HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! plus a special HAPPY BIRTHDAYWEEN to groc and a HEARTY CONGRATS to shed!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, CHICKLETS!!! wow, but it's been a great morning so far! first off, shed's make interview was posted today! W00000000T!!! congrats, shed! we're all eagerly awaiting the day when you will be a paid contributor to make!

shed is known for alternative carving. please witness his incredible melon of doooom. (photo courtesy of shed)



(for more lovely photos of the carved melon, visit twindx, shed's lovely blog.)

the esteemed shed's melon carving made me think about what other alternafruit might be hackable. since we have a lot of apples just sitting around and the show about satanic cults that i was watching said "apples! apples! carve the effing apples! *sounds of satanic things*", i did what i was told. here it is unlit:



and with lighting provided from a teeny, tiny flashlight.



it was super fast and easy! plus, i ate it when i was finished photographing it.

today is also groc's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAYWEEN, YOUR GROCKNESS!! i carved him a flaming bunny pumpkin a la the first foster's cheese episode.

see? a flaming bunny!


it wasn't as fantastic as i'd hoped when it was lit



but it did have a pumpkin candle inside



so i was able to have a pumpkin in a pumpkin. for some reason that's important to me. i can't for the life of me tell you why.

anyway, once again, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! if you get any mr. goodbars tonight, i'll trade you my almond joys!

easterween

leff and i were in a funk. (it always happens when it's the first day we're off daylight savings time.) so i says to myself i says "self, wouldn't it be fun to make some easter eggs?" to which my self replied "it's october, stupid."

i'm so mean.

anyway, i decided to bounce the idea off leff. "leff" i said "do you want to celebrate easterween this year?"

"easterween?" he queried (er, but not on google)"what's that?"

"it's when we decorate easter eggs as halloween monsters." (i made this up on the spot. amazingly, he didn't notice.)

"oh, sure then!" leff is always game for things.

here, dear reader, are our first ever easterween eggs!

we both made pumpkins




leff's is on the left. mine is on the right. (i tried to make it look like a hillbilly.) (materials: acrylic, sharpie, eggs.)

i made a bat with flappy paper wings.



(materials: acrylic, sharpie, paper, egg)

leff went transylvannian with a dracula egg.



(materials: acrylic, sharpie, egg)

i countered with a frankenegg.



(materials: acrylic, sharpie, paper, egg)

and then leff blew all of the other eggs out of the water with this, the most awesome mummy egg!



(materils: acrylic, sharpie, medical tape, egg)

i mean, how incredible IS that? leff is awesome!

here are all the eggs hanging out.



look! almost four cups!

drac and the bat are now all humpty dumpty. (leff was hungry)



happy easterween!

day six of halloween, dia de los muertos, the lamest pumpkin in the world

day six of halloween is maybe not so creepy so much as funny in that inside joke kind of way. here are some froooozen booones!



i went for the kill with assonance with that one. a little known fact, assonance is funnier than consonance because it has "ass" in it.

right, right, so yesterday i went to the set up of the dia de los muertos celebration at seattle center. i haven't been back (although i'm planning on it) but it looks to be bigger and better organized than last year's fete. some random photos, if you will.





two from the large sand drawing:





and my favorite skeleton so far:



sorry that they're all a little blurry. i'll try to get better photos later today.

my pumpkin is still sitting around uncarved. i did decorate it a little bit last night. see, it's now a texas ranger named jason.



maybe i'll just carve a walker in it and leave the texas ranger badge on it. then i'd have a chuck norris pumpkin and i'd be finished with the damn thing already.

oh yeah, if you're in the parts of the u.s. that observe daylight savings time, remember to set your clocks back an hour today because we're through with dst until the spring. damn it.

day five of halloween, errands, regina spektor, dinner party

today's halloween photo is a little devilish.



yesterday was partially a ballard day. among the many tiny errands, i managed a stop at archie mcphee where i purchased a glow-in-the-dark octopus.



back in the lqa, i FINALLY bought a pumpkin



which will be carved today? tomorrow?

later that day, j called about the regina spektor in store at easy street. j is notorious for arriving hella early to these things, standing forever and getting annoyed. yesterday was no exception. we waited



for over an hour. it was *totally* blowin' gold.



(photo courtesy of j)

but once regina spektor arrived it was worth it, i guess.



(i apologize for the crappiness of that photo. i hadn't switched my phone to "night mode" on the camera and it was dark. oops.)

i think i would've enjoyed the show a bit more if we hadn't been stuck in the vinyl jazz section for an eternity. because, well, it's no fun to play "dead or no record deal" when most of the musicians in question are dead. (seriously, it was *flip the record* "he's dead" *flip* "dead" *flip* "who the hell is that guy? he must be dead or blowin' gold.")

moving on, after the show was s's dinner party. not only was she on the ball enough to have made a *scrumptious* dinner but she'd already carved her pumpkin!



i didn't get photos of the food because i was too busy eating it. and, well, come on, it's weird enough that i'm always taking photos of food in the first place. the menu, however, consisted of pork medallions in a tasty reduction, collard greens with navy beans, arugula salad with parmesan, walnuts and and pears and a vinegrette dressing and the most wonderful baked yams i've ever tasted!

