Monthly Archives: October 2004

Whew! I can now relax…the party was last night, a new Halloween record for attendance! 38 people including myself had a fabulous time, the weather was beautiful but a bit chilly later in the evening, even around the coals on the grill with the hot spiced cider. 38 was a good number since we were able to fit inside pretty well, and I didn’t run out of food.

Everyone was impressed by the decor, first-timers and long-time guests…what is hard is impressing the ones who have been to my parties for several years! I have to keep outdoing myself each year, but somehow I keep doing it…Since there wasn’t much breeze, having two fog machines in the side yard made it look out on the street like our own little microclimate, as I was told by many guests as they arrived! haha…I refilled both fog machines once about an hour after they had been running, then around 10ish (I assume? with my long purple gloves I couldn’t wear my watch) I shut the fog machines off since not many were outside anymore anyway. Hooray!

There were several Murphy’s Law issues, of course. The door looked great after some last-minute afternoon repairs (Liquid Nails comes loose in the sun?! grr), but the surround & anchor points were not sturdy enough for it to open & close, so it was left propped open, but still worked great for a photo background. The new lightpost was haunted, since it randomly started going out & back on by itself later in the evening…very odd! I never got to eat until very late in the party, missing the baked brie entirely, and I only had a couple pieces of cheese during the whole day beforehand, but that’s par for the course. Speaking of food, last year the food arrangement was so cramped there wasn’t room for some of the food, so I rearranged the plan, and ended up having a whole table empty…? I’m still confused how that worked…these are the things you write down & save for next year so you improve each time.

What REALLY disappointed me were the webcams, or more specifically how my G4 desktop server stopped accepting FTP, so I could not do my image captures every minute…and from the few viewing attempts I heard about via email, it seemed like something else happened later in the evening that even affected the broadcast, so that was disappointing. *sigh* What I really want are battery-powered wireless webcams that work with Mac/Darwin-flavor Unix, and then I would invest in my own that would be reliable…maybe someday…

Anyway, I went to bed at 3am after the time change, but I woke up at 8:30…what is wrong with this picture?!? I was going to sleep in! So, I figured I’d check in to LJ (boy everyone’s been busy the last couple days – took awhile to catch up!), update myself, then do a bit of cleaning & resetting of decor, maybe a nap later, then as dusk approaches, start taking no-flash tripod photos, probably while trick or treaters come by…there might be an afternoon viewing of The Grudge if people feel like it, but we’ll see…

Happy Halloween everyone! Here’s me as Jessica, Ben crouching as Roger, and Jen as Eddie (Edwina?) Valiant posing in front of the door facade

P.S. Extra Halloween tidbit…since it is also JK Rowling’s favorite holiday, she has a treat on her website you can only reach after a trick or two…I found this as reported by The Leaky Cauldron, of course…Enjoy!

Gah, don’t you hate it when you catch a cold when you really don’t have the time? Forcing myself to take it easy is really hard when I have so many projects looming…but I was able to get to bed “early” in Britta-time the past couple nights at least (which means midnight), plus a 2-hr nap after leaving work a little early yesterday…trying to stick to my Zicam routine since that usually helps immensely, but my energy is zapped completely. Unfortunately due to important meetings for work this week, I’m not able to work from home until Friday. With any luck I will still have a voice for recording with The Choral Project on Friday evening…so far so good…

As for project progress, I have trimmed & curled Jessica’s wig, finished Roger’s yellow gloves, and started the red overalls, plus completely carved 5 gravestones and the stone coffin designs and begun painting gravestones…so I’m not too far behind. I still have the really cool gravestone to finish because it requires extra layers of foam, so I’ve kind of been avoiding it for the sake of continuing progress on the other projects.

Before I got my cold, Monday started fine…on his whirlwind (and I mean that!) nationwide tour of ACFEA meetings with his big boss, our tour courier Nick was able to stop by on Monday for a very quick visit… I consider it an honor that his one evening in the Bay Area when he had to fly to LA at 3:30am the next day and was already completely exhausted from meetings in 8 cities cross-country in 7 days, he wanted to visit the Choral Project rehearsal! I took him to rehearsal, which surprised everyone & got quite a reaction… We left really quickly so as not to interrupt rehearsal even more, since we had to get him something to eat and back up where he was staying at a reasonable hour. Poor guy was so tired he was a bit loopy. 😉 We were all disappointed, including Nick, that he couldn’t stay longer this time, but at least we got to see him! He thinks he might be able to visit California again in February, hopefully for longer, so we’ll see…

So, had this quiz in her blog today…it seems that when I take the quiz myself, I am an Academic Girl, but if I take the quiz designed for guys “what is she,” I end up as a hybrid that does seem to fit me…interesting… of course, my car only shows up in the Party Girl description…heh!

She is a hybrid of: Progressive Girl Academic Girl Click on the pictures below to read more: Take the ‘What Kind of Girl Is She?’ quiz at CookingToHookup.com