The Halloween Spirit

I love getting excited about things. Ask Steve and he will tell you I am the ultimate fair-weather fan, groupie, and clinger-oner. I love getting excited with other people about things. The best thing to get excited about is the up coming holiday season. Not Christmas (you can't get excited about that until after Thanksgiving.) I'm talking about Halloween. This week has been a months worth of holiday excitement stuffed into 4 days.

Sunday, after getting home from my third 3 12-hour work day in a row, Steve and I decorated the house with our various Halloween decorations. From the pumpkin lights to the pirate skeleton, all are out to shine and fulfill their Halloween destiny. Monday I invited a couple of friends over in the afternoon and made various Halloween cookies including candy-corn and sugar cookie cutouts. I then spent most of the evening listening to "The Nightmare Before Christmas" Soundtrack and decorating said cut-outs. Tuesday We carved our pumpkins as both of us will be working until Halloween. Tonight I cooked and feasted upon the pumpkin seeds as Steve and I planned the final parts of our costumes.

I think my favorite part of Halloween is when all the kids come trick-or-treating here. I still get excited even though now I'm on the opposite end door then I have been for most of my life. I can't wait!

With Hesitation

About a month ago my friend K at work got a phone call that went something like this:

"hi, this is Bob, your friend from high school."

K: "I don't have a friend Bob from high school... Is this a joke?"

Caller: "No, I know you, you drive a blue neon, you got married last year to Rob, and you work at MGH."

K: "Who is this? Is this some kind of joke?"

Caller "I'm watching you."

End of phone conversation.

Yikes! After that phone call K called the police, changed all her information, and deleted all of her online accounts. The Police think that because K is a nurse that the person who called her was a patient or a family of a patient. Apparently being a nurse makes you an easy object of fixation for people.

While I learned this in nursing school, I never have encountered it in real life. It's scary. To be honest it has made me really hesitant to post on my blog. It is a bit of a double edge sword, on the one hand I want people to be able to read about me and my life here, but I don't want it to become a way for someone who is crazy to hurt me.

So, I continue to blog because I like it despite the creepiness in the world. Because it helps me feel close with people who I'm not geographically close to. But I won't be joining Facebook anytime soon.

The Dream Dress

Ask any girl what here "perfect" wedding dress looks like and I'm sure she can at least give you a few choice adjectives. Even girls who say they never want to get married have some idea of the "perfect dress". So as I started to look for my "perfect" dress I a few ideas and a lot of anxiety.

The week before I went dress shopping with my mom I had multiple dreams regarding the search for the dress. One where I woke up yelling "I'm not wearing a kimono!" and another were I am continually trying to wear a lace dress but when I put it on it is a completely different dress.

The day the was designated "find the dress day" in my calender started off to a slow start. I, for the most part, wanted to avoid most large wedding chain shops and stick with local small business. The first shop we went to did not have much in the way of the kind of dress I wanted so we quickly moved on to the next store.

The second store was a lesson in retail. We were the only people in the entire store for the most part so every dress I tried on was met with "awww, you look so beautiful, that looks perfect on you" and "You have the perfect figure to wear this dress." It's hard not to be flattered but as I changed back into my jeans another customer came in to try on a coat and was met by the same "awww, this coat is perfect for you, it's like this coat was made for you." With a grand total in my hand for a dress and veil equaling twice my budget I left the second store at least an idea that there was a dress out there for me.

The third store was completely packed of girls and their moms shopping for dresses. I tried on what seemed like fifteen dresses before I tried one on that was different then any other dress I had worn. "This is a beautiful dress" my friend B told me. I looked in the mirror not completely sold until the bridal consultant came up and clamped and pinned the dress so that it would fit me like it would if it was my size. I looked the mirror and tears started to form in my eyes. It was the "perfect" dress for me. It had all the things I was looking for in a dress that I would wear as a bride.

So, we got a dress! (and for $300 less than my budget for the "perfect" dress.)

Go Green!

I just signed up to have 50% of my electricity to come from a renewable resource, like wind power. To do the same go to nstar.com and click on the nstar green link to convert your houses energy to a more eco-friendly fuel. I truly believe that only by having people support these kinds of initiatives will we be able to move away from big oil and other harmful fuel sources. Convert now!

A Day in Twenty Dollar Bills

First $20-A few weeks ago I asked B to she wanted to run a 5K with me. I've never run in any sort of race and had been fascinated by the idea of running a 5K road race. So after paying our small $20 entry fee and getting our "official" 5K shirts we lined up with the 1,000+ people at the start line in Somerville and started our race. Neither B nor I had really trained for this small run so we were both pleasantly surprised at our time. With only one quick stop to tie a untied shoe lace, we finished with a decent time of 34:00 min. Some might say this is slow but we were impressed with ourselves so don't harsh our mellow. Turns out B is a pretty good pacer with myself and we had a good time. Steve met us at the finish line with coffee.

Second $+20-My cousin's family was in town and staying at B's house so after our race I went home and showered and then headed over to hang out with the extended family. Kids are so funny and full of energy. We amused them for a short while by taking a Boston duck tour. The kids weren't really into learning fun facts about Boston but they were into having the duck go into the water.

Third $20-A ticket to the Mason Jennings concert. Mason Jennings is one of my favorite artists and his songs are so beautiful. It wasn't the best performance of his I've seen but it was still pretty good.

Yesterday was so much fun and a beautiful day. I loved it.

Vote Moose

A lot of people have been making jokes about the ruggedness of Sarah Palin recently. I’ve heard multiple jokes on both the Daily Show and Colbert Report about the Alaska governor getting attacked by a moose and that started me thinking. What if Sarah Palin wasn’t attacked by just any moose but by my Moose?

Come to think of it, Moose and Sarah Palin have a lot in common. They both like hunting and fighting. Both make poor decisions, and have (or could) cost me a lot of money. Come to think of it, Moose has been acting a lot more patriotic recently (just like Sarah Palin)!


These colors don’t digest well.

It is conceivable that Moose could indeed attack Palin in a bid to impersonate her until the November election. So remember, a vote for Sarah Palin would be a lot like voting for my cat. Trust me on this one; you don’t want to do that.