and people seeming to be enjoying themselves, but I felt sad when I thought about what their lives must really be like. I'm not so sure I'd want to live a good quality of life with alzheimer's if I couldn't remember that I had a good quality of life.

My sister used to do art classes there, and she'd bring paints and canvas and photographs and they'd all paint things, and there was one old woman who had this argument with one of the nurses:

Nurse: aren't you excited? We've been wanting to paint for a while, haven't we?
Lady: oh, but I don't have time to paint right now. My family's coming to pick me up; they're taking me home, and we're going to have dinner.
Nurse: No, your family isn't coming. This is your home. Remember?
Lady: Oh, no, no, that's silly. I don't live here. My family's coming to pick me up...

Spending time there would get really depressing really fast, but I feel so bad that they have been kind of left behind there for that very reason. I mean, yeah, their families visit them, but still...

If I ever get that way, just float me out on an iceberg...

Wow.

I can't remember ever being so distracted while trying to work before. From the moment I started working to the moment I walked out the door I could not stop spacing out. Every five minutes I'd catch myself completely immersed in a daydream about something or another and try as I might I couldn't get myself to focus. Huh.

That was probably my last day of hamming for real. I won't miss it, really.

I forgot about the TMBG concert. (runs to go check on ticket availability) DANGIT there are still tickets available. :( I was going to use the excuse that I had to fulfill my civic duty and vote after work tomorrow so I wouldn't have time to get down there, but I probably won't be working, so poop. :( grr. My only excuse now is financial, which doesn't really count since I'm working. Dangit! I don't know how much I want to drive to SD right now, but I really want to see them. Oh well.

aside: dangit! right now I've got one of those nerve twitches above my left eye and it's going to drive me INSANE. It's a good thing I have an hour of arrested development tonight to make me feel better.

lasting impressions

-those swords weren't sharpened
-I heard tie fighter noises when the tank was turning
-liam neeson's nose is amazing
-bat mask = weird jawline
-batman's voice = kind of funny
-christian bale - looking more like an actual man now. scary.
-I still am not a huge fan of whatsherface tom cruise's baby's mommy katie holmes that's it
-I dig the new and improved bat logo, though the curves of the old one are still quite nice
-I guess it's not actually new and improved, since it's a prequel, so I guess it's the "first draft"
-gotham looks like chicago. If it's supposed to, I don't know these things, so leave me alone. If it's not, well...it does.
-funny, I was thinking just how much I'd like to try spelunking when he took a trip down into the future batcave
-my sister has a crush on that dr. crane guy.

All in all, I really liked that movie, even if I did watch it alone in my bed on my powerbook screen with headphones on. Definitely a good way to pass the time (gee thanks daylight savings) though I totally didn't realize it would end post-1 AM. Oops.

I wonder what I would see if I got hit with the blue-flower-vapor. (Oh, wait, that's an easy one.) Okay, I wonder what I would see if it skipped fear #1 and went deeper, for the more sinister psychological fears. Hmm...

ps--please don't read these and think I enjoyed the movie on a purely superficial level. I took a lot more away from it, too, I just don't feel like writing seriously at the moment. but that's the case with a lot of things in this journal, really.

Phew.

I suddenly feel like a better person.

After conferring with my mom, I was reminded that the Haunted House was NOT in fact started as a ploy to get service hours. That was what painting US maps on elementary school blacktops was for. The HH was started in an attempt to boost trick-or-treating in our neighborhood, since we had noticed the numbers waning over the years. My dad had recently inspired us by telling us about the haunted house he and some friends built in a soon-to-be-demolished house (they actually built real walls and everything and had an entire house, as opposed to our cardboard and tarp, duct-tape and wire construction in a three-car garage), so we decided to give it a go. It wasn't until the next year that we started taking donations, because by doing so it would become community service, and the workers could take something out of the experience besides a sense of personal satisfaction.

Phew.

Success!

Phew. I am tired.

I began the day doing last-minute errands for my mom. That took way longer than it should have. However, I bought my pumpkin (yesterday I decided I wanted to carve one after all), so that's good.

Just when I wanted to get carving, I had to start making the Christmas soup. Yes, Christmas. My grandmother has a great soup recipe she makes every christmas, and my mom started making it for us on halloween to feed the masses of kids working the haunted house 8 years ago when we started, so now it's a tradition. This year I made it, since my mom was busy, and with the peeling and dicing help of kina, john, and jen, it was just as good as it always is. It's always reassuring to find out that I can follow a recipe well.

Post-soup-making, I had to make buttons to give to people who donated. That took my cousin and I a bit. At that point it was time to open the doors, so on a whim I went through my closet and found myself a dumb costume. Formal dress and japanese wings. Lots of eye makeup, straightened hair, and weird lip stuff. So unoriginal, I know. I wouldn't call it "slutty," though, since it's pretty high cut, but it is sort of tight, so meh. : \ I've been my share of un-sexy things, too, though, like a giant book, a baby in a basket, captain hook, jane goodall, princess leia (in her white dress, not the skanky ho jabba outfit), etcetera.

Then I helped work the HH for a bit, primarily in the guillotine room. Sadly, since we were working on it up until we had people waiting in our driveway, some things didn't get finished, like the exit that was supposed to have two separate exit possibilities, one full of someone scary. That didn't happen, which was too bad, but oh well. I got to drop the foam blade, weighted down by some pieces of metal duct-taped to the back (completely non-lethal), as they stuck their hand through the little hole. The blade stops before it gets to their hand, of course. The trouble was keeping them from sticking their head in the path of the "blade". Stupid people. It was fun to make them scream, though.

We ended up with over 600 guests and around 1100 dollars in donations. Usually we give to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation but this year we're giving it to United Way.

For future reference for myself, here is a quick summary of the HH: ramp entrance, catacombs, mummy room, strobe room, dot room, torture chamber, teeter floor, dark maze, air cannon, chase's monster window, candy guillotine, exit.

BUT, there was one sad thing about today. I didn't ever get a chance to carve my pumpkin. I think I'll do that tomorrow, if the mood fits. For now, goodnight.