Halloween: A New Era

Happy upcoming Thanksgiving!!! Before it gets even farther along, figured to to the belated Halloween post!!!

The new era alluded to in the title refers to this being the first year where the older was not in the vicinity, so it was just the younger.

First up is a shot of the Jack-O-Lantern. For a change, they didn't have the carving contest at work this year. Just the one this year, as it seems time always gets tight this time of year. Based on Papyrus from Undertale. The youngest drew it out and I carved it. considering the challenging design, I think it came out quite well. Didn't do it that far in advance, either, so it was in excellent shape for the traditional early November mayhem. You can catch this year's here.

Next up is a construction shot of the most complex portion of the costumes this year, a pair of glasses. Involved was some Plexiglas from the dodecahedron project (worse for time, the protective paper had bonded fairly well onto it!!!), frames from some old sunglasses, much epoxy, and some even older than the Plexiglas window tint film. The black piece was a cardboard mock-up repurposed to hold the bows apart while it was being epoxied.

A couple of new shirts were in order. I did mine with the same technology the the older had previously used for his Vriska costume, a cardboard template and spray paint. The youngers' was made up with an iron on print, on an orange sleeved shirt. I never saw an image of this shirt with the orange sleeves, but hey, artistic license!!!

My costume was yet another Homestuck character, Lil Cal. Also involved was a gold tooth cap I'd had for more than ten years ago. My wife was a huge help locating it. Where is a good place to store such a thing??? An old ball cap and gold chain completed the look. To finish it off, I shaved off my mustache and beard and drew on the cheek spots and jaw opening. I wore it into work, and I think I was the only one in my department this year that dressed up.

The boy had his costume based on Dirk Strider, who of course, is closely linked with Lil Cal, so that is where the inspiration for my costume came from!!! Glasses, shirt, and an old wood sword fresh painted silver on the blade comprise his costume. I'm of the opinion that wanting to have the glasses and an orange shirt were primary motivators to his choice of costume!!!

More of the Jack-O-Lantern, this time on the cat tree. I don't think awesome cat much cares for his heiarchal position at the top of the tree being usurped.

Something cool, I have so many vacation days now, that I happened to see they had a half day available on Halloween, which of course I took. Nice, as they have moved the start and end time of my shift 15 minutes later, and it had already been a late get home time. We trick or treated around the neighborhood, the streets behind our house, then over to what had looked to be a promising area.

One place had this sign up on their gate... I feel vandalism coming on!!!

There!!! Fixed your sign for you, mister!!! No treat, here's your trick!!! Haha!!!

When we had headed over two weekends before, we'd spotted what looked like a walkway at the end of the dead end street we'd walked up. We had walked down it to another cul-de-sac in the valley below. This was the previously alluded to promising area. There were several houses with Halloween decorations, and while we were there we witnessed a mother and child having a Nerf gun war. It was pretty far on in the evening by the time we made it over there, though, and it wasn't as good as it had looked, though there was one guy we caught pulling into his garage who dug out a three year old bag of tootsie rolls and dumped a good quantity into our sacks.

Finally, now that there is one in the neighborhood, no Halloween night would have been complete without a visit to a haunted house...

"And they say the old man's body was NEVER FOUND..."

The Post-Halloween Tradition Continues

Here it is, a month later, and here's the post-Halloween destruction video!!! For this year, I had the idea to get a big round pumpkin, cut it (almost) in half, then paint it up like a pokeball. Then, I had a much smaller pumpkin that I was going to carve the likeness of Charmander into, hopefully to make his tail into the candle part. Alas, I ran out of time, so that didn't end up happening. Oh well, it smashed up nicely!!!

This year I had two cameras rolling, so here you're getting two different views.

The other pumpkins I'd bought never got carved, either. A big, time consuming part of carving them is hollowing them out, so that is a big part of the reason they didn't get carved. We left them out on the porch railing.

Apparently, if you wait long enough, they hollow themselves out!!! One of the neighborhood squirrels gnawed a hole in the side of one, and took all the seeds out!!! Afterwards we threw it down, too. I cut a hole in the side of the next one to cut down on the gnaw time.

