Easter

So...today is my 36th Easter, even though I've just turned thirty-four. There's a math puzzle for you. Any idea how that worked out? I'll tell you, next year is even worse, I'll be up to 37 before turning 35.

If you haven't worked it out yet, I'll give you a clue: I was born on Easter Sunday. And today I overheard Dad telling Vynce that stupid people ask me if my birthday is a different date every year. It's totally true, and I've been asked that by multiple thoughtless people! They must find Thanksgiving births puzzling too.

"Come on, come on. Come on little rabbit, show me where you got it." - The Afghan Whigs, 66



Christmas/Movies

Are there Christmas movies your force people to watch with you? Every year I'm not happy unless I get my family to watch The Santa Clause 1 & 2. (let's never speak of 3. never). My mom makes us watch Rudolph. Both are great, because when Santa arrogantly says "I guess we'll have to cancel Christmas" you get to yell "Christmas is about Jesus, you smug bastard!" That just might be me, though.

I hope you had a good Christmas too because mine was lovely. I got Vynce to roll his eyes when I mentioned that we'd watched Holidays in Handcuffs twice, and his fiancee said she loves that movie too =) I'm going to buy us each a copy on DVD next year.


"They're lost in Christmas Day." - Sponge, Christmas Day

Halloween, Thanksgiving etc

Man, not having access to my desktop for more than three weeks means that there's a lot I'd normally talk about here but didn't get the chance to...

Halloween

Normally one of my favorite holidays, it was just okay this year. Halloween night itself went fine, and we scared a whole bunch more kids than usual, which was nice.

What wasn't nice were the halloween activities we tried beforehand. An amusement park when it's only in the 30s and very windy isn't nearly as much fun as when we went to Spookyworld two Halloweens earlier. There was a lot of whining, some mine, and people just didn't have that good a time to justify the cost of the Screamfest tickets. The three haunted houses were pretty good, though, despite needing to stand around in the cold forever to get in. And the rides, forget it. The sort of rides open swung people around, and we gave up after freezing on the ferris wheel, which is much slower. I think we all agreed to do something indoors next year!

And then, even worse, was Ghosts On The Bank, an event put on at the local historical tourist trap. It was advertised as being about, you know, ghosts. So, in that case we went expecting to hear some ghost stories about the Portsmouth area. And instead it was 98% safe trick or treating. I rather doubt many adults would have wanted to go knowing that, but at least it wasn't terribly expensive. Just really disappointing. There wasn't even a single ghost story!

Thanksgiving

On the other hand, I have no complaints about Thanksgiving. I don't really understand the point of this holiday and never have, but I do love turkey, so I count it as a win.

We stopped doing the big extended family get-together the year after my grandfather died my freshman year of college (he died 2 days before Thanksgiving, actually) and I don't really miss it much any more. Once Grampy died, and great-Grammy a few months later, things fell apart when it came to family gatherings. He'd been the force keeping everyone together at the holidays, ever since my grandmother died eleven years earlier, and without him... Anyway, I don't mind the smaller meal now, with just my parents and lil brother. It's kind of nice that no one has to endure a 3 hour drive, you know?

Black Friday

Colleen and I brave the Black Friday crowds every year (the one day of the year when I get up at 4 a.m.), and this one was no exception. It got off to a bit of a rough start, though, when I learned that my deicer doesn't work for crap when it comes to freezing rain. It takes a long time to scrape windows by flashlight.
 
It was fun, but the sales were underwhelming. The news kept saying stores were going to pull out all of the stops this year to get shoppers in, but they didn't have too much on offer that I cared about. Possibly because I've done the bulk of my christmas shopping early this year.
 

Later, in the afternoon, we met up with my dad  at the theater to watch the latest Harry Potter movie. You're shocked, right? =)
 
To be honest, the last book is by far my least favorite, so I was pleasantly surprised that they managed to make part one of The Deathly Hallows a lot more exciting than them sitting around in a tent complaining at each other. It gives me hope that the last movie, next summer, will be decent too. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, they did handle my second least favorite (Chamber of Secrets) fairly well too.
 
Dad and Colleen seemed to like the movie too.
 
And that's all I have to report about the holidays.
 
 
"Careful what you say, oh it's too late now, you've broken my heart" - Class Actress, Careful What You Say

Thanks etc

So, how was everyone's Thanksgiving? Mine was fairly nice. My parents told Vynce and me that Shrinky Dinks were a waste of money, so we never had them - until now. They're actually kind of neat, and thanks to the kits I bought at The Christmas Tree Shop, we now each have a new set of tiny, colorful, Christmas ornaments. In other news, Vynce and Megan are thinking of skipping the wedding with family and friends thing, and eloping to Vegas. Since that's always appealed to me too, obviously I don't disapprove.

2009 has hardly been a banner year for anyone, yet there are things to be thankful for. Despite the twin scares of H1N1 and the mounting unemployment rate, I don't know anyone who has really been affected by either yet. Both babies arrived safely. My sick friend does have cancer as I've feared, but his doctor thinks that his prognosis is very good. I made it to 50,000 words last Tuesday :) though I have a ways to go get before it's truly a complete novel - I'm shooting for Ground Hog's Day, but we'll see.

Before I sign off this last November post, I have a story for you.

I think I mentioned in another post that my best friend and I brave the Black Friday crowds every year. (Oh boy, waking up before 4am is the worst part) As it turns out, I learned a few months ago that she really liked lobsters as a kid. Well, while we were out shopping, we found a light up Christmas lobster. Yes, really. It lights up and it waves its claws. As you can imagine, we went home with it. And then we set it up, hoping to make her parents roll their eyes when they saw it.

I went home shortly afterwards. Then I got an e-mail... the gist of which was that her parents didn't notice it, but an elderly neighbor did. The neighbor couldn't see it clearly from her house, and from her perspective there was red wavy lights coming off the porch. Would your first thought been "oh, it must be a light up lobster"? Hers either. So she called them all upset, worried that their porch was on fire. Oops! Our plan to make her parents smirk had a fatal flaw. At least they were able to bring the lobster over the the neighbor's to reassure her that it was just a light, not a fire. I'm glad she took it in good humor, because I like the neighbor, who puts up with us visiting her every year at Halloween.

Hope you had a good November too, everyone.


"I’m a fire and I’ll burn burn burn tonight" - Biffy Clyro, Who's Got a Match?

Happy Halloween!

What do you do for Halloween? I help scare kids at my best friend's parents' house, because there are never any kids at mine. Most of the kids call it "The Spooky House" so they usually know they'll be scared by someone...or something.

This is my favorite new addition

There are quite a lot of gravestones this year...

This is Hanging Chad. He kicks when a motion detector is triggered. I was co-fashion consultant for this particular project. By the end of the night he also wore a sign that said "Took four pieces of candy" ('cause the kids were told to take three.)

This year two kids were too scared to come into the yard and two cried; the crying was a surprised because timid kids tend not to even come in the yard. The rest of the kids had fun, including my favorite kids from last year (they fell in love with my doll Blix then) who asked about how to make Hanging Chad. They're young teens, mostly girls, and we're tempted to recruit them as scarers when they get too old to trick or treat.
I hope everyone had a good Halloween!



"we are, we are the shaken (shaken), we are the monsters (monsters) underneath your bed!" - Matchbook Romance, Monsters