It is the autumn of the ye-ea-ea-ear...

I have been feeling very, very blah lately - blah about Juneau, my job, my personal life and creative output...my lack of ungodly riches...so, like a fool, I pinned all my hopes for kickstarting some fun back into life on Halloween.

Halloween is a very wonderful holiday, truly one of the greats (my all time personal favorite is Easter, but Halloween is right up there with it). Dressing up is so awesome, and kids trick-or-treating is so cute, and it's a nice cheerful and morbid celebration during autumn, a perfect backdrop for cheerfulness at fall leaves scurrying around in the crisp wind and for morbidity at winter's approach and the death of another year. Halloween is also a dangerous holiday, however, as people tend to party a little too hard when they get all mob-frenzied at the high turnout at the bars and the abundance of interesting or...shall we say titillating costumes. Last Halloween, for example, I dragged my feet, was totally broke, had no costume, and then threw together a very fun get-up and proceeded to utterly alcohol poison myself into oblivion. What a crazy night, what a terrible hangover, what a crushing case of the next-day-shames.

This year we vowed it would be different, and devised a gameplan for what we would drink, how much we would drink, and more importantly what and where we would NOT drink - buying drinks at bars was strictly forbidden because it's a money-suck and because it leads to over-intoxication, but drinking a pre-determined amount at home was projected to be both cost effective and a good way to ensure controlled conviviality. I instead poured money into costume supplies with some vague, grandiose vision in mind. Then I got the blahs, and those costume supplies festered in their plastic JoAnne Fabrics bags while I refused to do anything productive at all until the day before Halloween when I started stitching. I also had a few Miller Lites, I'll admit it, and who knows if they affected the following day, or if the cumulative stress of work and hating the season change (dreading winter) and not wanting to be marooned in Juneau at the moment were enough on their own, but I woke up on Halloween with a headache that waxed and waned throughout the day.

Between that and a spat at the house, and perhaps the impossibly high expectations for the holiday that had been built in group plannign and discussion for at least a month prior, I collapsed in a total break-down, and my headache turned into a sort of stabbing-icepick-in-the-brain pain. I barely scraped it together to get dressed as company came over, and was reluctantly pressed into makeup duties in the bathroom, and eventually plastered my own face over, and even got my arm twisted into having a couple of drinks before leaving the house, but the joie de vivre was long gone. However, I had already purchased tickets to the Reign of Terror haunted house at the JACC, so I had to go out at least to use those.

That haunted house was perhaps the worst that I have ever seen, ever. Words fail. Although the words "haunted tent" do describe the scariest thing in it, if that tells you anything. Honestly, the only time there was anything remotely unnerving was when one of the rooms was just pitch black and you had to make your way to the shredded doorway on the far side - and I can get that thrill for free at home. We need an investigative reporter to tackle the question, "What did 35 high school students do for the 5 months that they allegedly spent working on this haunted house?" And also, "If they had a budget, where the hell did it go?" The entire thing consisted of high schoolers lurking in plastic sheet cubicles shifting from side to side and occasionally shrieking, one pup tent with someone in it shaking it, and a legitimately creepy mattress set-up that looked ready for a massacre, if only one had shown up. I guess it was kind of funny, if I'm being charitable. And it would probably be really scary for kids! But scaring kids isn't hard.

Anyway, we went out to the Alaskan afterwards (after I was berated in a rainy parking lot to at least walk over with my friends as I tried to duck out and head home), and The Great Alaska Bluegrass Band was a pleasure to listen to, and a pleasure to take one sedate waltz around the dancefloor to, and I was all too happy to sit and look at all the creative costumes for a little while before heading home to get mad snuggly on the couch.

The next day Alicia gave me some tough love and forced me to figure out what I could do to be happier in Juneau so I wouldn't bail on her during winter break and leave her homeless. One of those things was putting up or shutting up, so I signed up for NaNoWriMo in an effort to get my lazy self to do more than start and shelve a writing project. Now I have to write oodles a day or I'm dead. But I'm glad I did it, it means there's something that I Really Need To Do in the evening, instead of shlubbing around doing nothing and feeling sorry for myself. Current word count: 1,049. X_x I'm cat meat.

Welcome, Kirsa Alaska Edit Profile | Log Out

My TicketExchange

Detail View
List View

My Auctions

Detail View
List View

My Tickets

Detail View
List View

The Bob Dylan Show WaMu Theater Seattle, WA Mon, Oct 5, 2009 07:30 PM Print My Tickets Email a friend Artist Info Order Details Order Details Event: The Bob Dylan Show Venue: WaMu Theater Seattle, WA Event Date: Mon, Oct 5, 2009 07:30 PM Order Date: 08/12/09 Order #: 10-57025/SEA More order details

Random Text Messages

1304389****: Hey
Me: Who is this
1304389****: It's Nate, michaels pretty cool don't u think ;)
Me: There are so many Michaels in this world, I wouldn't feel comfortable generalizing.
1304389****: Wait do u like anyone
Me: Yes, I like my friends a lot B-)
1304389****: Wait who r u
Me: Wait, how deep does this rabbit hole go? Are you playing Matrix mind games with me, Nate?
1304389****: no my friend gave me da wrong num and I don't no who u r
Me: :( sorry you don't have the right number. But look how much fun we had with this mystery :D
1304389****: pants
Me: Trousers.
1304389****: But who ru
Me: Just another pawn in the game of life.

