Haunted House

For years now, we had enjoyed visiting a haunted house up the road from home, but the neighbors moved last year. So we decided to put on a scaled-down version for the kiddies. We had a bunch of fun and were quite surprised to see that traffic was backed up & down the road in both directions as people were parking their cars in the road and walking their kids over for a 'run' through the spook-tacular. We had several adult visitors (some already under the full-sail guidance of Captain Morgan and a few martinis) come by to look things over and give us their votes of approval. We had so many kids come by that we ran out of candy 3 times, so Luann had to run out and get more. We even had the neighbors across the street drop off a couple of bags of candy to 'support the cause'.

Well, time to explain the pictures...

Here is the first picture of the entrance to the haunted house, a fan-blown feature we picked up at Walmart. Inside the seemingly small interior, is a park bench entirely covered with a huge, green irridescent cloth. Under the park bench is an ice-cooled carpet-fog machine (blows a slow, lazy smoke that hugs the ground) and a portable boombox with detachable speakers that plays spooky sounds from a CD. On the park bench is a globe with a witch's head inside it that lights up with fiberoptics and says all kinds of 'witchy' things. Sitting on the bench next to the witch globe will be me, decked out as the Grim Reaper. The mask I got this year is a special one that has a red fluid pumping through it so the face looks like it has blood dripping down the front. I also installed green LED lights for eyes in the mask. When I put this outfit on, I have the blood pump concealed in my right hand and the light switch for the green eyes in my left hand. Typically, I simply sit there on the bench and let people go through, not responding to them. But if I hear somebody claim that the haunted house isn't all that scary, I will quietly follow them out the back, wait for them to concentrate on the candy bowl, then flick on the eyes, pump some blood on the face and give them a rendition of a snapping, growling dog . That usually get's them going!

The open-air haunted house is really taking shape in this picture. We decided on an open-air format so parents won't be nervous about sending there kids off into the 'ever-after'.

It's still under construction, but when an adventurer makes it through the haunted house, the backside will be loaded with all kinds of beasties and creepy-crawlies that are sound and motion activated. We got quite a few jumps and shouts of surprise when something activated and started walking, crawling, shaking and making all kinds of noises as they came near, or even if they simply pointed at it.

Unfortunately, the new fog machine required surgery after we had let it sit with the heater on for a while. I had to clean out the injector system to get it functioning again. You can see the bench with the green cloth and the witch-globe to the right.

As dusk settled in, Katrina took up her station, guiding kids to the candy bowl and directing them to first push the button on the ghost doorbell. When they touched the button, a tongue would shoot out and hit their finger, and the ghost bell would shout something like; "Tag! You're it!", or "Hey! What're You Doing?" Even some of the older teenagers fell victim to that one...

We had to make up what we called a 'chicken run' for the little ones that didn't want to go through the haunted house. It soon migrated into also being used as an exit path.

So, night has fallen, the lights are lit, the strobes are flashing and a cacophany of sound can be heard from several sources throughout the site. It's time for our first victims...er, ah, visitors.

So, there's the witch-globe, all lit up and doing her thing, while I wait on the park bench next to her for some brave soul to venture within my grasp.

This was the most fun we had, doing something like this for Halloween. Even though we had some spoil-sport issues, such as the blue lightning disk in the top right of picture 5 being ripped down by a rapscalian teen-aged boy who jumped up and pulled it down and could only then exclaim when the glass shattered into thousands of bits; "That was real!" before running away at top speed.

And then there was the knot of about 9 teens (boys and girls) that huddled in front of the entrance and almost knocked it over, then decided that 3 boys should try to judo kick me in the face as I sat on the bench. When I stood up, they crowded up close and asked me what I was going to do in an aggressive manner... So I pulled the plug on the inflatable haunted house and they beat-feet back out of it as it was collapsing. At that point, it was nine o'clock and I was tired, so I pulled my costume off and told Katrina that it was time to shut down the haunted house. Humpf! Just some dumb boys trying to impress some dumb girls...

In spite of these mishaps, it was still a good time and the neighborhood really had some fun. I have to admit, for the 16 years we have been in this house, I don't think we had as many people stop to Trick or Treat over the whole time, as we did this evening. It had to be well over a hundred visitors and they kept coming by, even as we were working on packing up the equipment...

Katrina's Homecoming - 2007

Well, it was time once again for Katrina's Homecoming Dance at her school. Since she is no longer involved with John from last year, she and her friend Melissa, decided to team up and go together to the dance.

Here we are, after I had to deal with altering Katrina's dress for a better fit, adding a hook-fastener (and an hour before we had to leave, performing an emergency rip repair) on Melissa's dress, we were finally ready to go. Well, kinda. Melissa is on the phone because she just discovered she needs her school identification card to get into the dance and she didn't have it. We had to make quick arrangements to meet up with her parents to get it before heading downtown.

We paused for a moment for a pose in the lobby of the hotel, then we had a nervous moment when Melissa realized she left her ID in the car (that the valet just away drove in). No problem though, Katrina checked and at this time, they weren't checking ID's if they recognized you. Since both girls do computer tech support for the school for one class every day, they had no problems being recognized as the girls that help save the teachers from certain doom when their computers go nuts.

Meanwhile, I waited outside the ballroom area, writing a portion of a book that I had volunteered to work on. I had four hours of spare time, so this was a good time to pound away on the PDA.

The girls took cameras inside and it looks like they had some fun.

The dance wound down at midnight, but the girls decided to call it quits by 11:30. We finished up the evening by looking for some ice cream. Unfortunately, there wasn't an ice cream shop open at this hour, so we stopped by Starbucks coffee for some chocolate frappacinos. That filled the bill. You can see the girls were worn out and ready to unwind.

