Glasses

Brian got new glasses this week (his first pair actually, but also new). He will not let me post a picture until after he gets a haircut though. They look quite scholarly.

Pumpkin Carving Party

Tonight we had some friends over for pumpkin carving. Kristina and Lyyli (coworkers of mine) and Timmy and Alex (costudents of Hanneke's) came over. Lyyli brought her 2 children as well. Here are a few pictures of us scooping out the goo early in the evening:

I decided I didn't want to go the pattern route this year, I was kind of tired of it from the last several pattern years. So I decided to try out this design that I'd seen in pictures before: big pumpkin eating little pumpkin:

I couldn't put a candle in the little pumpkin so I just cut off the back 1/4th of it. It turned out pretty well I think.

Hanneke is still a pattern fan so she did a group of bats, a moon, and a bigger bat. She used a pattern for the little bats but she freehanded the big bat and the moon. Pretty nice freehanding work there, Hanneke! The edges are very clean on her carvings, the picture below is just blurry:

Here are most of the pumpkins together. The pirate is Timmy and Alex's pumpkin, the circles and squares pumpkins are Kristina's and the little one in the top middle is Hanneke's (and Obama is of course Hanneke's). Lyyli and Scott carved a ghost but had to leave before we took this picture. Hanneke hadn't finished her bats yet and I hadn't finished a white gourd I carved into a ghost either (perhaps a picture of that later).

It was a fun night. We wish you could have stuck around for it, mom (and I bet you do too)!

Well that took far too long...

Brian has been sxtra busy with work lately, so he asked me to carve his pumpkin for him. I wanted to try the carving method where you carve away only some of the pumpkin in some areas (so you have 3 color options instead of just 2). Here is the result of that attempt. I think it looks pretty cool, but it took me far to long. The next pumpkin I carve will be a lot simpler. My carving fingers are sore.

Election day is coming!

Huge Announcement

Brian and I have decided to participate in the Red Hills Triathlon. It seems like a daunting task to me right now, but I am starting to train for the events. The triathlon involves a swimming portion, followed by a long bike ride, and ends with a run.

We are participating in this triathlon to raise money for ALS research. Professor Gey is still struggling with this disease, but it is quite impressive that he is still with us, since his doctors predicted that he would be gone by now. So Team Gey (Tri-for-Gey III) continues to raise money so researchers can continue to search for a cure. Soon, we will be hitting you all up for some donations. We will provide further details on how to donate then.

Until then, feel free to ask how the training is going. It is going to take a lot of work to get into triathlon shape, so we are going to need to train train train from now on.

To learn more, go to: http://www.redhillstriathlon.org/

Halloween Horror Nights (Brian)

Well, this post is a good bit overdue. So, I'll make it longer to compensate. I apologize in advance, many of the pictures below are poor in quality due to the night-time taking and/or moving while taking them.

We went to Halloween Horror Nights a few weeks back. It was a great time. Hanneke and I along with my friend Adam from college and my brother Dave all went. Here's the Universal Studios Globe at the front:

When we first got there it wasn't very dark but they still had the fog machines on full blast in some areas to set the mood.

When we first got there, it was pretty rainy. As you can see, that rain was terrifying and caused strange things to happen to all of our faces.

They had areas in the park set-up as Haunted Houses that you had to walk into intentionally but they also had Scare Zones set-up that you could just wonder into by accident. Here's the sign from one of the Scare Zones:

And here's Hanneke sharing a special moment with the rabbit from a Scare Zone (based on Alice in Wonderland in this case):

And here's a quick video, just 13 seconds long, of walking under the entry light for a scare zone. It will give you a quick sense of the mood. For those really curious, I've put a 26 second one of a different zone that is a totally-dark area lit only by jack-o-lanterns. You can't see much in it, but it'll give you an idea of what a Scare Zone is like thematically.

Aside from the Scare Zones, there were also haunted houses. They were the main attraction. There were 8 haunted houses in total and we went into each one. The houses lasted about 5 minutes each, maybe a little more for some and a little less for others. Here are some pictures from the different houses (from the outside, no photography on the inside - and unfortunately, since I had to take these while walking in line, they are exceptionally poor photos). The scarecrow/pumpkin-crow one is from a Scare Zone entry:

They also had a lot of special effects set-up all over the place. I tried to take a picture of Hanneke (on the left) and Dave (right) in front of a jet of flame but you can see how that turned out (and thereby guess how big the jet of flame was---pretty sizable):

My favorite Haunted House was either Fractured Tales or The Hallow (if I'm remembering the names right). There was a moment in one of them where you walked through a short tunnel and saw the shadow of a large werewolf creature moving against the wall. Then you hear a loud wet chomping and biting sound that filled the room completely and came from all directions, like an animal biting into something, and at the same moment the tunnel was misted with water as if you were being soaked in the saliva of the beast. Another favorite of mine was a room in Dead Exposure. Dead Exposure was based around the theme of a totally-dark haunted house lit only by the occassional flicker of a camera flash. That flash was a sort of ultra-bright blacklight that caused strategically-placed paint to light up in the room. In one of the rooms of Dead Exposure, there were several bodies hanging from the ceiling that you had to walk through. Except the bodies were not all fake and were not all attached to the ceiling; some of them were actors that would move and scare you as you got close. But because of the flickering lighting, you couldn't tell which was which until it was too late.

