I loves me some Halloween!

Pretty much everyone who knows me knows I love Halloween. It's been my favorite holiday since I was a kid. My parents always did a good job decorating the house, a couple of years we even did a spook alley for the trick-or-treaters. Over the years I've built up a pretty decent collection of Halloween decorations. ( I have 3 big Rubbermaid storage things with Halloween stuff and 1 of Christmas stuff).

And, everyone who knows me knows how close I am to my nephew Booker (Catherine and Travis' boy). One of the things Booker and I share a love for is Halloween. This past weekend he stayed with me and Cam and helped us decorate the house. A bit early I know, but my next 3 weekends are pretty busy, and then it would just be too close! We had a lot of fun decorating. Here are some pictures:

This is Booker, pulling a face of course.

The first thing we did was make eyeball wreaths. Yes, my inner crafty person comes out during Halloween.

The 9 foot spiderweb. Booker untangled it on the living room floor while I was making dinner. Boo came in the kitchen when he was finished and a couple of minutes later we could hear my cat Pedro meowing a bit frantically. I went in the livingroom and Pedro had completely tangled herself in the web.

Just kind of a fun corner scene. Could use a little more work, but I like it.






I guess this could be called the cemetery scene. The statue of the woman is my favorite Halloween decoration I purchased last year. I would keep her in my living room year round, but people might think I'm weird or something.

This is what I call the cutesy stuff. Not my favorite Halloween stuff, but I love, love, love the witch hats. You put tea lights in them and they look so cool! The haunted house was mine and Booker's crafty Halloween project a couple of years ago. He made one too.

Just a view of the whole livingroom, except the cemetery scene. That is to the right on top of the bookshelf.

New to the house this year, the bat cave! This is my front entrance way. How many bats did I cut out? I don't know, I lost count around 200. There are flying bats and hanging bats. I got smart after the first couple of sheets of bats I cut out, and put 4 sheets together. My hand still hurts from all the cutting. The good news is, I won't have to cut them out next year. The bat cave turned out better than I pictured it. Cam had the brilliant idea of putting green lightbulbs in the light fixture.

This is one of my favorite Halloween decorations. It is the perfect way to make use of that odd banister thing in my stairway. I remember the first time I went through the house with Rob, our real estate agent and brother-in-law, I pointed it out to him and told him I could do great things with that for Halloween. And yes, those are rats I hot glued to him.

If you look at the bat cave picture you can see some glass candle holders on the coat rack. Well, I decided candles would be boring. So I filled one of them with rats, one with eyeballs and one with little skulls. I have two empty ones, I'm thinking one will be spiders and one severred fingers, or a brain or something. I'll have to look around. I took the close up of the skulls because they are my favorite purchase of this year. I found a bag of them for like 2 bucks. I bought 2 of them, but only needed one bag. I let Booker have the other one. He was very happy about that.

So that is it so far. We still have the scarecrow that Cam made for the garden. I have to use that somehow! Since the scarecrow is in 2 parts, I'm thinking of maybe putting the torso in the guest room looking out the window. Then I could do something separate with the legs. Maybe hanging outside the window? Cam and I will think of something. Or if anyone has any ideas let me know!

Infinite Loss

I am sorry if this turns out to be the most boring blog post you have ever read, but I have to do this for myself.

I got to work at 7 am this morning. At about 7:15, I went online to look at a map of Texas (work related, I like maps, but would never just look at a map of Texas!). My homepage at work is a news website. I usually glance quickly at the headlines before going to a different website. This morning, my eye caught a headline that made my heart sink. "Infinite Jest author apparent suicide". I closed my eyes and tried to figure out how that headline could mean something else. Like maybe the author found someone who had committed suicide and they were just quoting him or something. But I knew that wasn't the case. I took a deep breath, and clicked on the article. David Foster Wallace had hung himself Friday night (Sept 12), and was found by his wife, Karen. I didn't read any more than that. Why should I? That first couple of sentences is all that mattered. I don't need to read what that journalist, who had probably never read one of his books, had to say about DFW and his writings. I immediately got out my cell phone and sent my sister Catherine this text message: "call me when you get this." She called me about 45 minutes later.

