Daniel85

Yeah, yeah… I promised to post more frequent entries, but you all know I’m the world’s biggest procrastinator. I want to get back on track with updates though, especially with the Christmas season in full swing now (I heard Happy Xmas (War Is Over) on the radio a couple of days ago, and that’s my personal barometer to the Christmas season’s advent).

We’ve been sorta busy over the last month. This is really the business end of the year over here. Three major holidays all within a 2 month span. It’s pretty hectic. Thanksgiving was an interesting experience. I’ll post an entry about that later.

Halloween was pretty damn fun, I must say. I’ve always loved the celebration of all things ghastly, but never really got a chance to participate due to being born Australian. And even when I’d covertly try to do something vaguely Halloweenish on October 31, like watch Ghostbusters and eat some Snickers, I felt like kind of a dick. So, needless to say, I was incredibly chuffed to be in the States for a good ol’ fashioned All Hallow’s Eve.

That’s me at Party City with a huge mountain of candy (and a pirate Yellow M&M, although the moustache kinda makes him look like Peter Lorre).

Seeing as it was my first real Halloween, there was no way I wasn’t carving a Jack O’Lantern. I love that term. Jack O’Lantern. Jack O’Lantern. Say it out loud multiple times. It’s beautiful.

There were pumpkins everywhere in the week leading up to Halloween, so Laura and I were really pissed when we went to go buy one on Halloween morning only to find the local pumpkin patch completely stripped bare. So we went to Safeway- no pumpkins. Went to QFC (another supermarket), which had literally hundreds of the orange bastards stacked out front just a few days before- nothing. It was highly frustrating, and Laura declared that we’d make it our mission to track down a pumpkin, even if that’s all we did for Halloween.

Eventually we found a few unwanted pumpkins at a different QFC, and I brandished our pick aloft victoriously:  

Something else we managed to pick up at QFC was this Candy Corn flavoured soda, from the Jones Soda Company.

I’ve long admired the Jones people from afar for their whacky holiday flavours (reviewed every year at X-Entertainment), so it was awesome to finally be able to try some of their product. And it’s a local company, so yay Seattle.

The soda had this awful fluorescent yellowish green colour, like the liquid inside a glow stick, or something you’d pour in your radiator.

It kind of tasted like honey, molasses, and maple syrup all mixed into one ultra-sweet concoction. I think about three of my teeth actually dissolved, just dissolved, on the first sip. There were four cans in the pack, and the other 3 have sat in the fridge untouched for the last four weeks.

After careful consideration, Laura actually didn’t mind it so much. She’s weird.

Carving the pumpkin wasn’t too hard. I had no idea what I was doing, but Laura has carved many a pumpkin in her day.

That gunk she scooped out really stank.

I was kind of considering roasting the pumpkin seeds, but I was too grossed out by the smelly gourd innards to pick through them for seeds.

I find the look of intense concentration on my face kind of amusing. It’s just a couple of triangles and a crescent mouth, but I look like some kind of German master artisan, carving an intricate plaything for the Kaiser’s children.

I was kind of upset with how the mouth turned out, but hey- it was a first try.

It looked pretty sweet all lit up, I must admit.

We decided to a ‘couple costume’, cos we’re dorks like that. We originally planned to go as Roger and Jessica Rabbit, but ended up going as a 50s couple. We were going to head to Johnny Rockets that night for the 50s atmosphere (oh yeah, they still have those over here– remember the awesome one on Malop St?), but they were closed. We just ended up going somewhere else to eat, where we were asked by a fellow patron “Is that supposed to be like Grease times?” Come on… ‘Grease times’…? it’s the 50s, dude, not the Elizabethan era.

Anyway, Halloween was fun. More entries to come, with photos from the Billy Joel concert we went to a few weeks ago, the Christmas tree lighting downtown a few nights ago, and other random stuff.

P.S. Finally, rid of Howard! The Cats winning the GF and a win for federal Labor in the same year. Awesome.