YUM!!!

it made me feel doubly guilty that i hadn't gotten my ass in gear enough to make cupcakes. yeah, i bought cookies.



i suck.



(although, in my defense, i claim exhaustion from the lingering cold.)

today might involve pumpkin carving. then again, i might just run over to the center and take photos of their dia de los muertos celebration. or i might watch "carnival of souls" for the millionth time. who can say for sure? today might blow gold. i don't know if i'd be happy about that or not.

on the fourth day of halloween...

...someone gave to me/a glowy pumpkin thing-ee!



yesterday i had my hair dyed professionally for the first time. and let me say, no more boxes for me! i went about two shades darker and had two inches cut off (two. it's the new magic number.) and i heartheartheart it!

as for now, i gots to jet. i have errands to run, cupcakes to make for s's dinner party and regina spektor is playing in store at easy street today. i'm fairly certain that the cupcakes will be a version of these that i made earlier this year but i'll still post a photo when i'm finished. ciao!

walk of death, day three of halloween, potluck slideshow with unwitting experiments in muteness

wednesday's walk was full of death. skulls everywhere. drawn,



sprayed



and inflated.



ok, i knew about the inflataskull ahead of time. the others were random though.

in keeping with the skully theme, today's photo for a week of halloween is...a skull.




joe had an entry in last night's slideluck potshow in capitol hill.



it was my first time at one of their events. we missed the potluck section (which, you know, fine. i'm kinda' scarred from a billion church potlucks in my youth anyway.) but the slideshow part was pretty cool. there were some fantastic entries and some not so fantastic entries but overall it was really successful. i'd go again.

unfortunately, right before we arrived at the space, i lost my voice again. thankfully, i had my sketchbook in my bag so i was able to communicate with a mixture of notes, pantomime and translations from leff. plus, joe taught me the asl signs for diarrhea and bullshit. (i still felt like a party trick half the night.)

d said that her new bf j had an entry in last night's show but i'm unsure which it was. (i hope that i didn't leave with a coughing fit during his section. sorry if i did, j!)

i'll leave you with a photo of the crowd waiting for the analog slide section to start.

hoarse whisperer, the creature

talking has been making me cough. so last night leff and i communicated through notes even though he could speak.

the ones that i found esp funny this morning were written during the nova about supervolcanoes. a sample page, if you will.



ah, volcano jokes. they never get old.

it's day two of a week of halloween photos. today i give you...the creature!



moody, innit?

i'll try to carve a pumpkin today. that is, if i manage to find one small enough to drag home. i mean, watching someone roll a large gourd through the streets of seattle would probably be amusing buut i really don't feel up to providing that level of entertainment to my neighbors.

a week of halloween photos, persimmon season

i heart halloween. in fact, it's my favorite u.s. holiday. by this point, i'd normally have carved a pumpkin or two but it's not been a very productive month. i'll try to remedy that shortly (er, once i get the energy to drag a pumpkin home) but for now, why not peruse ye olde flickr set of pumpkins past. (it's more halloweeny if you say that link in a spoo0000oooky voice.)

anyway, since i don't have a jack o'lantern to post yet, i thought i'd do a week's worth of creepy photos. first up? the undead rising from a potted plaaaAAAaaant! OOOooooOOOOOooo!!



i think it's better if viewed large. but you don't have to click through if you don't want.

i'll have another spooky photo tomorrow (i *am* a halloweiner.) but for now, let us bask in the wonderfulness that is the persimmon.



i am *so* eating both of those. no, don't even ask if you can have one 'cause they're MINE!!

k, time to start watching monsterfest. it's the 10th anniversary this year! who knew?

sink holes, movies, the return of chompers not chompers

i'm not going to bother mentioning how i still have my cold except to add that, jesus, i'm getting so tired of not being able to do anything. least productive period EVER!

we now have a hole in our kitchen sink. the u shaped part of the plumbing has always been a bit rusty (we live in an older building) and yesterday when leff was replacing the garbage can he nudged the pipe. *gush* went some water. and now we have our sinkhole.

it's getting fixed today. (the management in our building is awesome.)

movies from yesterday? "halloween" and a remake of "the initiation of sarah". (not bad although the ending was hysterical!)(just fyi if you want some cheesy horror in your life, both versions of the movie are available for watching right now although i'm not sure how long they'll be online.)

