Happy Halloween!

I am going do dress up like a hockey player tonight. Then, I'm gonna play hockey.

Others though have dressed up and are dressing up. This is a pic my cousin Diana sent me of a friend of her's at a Halloween party she went to. He's a transformer. Awesome.


Also in attendance was the Price is Right wheel.

G-paps has a new kicthen

For Christmas, my New Jersey family redid my Grandpa's kitchen. It used to all old and gross.



Now it is all nice and pretty.

I am gonna help make curtains and other sewable items for it. Reminds me of another kitchen make-over this year. If only I had a kitchen.

Farming Game II

For my birthday, Shannon bought me Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life for the GameCube. It's a pretty fun game. You own a farm and have to do things with it. I am currently growing 3 watermelons, 2 tomatoes, and 6 strawberries. And I own 1 cow, 2 chickens, and a dog. It's a good cute game. Thanks, Shann!

9999

This blog is very close to 9,999 visitors (check bottom of right side bar). If you are 9,999, leave me a comment and tell me who you are and I will make you a prize!

What I Nice Birthday

Thanks to everyone for making my birthday (week) nice. Jenette found a song about ghost chickens, Maria wished me and baby me, Shannon, and Mom got me some stuff, Aaron gave me a Best Buy invite first, and Jayme, Mom, and Baby Nicole came up for the weekend. Chris even made me a video!



How wonderful.

Things Made

Many of you who know me, know I like to sew. I like to sew costumes because they are just so fun to design and make.

I wish I had a reason to dress up for Halloween. But I don't. Having hockey practice from 7-8 on Halloween makes it even harder to find a reason to dress up. But this got me thinking about all the fun I've had sewing over the years.

I made pirate costumes this summer.


2 years ago I made Jayme's wedding dress.


4 years ago I made brides' maid dresses for Michelle and I for Jenette and Chris's wedding.


5 years ago I made my wedding dress and the dresses for 5 of my brides maids. (this was pre-digital-camera for Shannon and I, so sorry no pic)

I've made some other stuff and a bunch of little things that didn't take more than a day. But I had forgotten about probably the coolest thing I ever made. When I was a sophomore in Honesdale, I was part of the band and we marched in costume in the Halloween parade. I made the neatest costume my sophomore year. I had taken a pattern my mom had saved and used when I was really young (she can correct me) but I was about 5, and made it much bigger. The result of my efforts was the coolest, most biggest Rainbow Brite costume ever. I am still proud of that costume to this day.


I have this one pic of it on a CD Shannon and I made for our wedding. In it are my old buddies Anna (beatnic) and Liz (cow). Oh, good times.

Pumpkin Fun

Last night's Game Nite was a special one, Maria and Nic came!


Shannon and I made pizza crusts and I made a pizza sauce and everyone was able to create their own pizza. (Everyone is Shannon, Jenette, Chris, Maria, Nic, and I). The crust was pretty good and the sauce was surprisingly good too. I did use half the honey called for. Anyway...

Ricotta cheese on pizza is good. :)

We then carved up some pumpkins. Maria and Nic had to go to volleyball practice. But the 4 of us stayed and finished. Two years ago we made Home Star Runner pumpkins. See? This year, I tried to find some more cool stencils. Zombie Pumpkin has a lot, but you have to pay for them. A lot of places had pretty lame ones. But I stumbled upon these, Star Wars stencils. Not everyone made one, just Chris and Nic started one. They are pretty neat though.

Here are the finished products. They are Jenette's Evil Fairy, my skull, Shannon's "I eat your Skin" man, and Chris' Storm Trooper.


While we carved, we watched some old movies Jenette and Chris got me last year for my birthday (which is Sunday). We watched all of I Eat Your Skin and part of The Last Man on Earth. I tell you what. Movies used to be really bad.

It was a pretty good time. Holidays are fun times.

Halloween Parties Missed

Some of my funnest memories of Lincoln Elementary school stem from the Halloween party. All the kids got to dress up and it was loads of fun. Now-a-days, students are not allowed to dress up. When I taught at JCMS, the principal said we couldn't dress up. Even if students payed a dollar for a fund-raiser and then wore a costume, they couldn't dress up. I reponded by wearing all black, with a slight bit of orange to show my support of the marvelous holiday.

