Halloweenies

*** For anyone playing the home game, you’ll note that this entry should be back dated, but I’m playing catch up due to mayhem throughout all of last week. ***

Well Halloween has come and gone. Due to really sucky weather a few days prior, we didn’t set up any decorations other than a couple of pumpkins my daughter Brenna carved. Given the rain storms earlier in the holiday week, and limited time, I just couldn’t bring myself to drag out the stuff. It turned out to be a good choice, but I’ll explain that later.

On the Friday night prior to Halloween, Amanda the kids and I drove down to the Los Angeles area and went to several houses that have put up holiday displays. At this point you may be asking is this man utterly insane to drive 45 minutes (one way) into LA traffic on a Friday night with fractious children to look at some people’s personal Halloween displays. For those who know me, of course the answer is yes, but these weren’t any common displays. The three yards we went to look at are nothing less than spectacular in the level creativity and experience. These displays have been going for between 14 to 32 years. They aren’t done for profit but they have been listed in the newspaper on the same par as Six Flags/Magic Mountain’s and Knott’s Scary Farm’s celebrations. Put simply if you are ever in the Los Angeles on Halloween, they are worth the time to go visit. Here’s their websites:

This has been rightly compared to an outdoor version of the Haunted Mansion
The Hallowed Haunting Grounds - http://www.hauntinggrounds.org/

In the same tradition as HHG, they use cool mechanical effects.
The Haunt With No Name - http://pages.sbcglobal.net/srozell/index.html

These are the same folks who’ve been sponsoring BATS (Goths) Day at Disneyland.
Grimmstone Cemetary - http://www.inspiredillusions.net/insp.html

On Halloween evening the weather was cool and clear. Now normally, I dress up and scare the bejezus out of kids coming to the house, but this year, I had a small dilemma. If I stayed home to hand out candy to hyper frightened children, there would be no-one to walk the neighborhood with the kids. Conversely, my houseguest who had I thought would be home, well... wasn’t. Given this, I took the kids out early and walked the neighborhood, leaving the house dark. Had we put up decorations, we would have left then to the mercies of a number of angry, mischievous or malicious children. The kids got lot’s and lot’s of candies from the surprisingly few houses in the neighborhood that were participating in Beggar’s Night. Sadly, we did suffer one Halloween Trick. One of the pumpkins my daughter hand carved disappeared overnight. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but she’d put one of her handmade candles in it. All in all, I was still a good holiday.

Bytes and bites…

So understand this isn’t a rant, it’s just a statement. So, two weeks ago my roof leaked in the den and I contacted my insurance company. That Friday, I talked to the representative about the water damage. They sounded interested and helpful. That about all they did. Ten days later, no adjuster, no phone call, no nothing. Grrrrr...

In the mean time, I’ve been rearranging furniture and trying to clear out the room to limit the inevitable plaster dust and debris that will get into everything when the damaged section comes down. On Friday, Amanda again came over and helped move furniture, clean and shift stuff to the living room. To make things fit in there, I’d already been moving and reinstalling the satellite cable plug in there. Now given all this, we cleaned most of the junk out of the room except for the computer nook, a futon and some sewing stuff. While I’m maxing out every other part of the house, my ex- sends a little surprise for the kids.

My ex- and I have agreed that the kids should be able to keep in touch. We also agreed that with as much as I have to be on the computer at home, one system wasn’t enough. She’d told me before her recent visit that she was planning to buy the kids a computer system for gaming and e-mail. Here’s where things get more frustrating. Even though she was fully aware of the damage to the house and the need to move *everything* to other rooms, she ordered and sent the new computer anyway. Nice gesture, bad timing… Worse still, she and the kids are asking why the new computer hasn’t been set up yet. I suppose I could take down the kids activity table in the dinning room area, or put it in the living room, but then it’ll still need to be relocated to get e-mail access through my router. I wonder why on earth I’m even worrying about it?..

Oh well. On Saturday and Sunday, I started cutting, breaking, pulling and scraping the damaged areas. By Sunday evening, I made a rectangular opening about 4 foot by 18 inches wide. I’ve still got two small strips on either side of the evaporative cooler vent that need cutting and preparing, but the worst of it is done for now. Given that we had rain last night, the rubberized seal I put on the roof above the leak, appears to have held (crossing fingers).

On a happy note, I took the kids to see The Incredibles Saturday evening. The movie has a great storyline and had a wonderful retro look to it. It actually had good plot development and wasn’t all just cool CGI effects. As another added bonus, the kids loved my (semi) new “Beggar’s Chilli” recipe on Sunday.