Day in the Life of an Idiot

Last night was Halloween.  This year, the holiday snuck up on me like a ninja.  Actually, someone stole all of October all together, so all of a sudden, there we were putting up porch decorations in a hurry, buying candy last minute, and throwing together costumes.  Actually, Mason had his costume picked up several days ago.  It was me that, at seven-oh-five, said, "Oh!  I know I'll dress up too."  But, despite feeling like we did it all last minute, things went well.

Here's Mason and I gutting the pumpkins:




Our cat, Deliah, trying to figure out what the heck the monkeys are up to.... and whether or not any of it is tasty.

The finished faces (designed by Mason, carved by ima):

Mason as "Skeletrox." This is a name he came up for himself. He's looking pretty scary, and I have to feel a wee bit proud of the leg bones as I built those myself onto his black jeans with a bit of creativity and some duct tape sheets. (Did you know duct tape came in sheets? We didn't until we were at Michael's for Mason's friend Datlton's birthday party and spotted them.)

Here's the lovely Ms. Rounds as your newest Defense Against Dark Arts professor:



And, now, the most ridiculous samuari ever.... I think the glasses really give my costume that perfect Edo Period look, don't you? Of course, you can't tell in the picture, but I don't have actual hakama. I'm still looking to buy a cheap pair somewhere, so I'm wearing my Kuk Sool Wan gi. So I guess I'm a mixed Korean Martial artist with bad hair and a plastic katana. *snort*

... for I have sinned. It's been fourteen days since my last confession... er, post.

I can't really say I've done anything terribly interesting with my time, either -- which I suppose is a fairly big sin.  My folks came to town over the weekend.  On Friday night we were supposed to drive out to their hotel to hang out, have Red Savoy's pizza, and go swimming.  We were already running late because I'd mis-timed getting Mason to the library and back again to Shawn's work in time to take her to the clinic for her B12 shot.  We stopped at home long enough to change, but when we got back in the car and drove about a half block, the engine light came on. 

I'm usually the sort to say, "Aw, whatever," and keep driving, but several years ago (okay, probably more like several decades ago at this point,) when I was driving up to visit Shawn in Grand Rapids, MN where her folks were living at the time, I ran over an ice chunk in the road. It made a god awful sound, but when I pulled over I couldn't see any damage, so I got back on the road.  I drove until my engine light came on, but thought, "ah, whatever," and then.... in the middle of nowhere the car sputtered to a halt and died.  It was minus twenty degrees outside. On Christmas eve.  Luckily, a family stopped and gave me a ride to the next town's diner, where I was able to call (this was before cell phones) and have Shawn's dad come and pick me up.  Turns out I'd totalled the car.  The ice block had smashed the oil pan and as I'd driven the car, it had less and less oil, until suddenly the engine seized.

Ever since then, I don't disregard engine lights, even though I know they're often just one of those lights that come on randomly.

But I did risk the half a block back to the house so that I could wait for the AAA guys in the comfort of my own heated house.  I had them tow the car to our favorite mechanics, Sinclair Grand (on Wheeler).  I called my folks and told them we'd just have to see them on Saturday, and after a few bitter tears of disappointment, we all settled on our brand new chairs.  (As part of Christmas sprucing up, we bought three matching chairs from LL Bean to replace our ratty old couch.)

The evening was made much better by the discovery of a free app for the iPad called "Moxie."  It's a very fun word game, and so we were able to play that and forget about the car for a while.  When the AAA guy came I decided to let him take the car without me since the problem was pretty self-explainatory, and I went back in and made flautas for dinner.  I had accidentally bought the fixings for flautas when I went to Whole Foods earlier in the day, because I spaced on the fact that we'd be having diner with the folks.  (I guess it was actually some kind of psychic impluse, however.)

Saturday morning, we got up early to start bread and cook a squash for squash muffins. My folks came around nine and we all hung out chatting on our fancy new chairs.  (Have I mentioned the chairs?)  I'd wanted to show off kuk sool wan to them, but no one but me was feeling up to it.  So I got out voted.  Shawn made her wild rice soup with turkey leftoves, and we all had a nice lunch before my parents took off to try to race the snow storm on the way back to LaCrosse.

I had them drop me off at the car mechanics on their way out of town, and I found out that the engine light was indeed a fluke, but they wanted to see if they could get the engine to stutter.  (I had noted that it had been doing that just as the light came on.)  So, I left the car there and picked up cat food and some other necessities at the nearby store and walked home.  It's probably a mile, but it's an easy mile, even in the cold and a walk I've made a dozen times.  On the way I listened to an audio book that I got for review called CINDER.   (It's a retelling of Cinderella in a dystopian future China, where Cinder is a cyborg.  It's really fairly awesome [so far] and I'm looking forward to giving it thumbs up.)

The rest of the weekend was low key, even the walk back to get the car.  The mechanic never did find anything wrong with it, so I got to take it home free of charge.  (This is why I love this garage.)  The only other excitment of the weekend was on Saturday evening when Shawn and I watched the third episode of "Case Histories."  I'd been only watching it half-heartedly because the storylines tend to be darker than I usually like, but this particularly one was very good.  (I usually end up not watching with any kind of seriousness, but get caught up by the end.)  Afterwards, Shawn and I were talking about how awesome it was and she decided to look up information about it.  Turns out the main character Jackson Brody is played by none-other-than Jason Isaacs, known to most of us as Lucius Malfoy.  The two could, in many ways, not be more different.  Dude is an awesome actor.

I spent much of the rest of the weekend trying to wrap my head around this discovery.  I think some part of my brain may have exploded. 

Also in the attempt to discover if the Scottish accent Jason Isaacs affects in "Case Histories" was real or not, I discovered that he was born in Liverpool in a very insular Jewish community. 

All of this information just made Lucius Malfoy/Jackson Brody/Jason Isaacs all that more hot.

*sssss boom!*