I'm guessing that all of you, besides Emily, who read my blog have no idea who David Foster Wallace is (all of you that I'm aware of that is). If you've ever caught Cat and I in a conversation where we are laughing really hard, and we tell you that we can't explain what is so funny because it is too hard to explain. I would bet that at least 85% of the time we were discussing something David Foster Wallace had written, or one of his characters etc. My boss was in the office this morning, and she heard my gasp when I saw the headline. She asked me what was wrong, and I told her my favorite contemporary author had died over the weekend. She had never heard of him and asked me what kind of books he writes. Never in my life have I had such a difficult time trying to describe not only a writer's style, but his subjects as well! I had to give up. DFW was truly one of a kind.

I was introduced to DFW Christmas of 1996. Someone, who never let me down when it came to book recommendations, gave me Infinite Jest for Christmas (it was my ex bro-in-law Steve). It was by an author I had never heard of, the book is over 1,000 pages, and it is written in a very small font, I'm guessing size 8, possibly 10. I knew that if it was that long of a book, written in that small of a font, given to me by Steve, then it must be mind-blowing. Well, it took me about a year and about 7 tries to get past the first 50 pages or so, but when I finally read the book cover to cover, my mind was indeed blown. I had never read anything like it. It's fiction with footnotes! Some of the footnotes go on for pages and pages. His style, subject, vocabulary and characters are amazing. I won't get into a review of his stuff, I'll leave that for the experts. But, I must say his love of acronyms, his vocabulary, the nicknames he gives his characters, the way he can link a character you read about on page 80 to a character you read on page 768, his humor, his way of noticing strange things about people, his characters, okay, I could go on and on. He is a genius.

When I finished Infinite Jest I wanted so much to talk about it with someone, so I recommended it to Catherine. I don't know what I said to recommend it. It was probably something like "don't try to figure it out while you're reading it, let the book be what it is, read the footnotes. Just trust me". I have to say, I've never been more satisfied at recommending a book, than I am at Cat's reaction. She has since read pretty much everything he has ever written. I've read almost all of his books, but she has read his personal essays, contributions to magazines, etc. I've read some of those other things he wrote, but I believe Cat has read much more than I. Catherine has actually read Infinite Jest 4 or 5 times, I read it just once, 12 years ago. In fact, Cat is in the middle of that book right now, but put it aside to read Breaking Dawn, then is planning on finishing Infinite Jest.

I emailed Cat today and told her I was going to blog about this. I asked her to email me back her testimonial on why she loves DFW so much. Here are some of the things she said:

I love his "voice". In Infinite Jest, he takes on so many characters, that book astounds me in it's genius. His sense of humor really speaks to me. In both his fiction and his essays/journalistic things. I can't tell you how many terms and DFW-isms I use in my language.

I then asked her what terms and isms she uses, and she said:

The howlers definitely, or the Howling Fantods. "out of somewhere that's blue" instead of "out of the blue". "heat and kitchens"- a shortened way to remind someone if they can't stand the heat.... "the straw that was the camel's spinal demise"-his way of saying the straw that broke the came's back. He has this way of subtly distorting cliches that I found hilarious.

Since she has read his stuff so much and so recently, she was also able to give me some DFW vocabulary and nicknames that are hilarious:

The Moms-what the boys in Infinite Jest call their mom
Bob Hope- marijuana
Ass-over-teakettle-his way to describe someone falling
Tear-assing-someone running really fast
Eating cheese-someone ratting someone out
Sir Osis of Thuliver-the most gallant of diseases
Sphincter-looseningly scary-something really scary

(Sue now talking) And there are hundreds more like them. David Foster Wallace is just one of those writers that sticks with you. I was just thinking of him last night! I didn't know he had died at the time, but I was piercing potatoes with a fork so they wouldn't explode in the oven. In the last 12 years, since I read Infinite Jest, I haven't pierced a potato without thinking of DFW. I also thought of him sometime last week. I was in my office reading the second Harry Potter book, and glanced at my bookshelf. I saw "The Girl with Curious Hair", and thought to myself, I should read a couple of stories out of that book as a pallet cleanser before I start the next Harry Potter (sorry Em!).