Taking away Halloween from schools is sad. Teachers and students everywhere are going to miss wonderful costumes. Such as this fab zombie.

This is totally awesome.

Thanks to Grossman

The Snotvia Snotknockers had a bad game this week. Coming into the Monday Night Football game they were up 2 points over the Harbor Coast Red Burns (of Lance). All we needed to do was have Grossman have a decent game, and not throw to Muhammad a lot. What happened? Not that.

Grossman had only 149 passing yards, -7 rushing yards, 4 interceptions, and 2 lost fumbles. You will be sad to hear that the Snotknockers lost yet another game. This one by 1 point.

Braaains

The winner of the zombie t-shirt is:

I have my own shirt made, I don't have a pic of it yet. But it is done.

I am currently creating a cafepress store so you too can be stylin'. Perfect for Halloween time!

Too Much Homework

I really, really need to stop procrastinating. I was here all day yesterday (from 9:00 am to 12:30 am) with about 45 minutes break for food, and then 3 hour break for hockey meeting/320 Exam. I was doing homework, that I finished this morning. Yes. I am a slacker and it sucks. If you have homework to do now, finish reading this post, then go do it!

But I did find these Stat Calculators. This guy has a whole bunch of them and they are useful (and free).

It'll make my farts smell bad.

Sorry, but they already do.

Today was rainy and chilly. Not quite cold, but chilly. I'm glad it's getting to be a more wintery time. I do like the winter better than the summer. I also like the fall better than the summer. Well, heck, I like spring better than summer! If I had to rank, and I mean absolutely had to because if I didn't I'd get my hair cut off, I'd rank the seasons as follows, from least to best.

Summer
Spring
Fall
Winter

Electric Plumbing

Yesterday was a good day. K-State beat Oklahoma State. Thank goodness for that. The game was down to the last drive. Someone, with 3 minutes left and down 10 points, Freeman and company managed to get ahead and hold off about 6 tries by OSU from about the 15 to score a touchdown. Crazy. I felt so sick, sad, happy, worried, and sick again in the last few minutes of the game. Awesome.

More awesome...Willie was totallyl a pirate. How can you beat this. He looked really awesome (I think, I'm some people would disagree).


Then we went to see Jennifer, Shannon's friend from grad school. We joined her and her boyfriend, Matt, at their campsite and made some s'mores. Good times. I thought the log in the picture here looked like the head of some thing. The big knot (on the left) is like the eye and then it has a long snout (pointing down). See it?


Something I haven't done before, but Jennifer did and we all agreed was an excellent idea, put the chocolate on a pan or piece of foil and melt it by the fire, then put the melted chocolate on your s'more. Brilliant!

Then all of a sudden....

Yay, on the road again. We were going fine. Then about 5 miles east of Colby, the speedometer drops to 0, the blinker ceases to blink and the car starts to rev horribly. I don't stop, we are close to Colby. I keep the cruise control on and the we keep driving.

Shannon gets Jenette's phone and calls his sister Michelle, in Garden.

"Google for a place to get the car fixed in Colby."
"Denny's, phone is 785-462-0414."

Shannon calls them and we exit following his directions. We are waiting for 4th street and all the while I'm trying to keep the car moving. We went through a stop sign, got lucky with a green stop light, but then had to stop for a red one. All the while, the car is only registering every 3rd time I push the gas pedal. The car can't make it once we stop. So Shannon, Jenette, and Chris jump out and push the car into the nearest parking lot.


I'll save you the long story. What happened was Five Star Auto sucks and didn't fix anything. Denny came and towed the car to his shop and discovered it was the alternator (like just about everyone said) and replaced it. This is this took a while and that left us without a car for, oh the weekend.

Since the hockey team was behind us, they all met us in Colby, we ate lunch and then jammed our bodies into the remaining spots in the car, threw our stuff in the trailer, and went on to CO.


