baTTy HaLLowEEn PosT

Here are a few recent photos to help wish you a

Happy Hallowed Eve!!!!

 

Let’s Have Some Halloween Fun!

This is the first crisp fall weekend we’ve had, dipping down to “this is a phenomenal Saturday for hiking” and “let’s bring in the ferns before Sunday morning’s frost.” So what better to do than plan a Friday night/Saturday morning project, so we could reward ourselves with that hike?

I thought I’d take you through a few of the steps of our self-mutilating fun (involving the type of chicken wire that is self-scratching, as well as various types of flesh-sticking glue). See if you can play the game without cheating to come up with your answer as we go (which means “don’t scroll ahead).

Here’s Phase 1.0 – selecting the appropriate PVC joints. Any guesses yet? C’mon.

Even the guy at Lowe’s gave it a try. And he had a good answer…even if he was wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, maybe it’s a little premature in its shape to give many hints away at this point.

 

Moving on…

Next is what we’ll call Phase 2.5 (since you missed me measuring out the PVC pipe to my desired specifications, us finalizing the joint angles, gluing it all together, and working to avoid flesh wounds while shaping the chicken wire around the pipe. Come to think of it, this should be Phase 5.0 by my estimation.

And this is where the fun starts in daring to take a guess as to the finished project.

 

Any ideas yet?

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, I’m on pins and needles by this time too.

Never mind. I was actually sitting on a leftover piece of chicken wire…

Once we got our project all dressed out and ready to go, T helped out with the transport.

 

This is T (helping out with the transport, in case you didn’t get that.)

This should also give you a better idea of the size of the project in question (if you knew what size T was, of course).

 

 

It should also clue you in that our project is too lazy to transport itself.

 

 

But that’s a whole other story…

 

This next photo op was taken inside my car during transport.
Did I mention that it wasn’t all that easy to get our project to cooperate with the idea of transportation?

It’s obviously a homebody.

Or didn’t want to miss the Tennessee-Florida game.

 

 

Neither did the other Tennessee fans – until the end of the 4th quarter.

 

 

So do you have an idea of where we might have been headed?
That’s right! Big Orange Country!!!

Surely this is what you were thinking when I said Big Orange Country. Yeah?

 

Well, this is going to be our project’s new residence for this rest of this month
(as long as it doesn’t end up like another famous Southerner – – –
Gone with the Wind).

 

When we arrived, it was a windy day – but there was plenty of fall sunshine to cut the chill in the air.

We took some time staking out a great location…

So do you have your guess yet??

Let’s see if you got it right…

 

 

Here’s a selfie of our finished project with its creators – T & me.

Do you think you have it?

 

 

Hint: If you said a terrorist, you would be…

 

INCORRECT!

 

Because this guy is hanging in the pumpkin patch at our church…

I’m dubbing him as our Spiritual Ninja Warrior!

 

HI-YA!

(Not to be confused with the Southern term, “Hi Ya’ll!” (But I’m working at teaching him that one too!)

 

Both he & we want to wish you & yours a

 

HAPPY HALLOWED EVE!!!!

 

 

The Hospitality of a Hallowed Eve

Hi, my name is Jody. I’m a Christian. And, here’s my hellacious holiday confession. Well, hey, I happen to like Halloween.

I don’t see it as a holiday to be demonized. And I really don’t think all those little kids are dressing up so they can come onto my front porch to practice their evil incantations. Basically, they’re in it for the candy. And I’m in it for the hospitality.

How many other days of the year can I expect that, if I sit on my front porch, a large percentage of my neighbors and even complete strangers will come by and visit? I walk my neighborhood each day – and though I stop and chat a time or two with someone each week for a couple of moments – how many other days of the year are our sidewalks filled with people joyfully greeting one another and socializing along the way? How many other days do I have the opportunity to chase down people I don’t know and ask to take their pictures? (Okay, well, maybe I’ve done that a few other times too…but you get the point.)