I will miss you dearly David Foster Wallace! I choked up a lot at work today, tears kept welling up in my eyes. I'm going to re-read Infinite Jest and everything else, when I'm done with Harry Potter. It saddens me to think of what we are going to miss from your brilliant mind. And I am so, so thankful that some writings of yours exist for us to read. I will always be grateful to whomever that first publisher was that read your stuff and decided the public needs to read it. I will leave you with the last email Cat sent me on her thoughts of his death, and I quote:

" Suck. Lame. Bunk. Sauce. Face."

David Foster Wallace 1962-2008

Book 1- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

I finished the first book this morning. Only 223 pages, so it went pretty quickly. The second one looks about the same size, the rest, holy crap! Anyway, all in all, I found it somewhat enjoyable. I find it kind of weird, that this is the only one of the Harry Potter movies I saw, and I don't remember any of it being in the movie. I guess the movie did not stick with me one tiny bit. (although I do remember Hans from the first Die Hard as being one of the bad guys in the movie. I'm guessing Snape. Am I right?) Not as big and complicated a world as Em is getting herself into that's for sure! Unlike Emily, I'm not scared at all to jump into a whole different world full of different creatures etc.

For this book, since it is so short and the first of seven, I'm just going to list my likes and don't likes. And they are not listed in any kind of order.

Likes:

--The real-life chess game. That is a pretty cool concept. (I'm sure it was in the movie, but for the life of me, I just don't remember).

--A ghost as a professor, and other ghosts as characters.

--Animated playing cards and portraits. Kind of reminds me of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.

--How dreadful the Dursley's were. The author gets into some really great detail about them, and I loved it! Man how their attitude towards different people remind me of some people I grew up with in Mapleton!

--Hagrid.

--The fact that the girl, Hermione, is smarter than the boys. (and could someone please tell me how to properly say her name before I start calling her hemorrhoid or hormone?)

--The fact that these "wizard" people have secret places among the "muggles". Like the secret shopping district right in London. I like that concept.

--Dumbledore, he just kind of reminds me of Gandolf, and I loves me a Gandolf!

Dislikes:

--The "put-outer". This is the device Dumbledore uses to put out the street lamps on Privet Drive. A- I think she could have come up with a more clever name. B- I think a real wizard could have put them out with a wink, or a snap of the fingers, etc. It shouldn't have taken a device. (Gandolf could have done it by just thinking about it!)

--Harry's scar hurting him when Voldemort, oh wait.. "you know who" is near or whatever. (Sorry, it just smacks of the ring hurting Frodo or Sting lighting up when an orc is near.)

--The names of the different kinds of brooms. (the Numbus 2000? Give me a break!) I know she was trying to be cheeky, and I'm sure most people thought it was funny. But it bugged me for some reason.

--The owls as postal carriers. Sorry! But I couldn't help but think of the amount of bird crap that landed in the kids lunches when the owls flew in everyday to bring them their letters and packages. But I'm sure these are specially trained owls who don't crap or something. (and is it just me, or did she get that idea from Gandolf's butterflies?)

There were a couple of other things that kind of bugged me, but I'm not going to get into them because I'm hoping they are explained in the books to come. And it is fine with me if some things are just mentioned in one book, then fully explained in the next. (For instance, is it explained please why a stone holds the "elixir of life"? How can a stone possibly hold an elixir? It's a stone!) And the whole owl thing kind of bugs me more than I let on. It's not just the owl crap, but the line "send me an owl", just really bugs me for some reason. But, I hope you notice, Em, that I do list more things I liked than I didn't like. 8 to 4 in fact. And I hope you notice too, that the things I dislike are really quite irrelevant to the whole idea.

And if you think I'm comparing it too much to LOTR, well I'm sorry! I can't help it. That is the only world of wizards and things I'm familiar with. I'm trying really hard not to compare apples with oranges. (cliche!) And, I am actually kind of looking forward to starting the second book. The first one did interest me enough to sort of care about what is going to happen next.