once again, typing is wearing me out. plus "columbo" is on. here's a picture of chompers as the virgin mary.

devilish

you regular readers know about me and my young adult fiction fixation. for those of you new to this site, hi, my name is rakka. i'm 33 and i read kidlit.

yesterday devilish was waiting for me at the library.



i'd heard about the book through the cupcakes take the cake ladies. to say that i now love maureen johnson and her awesome writing style is a bit inadequate. to say that i lovelovelove her and her awesomesuperfantastical writing style is getting closer to the truth.

i now have her remaining three books in transit to my local branch library. and, when i get around to buying those tickets at elliot bay books for the bill bryson reading, i'll also pick up a copy of devilish.

in the mean time, i'll be reading her blog.

and now back to sleep. i have a feeling that my cold is trying to be my bff. the stupid thing doesn't realize that the feelings have to be mutual in order for us to exchange pendants.

special delivery

a package from woot!



(and now for a bad yakov smirnovism...) in seattle, package sends you!

i return briefly from the dead

hello again. sorry to have not been around. i still haven't managed to shake this damn cold.

i do have photos from my week inside. (the apartment. i've not been in jail, silly person!) actually, here's one from the day that i caught my cold. i was on the way to purchase soup when i met this cute little puppy!



his owner told me that the little guy has a full wardrobe and that he's getting a new coat for winter. hee hee!

ok, so the week of illness? well, i've watched a lot of "matlock". (it goes well with colds.) also i've been doing a lot of the "push down and twist" motion.



and i saw the great yokai war. (really fun!)



i mixed plaid with stripes because i was high on cough syrup



and i saw amy sedaris on "sesame street".



also, "project runway" can go fuck itself.

also, also last night i finally got to see "the corpse bride"! fantastic! that coupled with a large chunk of "mommie dearest" is probably what made me start to feel better.

well, that and all the sleeping.

sorry to post and run but i'm feeling really weak again. plus "matlock" is on. (i never thought i'd type that last sentence.) *cough* *hack* etc

sick leave

hi, all. i've caught leff's stupid illness and won't be around for a while. thankfully, my cold's not developed to quite the extent that his did since i started taking zinc a lot earlier than him but i still feel like death working overtime.



in the mean time, i'll keep eating those lovely zinc lozenges up there, sleeping and recuperating. bye.

viaduct, more food, the rack, schmancy

leff and i woke up too early for a saturday morning. why? because the viaduct was closed! (it's almost like christmas and kwanza and hannukah all rolled up into one big ball of fun! except not because it's really just an elevated roadway that was devoid of its usual traffic. with no wrapped presents.)

we signed up for the allied arts tour of the waterfront. free coffee and doughnuts plus a lovely silence from above. (if you've ever walked along alaskan way in seattle or any of the other streets that are parallel to the viaduct, you know how deafening the sound of traffic can be.)



there was a lot of press coverage. here's one example.



leff and i, as usual, avoided all cameras 'cause we have no desire to be on televison. ever.

you know how i like to keep this site politically neutral when i can (well, as far as *specific* issues are concerned.) but i'm going to say that, yes, i'm in favor of viaduct replacement (and by that i mean replacing the damn thing with something that's not an eyesore). i just don't know which option i favor at this point.

anyway, enough with the political, let's just enjoy the empty viaduct, shall we?

luther enjoys the silence quite like depeche mode before him.



since we were near pike place anyway and it was lunchtime, leff and i stopped at taxi dogs for lunch.



they have dill relish.



i LOVE dill relish.



and smoked salmon.



and ice cream.



but i only ate the relish, er, i mean taxi dog.

after lunch, we stopped by the rack. i heart the rack. just, you know, NOT ON SATURDAYS!! it was so crowded that i almost wanted to walk out without my new sunglasses. but i didn't.



(the bottom pair are the new ones.)

the rack almost killed us both (haha! if i was in the middle of the spanish inquisition, that sentence wouldn't have been amusing at all!) so after coffee, we stopped by schmancy for the plush you show!

it was even more fantastic than i thought it would be! and that's saying something! i mean, LOOK AT THIS SQUID!!!



(i can't believe that i forgot to get the artist contact info on that plush! i'm very sorry! i'll try to go back and get that for you!)

leff and i left with an invisible plan figure by mars-1



and a vinyl, not plush but vinyl dounut from my paper crane.



also, some free schwag



and a monster tag.



(does anyone know who's making those stickers?)

on the walk home i finally got a photo of my favorite building texture



and the confusing manson "graveyard slut" sticker.



i always thought that lydia from "beetlejuice" was more of a graveyard slut. or maybe even emily the strange. manson has always been more of a graveyard creator to me. ah, well, i'm getting pedantic.

today? not much going on except reassembling leff's office. (long story short, the new video card from m did not fit in our computer. *le sadness*)