You purchased 1 ticket to:
______________________________

_______________________________________________________________
The Bob Dylan Show & His Band-Bob Dylan,John Mellencamp,Willie Nelson
Louisville Slugger Field, Louisville, KY
Wed, Jul 8, 2009 05:30 PM

WITH FRONDS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS ANEMONES?

Spring 2009

I haven't blogged in a long time. Like for real. I also haven't done a lot of other things. But I have done still others. One thing I did was make Emily a stuffed elephant. And myself a stuffed rabbit. My creativity is not without a pulse. I firmly intend to get some stuff on the still-defunct website, too. The weekends have been occurring in rapid succession, but also passing by with great haste, leaving nary a trace of their existence in time's cruel forward march. Seriously, right about NOW is when I wish I actually just taught school, so I could have the summer off. It's something to think about.

A Little Bit Of Broadway, 4:40-6:00, 2/22/08

Knowing Me, Knowing You - ABBA
Opening: I Hope I Get It - A Chorus Line
Jet Song - West Side Story
Joanna - Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Jolly Holiday - Mary Poppins
Light My Candle -RENT
The Trolley Song - Meet Me In St. Louis
Mimi?! Speravo Di Trovarvi Qui - Baz Lurmann's Production of Puccini's La Boheme
Quiet, Please, There's A Lady On Stage - The Boy From OZ
Tomorrow - Annie
Dance: 10; Looks: 3 - A Chorus Line
Oh, What A Beautiful Morning - Oklahoma!
Mack The Knife - Threepenny Opera
Defying Gravity - Wicked
By The Sea - Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
Take Me Or Leave Me - RENT
What Do You Do With A BA In English - Avenue Q
Ease On Down The Road - The Wiz
Oh my god, we wrecked this show. We did everything wrong. Ten thousand regrets.

...Yawn.

We (Alicia and I) went to bed all kinds of early last night, as we'd had respectively difficult Fridays. Of course, mine was sort of normal difficult, meaning coaxing children to put on their coats when they'd rather sit under a table and blow raspberries at any adult exhorting them to "make good choices," while hers was extra super hard, like facing Juggernaut at the end of the first level in the X-Men for Sega Genesis video game but your controller only has a couple of reliably working buttons - she was hell of sick (just a perk of my job I like to share with the people that I see in my life) and had a couple of tests that went down pretty nasty and raw. We were in bed by midnight and that meant we got to wake up luxuriating in pools of sunlight at about 9 or so this morning! She headed to Eaglecrest with Boni while I held down the homefront, listening to my soft rocking Valentine's Day mix and making valentines like it was an assembly line. I also washed dishes. I guess getting up early of my own accord puts some kind of work ethic in me. Josh and I headed out for a V-Day lunch after he got himself together and we had pretty hilarious misadventures at El Sombrero and exchanged valentines. After some sunset photo-ops, he brought me home to find some very sleepy snowboarders and borrow some duds for the wearable art show - you won't catch me there because I'm as outraged by the ticket prices today as I was the first time I heard of the whole shebang. JEEZ, like it's even worth that much! Anyway, between Alicia, Adrienne, Boni, and myself, we were able to kick Nick out of bed and smear enough make-up on our faces to scrape ourselves over to R&J in the nick of time. Nick put it best when he said that the show accomplished what he had previously thought impossible: making him even care about Romeo and Juliet. I'm in the same boat; the play itself always left me all kinds of cold, but this format really gets me into it! Tomorrow (or tonight, since it's after midnight now, I see) is the last show, so let me say that anyone who hasn't seen it really, really ought to, as it's pretty spectacular. There's a matinee of Dying City, too. Following, we forced Roma to stay open long enough to make us some pizzas and invite us to stay to eat after they caught us trying to take our boxed food to the bench outside like hobos. I have a 3 day weekend, so I'm basically super-jazzed, as Jimmy Tickles of Strangers With Candy fame would say. I want to finish my book tomorrow - I'm still reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, because I always misplace it and then eventually find it next to my bed. I think this book of magic has a spell of its own to confound me. I'm so into this book that it will kill me to eventually finish it...I just read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book in a day and as I watched the pages whittle down I got progressively more upset it wouldn't continue indefinitely. This occurred at the same time as a conversation with Josh about enjoying one's time in a pursuit and having to break away as compared to enjoying one's time in a pursuit and continuing it until one might beg to be let go - we were talking about working in Antarctica, but it was very timely, as I was simultaneously lamenting every page closer to the end of The Graveyard Book...so I guess I know which camp I'm in: ride the mother out. Time to see if Alicia's up for some pre-bed Yacht Rock, so faretheewell.