So, a good time was had by all, in spite of the flurry of mini-emergencies that occurred.

Whew! Katrina is growing up so fast!

What A Weird Weekend...

Well, it has been strange at work because the wife of one of our engineers suddenly passed away on the 18th, so the shop was just full of depression the next day. What made it strange was that people wanted to wish me a happy birthday when stopping by my cubicle, but they did so kinda under their breath.

After work, we decided to go geocaching and then out to dinner, so we headed out to the touristy, John's Pass area and started hunting. We had some success, both at John's Pass and nearby Treasure Island. That is, until the 'check engine' light on the car came on. We ended up taking the car home instead of looking for a place to eat at John's Pass.

The next morning (Saturday), we took the car to the dealer and they said it would have to stay for the whole day. Since the dealership had no transportation, we had to take the municipal bus system to get home. With the assistance of Katrina by phone, we were able to follow the route she described and made it home safely (there were some strange people on that bus - including the people that were riding with us). The funny thing is, it took 1 and 3/4 hours to get home, when we normally make the drive in 20-25 minutes.

When we came back to pick up the car, the service writer told us that the EGR valve was clogged with carbon and had to be replaced. Thankfully, we bought a premium extended warranty for the Magnum, so the only thing we had to pay for was the oil change and tire rotation (and not the extra $330 for the new valve). When we left the dealership, I talked to Luann on the phone and told her to tromp on the gas when the traffic light turned green, and man, a ton of carbon smoke came blasting out of the exhaust pipe. I told her that she needs to do an 'Italian Tune-Up' like that every so often so the engine doen't get carbon fouled as easily.

On Sunday morning, Katrina surprised us with the announcement that she had a 'shoebox diorama' due on Monday morning and the topic was US colonial-times clothing. We ended up running all over town to get the supplies, then helped her with the planning and layout of the project. It came out alright, but talk about stress...

So my 44th birthday has come and gone, albeit gasping, wheezing and struggling. I hope the rest of the family has had better luck with their birthdays this month: Jody, Treesie, Jennifer and Kim. Happy birthday you-all, looks like we're all one year older...

Getting Ready For Halloween

Well, Halloween is coming, and since Katrina is a bit too old to go Trick-or-Treating this year, we decided to decorate the yard and then put together a haunted house for the kiddies. This posting is for the yard decorations, we'll put up pictures when we put the haunted house together on the 31st.

Here is the mini-graveyard put together. The headstones on the ends have red flashing 'eyes' in the skulls.

Since Katrina is taking Advanced Anatomy in school she felt she was qualified to put the skeleton together. I guess she is kind of getting her mind into the part.

Well, I must say, the skeletal layout looks a little strange. What ever happened to the, "Ankle Bone Is Connected To The Knee Bone" dealy?

Meanwhile, the pirate in the crow-cage, looks on from the carport.

We also decided to put up this floating ghost which runs back and forth along a wire. We have to remember to duck whenever the thing goes by.

For the last large tombstone, Katrina decided to ham it up a bit. Alas, poor Youric, I didn't know him at all...

Here is the final setup for the larger headstones. Each headstone has its own creepy-beasty coming out of the ground.

The smaller headstones in the mini-graveyard look pretty good.

And for good measure, we put up a spiderweb and a couple of spiders. If you look past the web, you can see our doorbell spook that yells at you and his tongue shoots out to touch your hand when you push the doorbell button. We also bought a fog machine, a candy bowl with a hand that is light activated and says, "Would You Like some Candy?" and then the hand grabs you when you reach for candy. Then there is the lightning disk that's sound activated, the hour-long spooky sounds CD and a whole bunch of other stuff we're going to set out for the fun-fest.

(There Was A) New Link On This Page

We've been working on re-creating the recipes of treats Dad made for us over the years and stumbled across a fellow Blogger with a neat Indonesian Food & Recipe site. Just click on the link on the left border of the main page to see all the neat stuff we found...

We plan on making the little meat pies Dad made when we were younger that us kids called, "Crab Shells". Something like an empanada, they were half-moons pockets of pie crust dough filled with stir-fried, spiced hamburger meat. After the filling was tucked inside, he would crimp the round edge with a fork and it looked something like a blue crab shell, which is how it got its name. After we have a go at it this weekend, we'll let you know how it came out!

[Added 11/17/07] We finally made some up, and yes, they do look quite a bit like Cuban 'empandas', but we were making these things way before the Cubans had started moving into the Miami area...

News From The Parents

Got a call from my mother that Dad was admitted to the hospital complaining that he had difficulty breathing. Turns out it is something that is allergy related and he also has itchy, watery eyes. Seems they were cleaning out the garage in order to have less cars sitting outside and they all got into a bunch of dust while moving things around. According to the doctor, this is what most likely triggered his allergic response.

Mom says that her chemo treatments haven't fully beat the cancer yet and they are now looking at a different medicine cocktail to get her 'marker' values down. She is still upbeat and the doctor seems to feel she can get it into remission if they hit on the mixture.

Better watch out! Kaylee has been seen driving around town in a Chevy Cavalier convertible, you better keep an eye out for the young driver in training. I suggested they set off a warning siren for the neighborhood whenever she turns the key in the ignition to start the car. It didn't sound as though they liked that idea...

Treesie has finally been able to move into a different career path at work so she can work normal 8-5 hours and be home with her family on the weekends. She knew it was going to be tough to work her way back to a normal schedule, but she knew she to 'take one for the family' so she could be home if the parents ever needed her during Mom's chemo. We hope things start settling down for all of them some.