Random Recap & The Christmas that Everything Broke

Happy new year to all!!! It's been a while, huh??? Soooo much has happened, who knows if I'll cover it all???



Christmas was good, but a lot of things broke (as you may have surmised from the title) right around then. The week before we were having our famous rain storms, and the top of the pepper tree by the property line and driveway blew off. This was actually something of a win, as we've been gradually working on cutting this tree down for a while, and the top portion is the hardest to get to, and when it fell it was away from the cars & the neighbors' house!!!



There's a shot of my younger boy in one of his Christmas presents, a shirt from Woot! It's got to be one of his favorites, he's worn it almost every day since!!! The colors have grown on me. Boss shirt, boss!!! (He says, "I know.")



We had goody day a few weeks back at work. As usual, it was good, and there were plenty of leftovers. I ended up taking home two 12-packs of soda and the remains of a cheese ball, among other things. I've been nomming on that cheese ball ever since!!!

The work Christmas party could have been amazing. Instead it was pretty decent. A lot of things could have been a lot better, though. I'm interested to see if they keep the same venue next year.



The sink in the kitchen had been draining slow. I took it apart to clean out the trap & use the hydraulic drain cleaner on the pipe. Turned out the galvanized pipe was all corroded out on the bottom threads. Only about 12 years or so that lasted, I remember replacing it before. Replaced it with some incredibly beefy schedule 80 stainless steel pipe, think it'll outlast the rest of the house!!! Of course, I had to put it back together in the meantime. The garbage disposal stopped working in the interim, sounded like something was jammed in it. This breakdown magically fixed itself, but on the night of the 23rd, while the older was doing dishes, it all came apart, flooding the kitchen with 2 sinks worth or dirty dish water. Before this project was done, I had to replace the P trap, too. Once I got it back together, it had a line of pin holes down one side.



There's a shot of my nephew with a blade from my younger's Lego set. Ever see the Veggie Tales' "The Toy that Saved Christmas"??? My nephew goes by the nickname Louie, so here's your Buzz Saw Louie!!! The only toy featuring an actual working buzz saw built into his right arm!!!

Had a power surge on Christmas morning that took out the stereo amplifier that we run the sound on the T.V. through. I was resigned to buying a new LCD T.V. the next morning. We went out and saw Tron, then I messed with it and another like it I had in the basement when we got home. Couldn't find anything wrong, but when I put it back together, it worked!!! Another problem that magically fixed itself!!!



A couple of shots of pumpkins here... One is my youngests' of Sonic. Of course, I did all the carving and a lot of the gutting. First time I've ever followed a design, and first one I've ever done with the shaving off of the top layer. My pumpkin, I was inspired the day we carved 'em. I was going to the boys' room to get them, and I saw the shells the older had brought back from Florida, along with a couple of blue marbles from inside spray paint cans. I like the way the flash made them glow!!! Somewhere in my video camera are some clips of the annual pumpkin smashing...



Speaking of video, see the shot of me with my new camera??? A real nice Pentax I bought for myself. It'll shoot a video HD enough to choke your laptops' meager video capabilities!!! It also features in body image stabilization to help keep the price of lenses down. I'm quite pleased with it... except... after about half a dozen shots, the built in flash stopped working!!! At least it's still under warranty...

One of these pictures is of my dad with our Christmas present to him, a gas tank that I'd had in my panel truck. Hope it works better for him than it did for me!!!



There's a shot of the cake I did for my nephew's birthday. If you don't know, that's Wubbsy. My sis started with him, then changed to Sponge Bob. I've done too many Sponge Bobs, so I stayed with Wubbsy, only with Bob's pants on him. Why??? That's why his tail is in the form of a question mark!!!

I know another thing or two broke around then, but I can't remember what....

New year's resolution: I resolve to blog more!!!

The Return of a November Traditon

Ladies and gentleman, here it is yet again, videos of the destruction of the jack-O-lanterns!!!



For a little explanation, check this out!!! Last year's videos here... (Scroll down)