We had a good time after Halloween Horror Nights too. We did mini-golf the next day before Dave flew out, as Hanneke talked about before. The course had lots of water features and whimsical obstacles. It was a lot of fun. Han already put up pictures of it, but here are a few more:

Finally, we also played a few board games while Adam and Dave were in town. We were up really late on the night we went to Halloween Horror Nights playing Powergrid.

All in all it was a very fun trip and I look forward to going in the future. If you're a haunted house person then you should check out Halloween Horror Nights.

birthday boy

Happy Birthday Brian! Today after work, Brian enjoyed a piece of his fall-themed cake.


We went out for dinner with his mom and came back home afterwards to eat cake and open cards. Thanks for the cards everyone! Brian even got a book in the mail.

After cake, Brian talked on the phone with his dad. Now it is time for ferrets. Overall, I think it was a pretty good birthday (at least the part after work).

Working hard

Brian is putting in a lot of extra hours at work this week (which is too bad, since his mom is around to visit). He just got home a few minutes ago (it is 8PM), and that will probaby be the normal time most days this week. When he gets home, he is pretty beat. Here is a picture of him right now, napping on the futon with Rex.

First pumpkin carving

Over the weekend, I carved a pumpkin. I plan on carving another one later on, but I was impatient, so I decided to carve one early too. I carved 2 dragons, which looked pretty cool. Unfortunately, our warm, humid weather made the pumpkin rot out already, so I should probably throw it away tonight (there is a lot of mold). It always amazes me how fast mold grows here.

Disney mini golf

On Friday morning, we went to play mini golf at one of the Disney courses. It was a great course, with several water features and moving pieces. Here are some pictures from our game.

Halloween Horror Nights

We went to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios on Thursday night. Brian, Dave, and Adam thought it was awesome (horror stuff isn't really my thing). It rained off and on, but we were prepared for rain, so it wasn't that bad. We went through all the haunted houses, walked through areas called scare zones, and even saw a pretty funny show.

More fish tank stuff

Today we did some reorganizing of the tank. We put in 3 new pieces of live rock and moved some corals around that we recently added. We also put in a new coral we bought at the store (it was only $5!). Here's one Han took of me positioning things:



Here's another of me trying to glue something down underwater. It's pretty annoying because I have to use forceps to hold a very small shell (like the size of a pencil tip), use an applicator to put glue on it, but then not get glue on the forceps or else I instantly bond the shell to the forceps.

I don't know how much you remember the layout of the tank before but it was more of a pyramid-type shape. Now it's more of a solid rectangle with crevices and tunnels throughout. Here's a picture of it now:

Ever since out power outage back in the middle of August, we've had a type of algae that we don't want. We bought a nudibranch, sometimes called sea lettuce, to eat it up. Here's a picture of him (he hasn't eaten much of the algae so far, though):

Finally, here's the coral frag we bought today. It's the tree in the near picture, with two hermit crabs nearby, a new yellow zoanthus in the background, and in the far back (on the right, the lumpy thing highest up on the rock) our leather:

That's all for now.

A Haunted Ad

Hey everyone. Just a quick update. There's a haunted house here in Tallahassee that is run by someone part-time, mostly just for fun (not profit). I called him this year after going last year and volunteered to help out. I thought I'd be helping build stuff or plan the house but it turns out he also wanted me to help with an internet commercial. So, here's the commercial I came up with. If it doesn't download immediately on YouTube, pause it and let it download before it starts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nou-_A83AT8

Door update

We still don't have a new door in place, but we have been working to improve the door situation while we wait. Our house is old enough that the door size we need was not in stock at Lowes and Home Depot. So we have a door on order, and it should arrive in the next week or two.

On Thursday, we both took off work to try to get things figured out. We had hoped to get a door that day but ran into unexpected delays (see size issue above). One thing we did do is buy a motion light for the bakc porch. Brian wired it in on Thursday afternoon (here he is working on the final installation).


Here you can see our new light, which is quite bright. The motion sensor is the white box hanging down between the lights. You can also see the temporary door fix for Thursday night. When the door installers came and realized that they had the wrong door for our house, they used some spare boards to cover the weakened area and (hopefully) make the door more secure.

Today (Friday), our landlord came by after work to "fix" our door until the new one arrives. He cut some plywood, screwed it into the door frame, and put a series of boards across the door (on both the inside and outside). I think it looks great (read: secure), and I think we should be all set until the new door arrives.

Break-in

Unfortunately, we had someone break into the apartment tonight. We were out with friends for dinner and on our way home our security company called to say that the alarm had been tripped. The person knocked out part of our back door and came in but appears to have left when the alarm sounded. For now, I put the back door panel on and took a few other safety steps I won't describe here. It doesn't look like they took anything and we are fine, so I guess we mark this as a close call and no more.