Entries this day: Maggie Rocky_n_Trisha Sean haunted_house

Maggie

8:22pm CDT Saturday 26 October 2002

So great that Maggie has come to visit! Janette and I went in to her work for some hours and cleaned up the sewing room and got some barbecue (actually Laura has previously informed me, et. al. that it's not barbecue unless there is barbecue sauce put on or something like that, but I don't know what to call it otherwise) with delightfully few utensils. Scooping up beans with a paper plate and eating beans and chicken with no silverware. Good stuff.

Anyway, Maggie had a relaxed non-time-constrained non-map-constrained trip up here. She arrived around 3 pm and we yammered with Janette for a while and I called Rocky to invite him to a haunted house. Didn't tell him that Maggie was in town; wanted to surprise him. He couldn't go on such short notice, so Maggie and I went to Rocky and Trisha's house to say HI to them.

Rocky n Trisha

8:30pm CDT Saturday 26 October 2002

We laughed most all the way there, and had a lovely great time. Mostly we just gossipped about Telecheck where we all met. Watched a bit of Monsters, Inc. which Brennan had on.

Tina P called from the San Antonio Rally; I'm so glad they are having such great fun! Said HI via Tina to all my peeps.

So awesome to see what great parents Rocko and Trisha are being. Great to see them after so many years!

Sean

8:38pm CDT Saturday 26 October 2002

As we arrived home, I heard someone hollering my name and it was Sean!! Hugged him and now he and Janette and Maggie and I are all at dinner before Sean goes to a costume party and we go to a Haunted House!

haunted house

8:26am CST Sunday 27 October 2002

Haunted house last night was pretty great fun, not because it was all soooo super scary, but because I got to hang out with two of my great friends.

There were a couple of guys with really long long legs and one had a scary pumpkin head with long craggly twisted sticks for fingers and a scary big red tongue, not pointed, but just so big it should be choking his breath.

The other guy's skull was visible; all his skinn had been removed in some horrible accident, or due to his death many years ago.

Anyway, they were walking around posing for pictures and chasing those people who showed fear. THAT was the funniest part. The silly girls would be all shrieking and running away, hiding behind their friends or their um, friends as if the tall guys couldn't see them wherever they went.

They had followers, like personal assistants to make sure that no one messed with them too much. The girl behind the skull was cute, though her face was pale white with dark around her eyes like they were sunken in hollow voids.

Wyatt Erp walked behind the pumpkin man, and seemed nearly as tall. Wyatt Erp took a picture of us three with Maggie's camera.

This was all outside the haunted house as we were waiting for our group's number to come up (29) on the "now serving" thingy.

Our number came up, and we got in line (the number turned to 30 before we got past it) where they checked our tickets and said, "if you get scared, grab each other as hard as you can" (i.e. don't grab the actors; you don't touch them; they won't touch you.)

- - - -

I was pretty much not scared through the whole thing, just had my ultra alert guard up the whole way through, so that almost nothing would startle me.

But the one room intentionally made to look like the bedroom from The Exorcist, including the girl on the bed with her arms all backwards like she's doing that fucked up back bend. Plus the drawers on the chest opening and closing by themselves was pretty good.

And then when leaving that room, another doll like the girl was in that backwards-crawl up on the top of the wall. Spooky.

- - - -

There were three haunted houses in a row, which basically amounted to one big big haunted house with two people dressed up controlling traffic into the next section. When we got out of the whole thing, to the guy at the door I was all, "so, where's the second haunted house?"

"That was all of them.."

"Awww man... No, I'm just kidding.

- - - -

I talked to a cat sitting on a couch thing; I was directed to him to provide feedback on the houses.

The guy with the lawnmower was good. He was up on a platform, mowing the grass, and then would push the mower up over the guests as they walk through. It was on chains, but yeah. And when it happened, Janette was all, "eeee" and grabbed onto me and Maggie. I was all laughing, "you knew it was going to happen; you knew it! [but you still got scared...]"

There was a room of heads hanging from strings, all white heads in utter pitch blackness. I knew one of the heads would jump out at us; I was looking for one of them to be an actual human. But it turned out to be a pitch black dressed human holding a head on a stick, so the head was fake and undistinguishable from the other except that it jumped out at us. bwahhh!!

The most impressive was a guy with no shirt on, and no lower half of his body.. speaking into a microphone randomly at us as we walked by. I was all, "that should be controlled by an actor so it could say things specifically to us."

Turns out it was a guy in a suit. Wow! I could not tell how they had removed his lower body below the ribcage. I was impressed and a bit disbelieving it was an actor. But the guy on the couch assured me it was.

I gave him some other ideas on what is scary to me, and even as I'm writing this entry, I'm thinking of more stuff. oh wait I forgot. aw man.

Oh, um plexiglass floor with apparent places to walk, like stepping stones and dismembered bodies below it.

He had an idea of a people mover from earth past heaven and dumps them out into hell, but insurance prices skyrocket when they start moving people around. I wonder if they can make that optional, but I guess insurance would still go up. Pooh.

Cheap black plastic is good to cut in strips and dangle from the ceiling in a completely darkened room.