We played some fun hockey. We played four games and L5-6, L0-8, W6-3, and L2-4. It was better than it sounds. We probably should have ended 3-1 instead of 1-3.


We ate with Shannon's family, and spent the night at Gary's in Longmont. Monday we picked our car up and headed back to home (thanks to help from Gary).

On the way home, we had to get gas. We pulled into a Conoco, read the "sign" and drove across the street to the other, less "markery" gas station. Jenette said the one behind it looked even more ghetto.


P.S. Denny is the man.

On the Road Again

If you know your geography of Kansas, you will notice that it is not 90 miles from Abilene to Denver. Heck, it isn't 90 miles from Abilene to anywhere! Except for Russell, KS.


I noticed again that things were going wacky. This time the speedometer dropped to 0. Yes. Then the lights died. This was making for a crummy drive. We exited as soon as we could and were now dead in the middle of Kansas. Russell was a good 3 miles away and we didn't have a car to drive.

Well, we were in luck. Remember how I said Amber was meeting us in Hays for dinner? Well she was still behind us on the road and so we called her. She didn't have enough room in the car for all four of us and our stuff however. So after many callings and pacings, and even a failed jump-start of the car, a few things came to be:
a) It was probably the alternator (about, oh, everyone suggested this)
b) Amber's mom was going to drive the van out to get us
c) We were really freaking hungry

Five Star Auto Repair came and towed our car to Hays and worked on it Friday night. We dropped all our stuff off at Amber's house in Hays, and then ate at IHOP. Not quite as good as I would guess Gella's would have been, but food none-the-less. We did learn a lesson at IHOP, don't put syrup on their potato pancakes. Gross.

Tired and no longer hungry, we returned to Amber's house, went to bed, and when we woke up, there were scones and orange juice to eat. Shannon got the car with Amber and we were ready to travel again.

What did Five Star do to the car you ask?


They gave us another new battery, this time a green one. They said it wasn't the alternator and that it was the battery. So that was 2 batteries in about 1 hour. Nice.

We gassed up the now running car and headed back on our way (-270$ of course). We made sure we left early enough so that the rest of the hockey team was on the road behind us, just in case.

My Fall Break

On Friday night, Shannon, Chris, Jenette, and I started our trip to Denver around 7:00 pm. On Sunday we had a tournament at the Bladium in Denver. We were going up early to spend some time with Gary and family. We were planning to meet up with our friend Amber in Hays (which I really thought had an "e" in it) and eat at Gella's. We were driving along, it wasn't too late, and Shannon notices that our air bag light is flickering in our dash. Odd. Our "service engine soon" light is always on (except for when we need to service the engine, then it goes off) so I didn't think much of it.

About 5 minutes later, right outside Abeline, I notice our blinker sounds like it's making 2 clicks instead of just 1. It sounded really odd. Now it was beginning to get dark and when I used said blinker, I didn't notice any lights blink on. Hmm...now that we looked for them, we didn't have any lights on outside. Even though they were turned on. Not good for night driving. So we pulled off and made it to a parking lot by Alco in Abeline. As we pulled into the spot, the car died. Geez.

Pop the hood, take a look. The battery is not looking too good.


This was the original battery, one month shy of 7 years. So, in order to get to Denver tonight, we needed a new one. Jenette and I start to walk down to the AutoZone that just happened to be about 1/4 mile away. They closed in about 10 minutes. So while Shannon and Chris took the battery out I told the man there what the symptoms were and we found a new battery for our car. 15 minutes and -70$ later, we were putting a new battery in our car.


After washing our hands in Alco, we purchased some candy, drinks, and men's crew socks. The car started, we were on the road again. For about 90 miles...

Results

I got my score back for test 2 (STAT713). I recieved a 59/60. Yay.

**For test 1 (STAT770) I got a 92/100. These scores are higher than my actual knowledge/confidence in the material.**

Back

Our trip to Colorado was eventful. It was fun, too. I will post some pics and more detail after classes today. But I will leave you with a couple of things.

1) Our hockey team looks pretty good.
2) We spent a lot of money.