I wish I could tell you the excitement I felt at rushing to get home last night, after traveling on the road all day, then bringing my dinner out with me onto the porch, so I wouldn’t miss the busy group of excited children and teens gathering as it all began.

I wish I could tell you the joy I felt in my heart when I extended a handful of candy to a young visitor and was met with large eyes attached to a small, amazed voice that gasped, “I can have ALL of these?” “Only if you want them all,” I answered with a giggle.

I wish I could express the satisfaction I received from offering extra candy along with a bandaid to the overzealous trick-or-treater who tripped on my sidewalk because he was so excited to get there, as we both picked up his spilled trail of candy together.

I wish I could explain my frustration that I hadn’t thought to take pictures of all my visitors until after many of them had already gone on their way – and then my delight at rushing inside to grab my camera so I could share a tiny bit of my joy with you.

With that being said, I hope you, too, get some enjoyment from the precious few photos I did gather. More than anything, I hope that you were able to personally get great enjoyment from the hospitality opportunity that this Hallowed Eve offered once again to us all. I would hate to think that any of us might miss an opportunity to extend or receive the warmth of hospitality to one another.

The sun sets over our Hallowed Eve Neighborhood

Halloween – a family & friend affair (with hot dogs!)

Peter Pan & Tinkerbell (looking for their Halloween shadows?)

a sweet treat of a baker

Tiberius expressing his best front porch hospitality

mY LIL Vampiress

striking a pose – or two

Hallowed Front Porch

Hallo-Weenie! Relation Station: JOdY-iSm #67

Hallo-Weenie! Relation Station: JOdY-iSm #66

Hallo-Weenie! Economizing: JOdY-iSm #44

It won’t hurt my feelings too badly if you don’t accept this one gladly.

Several spirits began to BOO when they heard it, too.

Hallo-Weenie! Personal Arsenal: JOdY-iSm #57

Howl-O (No)-Ween (us from the) Elections

How appropriate that our national elections are scheduled to occur just

after  Howl-O-ween.

Here’s a recap of events leading up to our hallowed election eve…

The Big Show kicked off with both Political UNconventions, otherwise dubbed to many as The Little Shops of Horror.

• It’s rumored that Obama led the Democrats in Michael Jackson’s dance rendition of Thriller.

 

• It’s furthermore rumored that for the GOP, Mitt Romney & Paul Ryan re-enacted the parts of Brad Majors and Janet Weiss arriving at the Annual Transylvanian Convention in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 

This year’s political fright-night agenda includes the following Tricks (not Treats), boys and girls:

• The Health-scare Deformation

• Alien Abduction (re: illegal immigrants)

• Nightmarish Budgetary Horrors, to include:

  • Inoculations for The Tax Plagues, up from the grave of the past century

  • Federal Deficit Snipe Hunts

• Gray Matter Rights (for all voting constituents who have not yet been lobotomized)

• Upcoming/Continuing Wars of Marvel Comics Proportions

• Past Presidents (& Presidential candidates who should have been severed) now Resurrected from both dilapidated parties

• Media Witch Hunts, complete with leaked, recorded stake-outs

• Unemployed Mobs conducting General Mass Chaos (or maybe just lying on their couches with their government-subsidized high definition cable, while the employed mobs work harder to support the mounting demands in lifestyle of those who have the ability to work but refuse to go to school or get a job)

Apparently, Americans have been given two choices:

To either conservatively Gird our Loins

or

To liberally Show our …

So I hope you’ll (enthusiastically?) join me at the polls!

OK, how about if you just be there…

(so you have to accept a portion of the blame too).

Celebrate Good Times – or other times, if nothing good can be found

If you’ve come this far, you may as well keep going…

Bonus Read: In case you need a write-in for your ballot, well, I’ve really got nothing for you.

But if you need more voting incentive, you can follow this link to check out my stellar, albeit late, recommendation for a Vice Presidential candidate.

And, yes, less you doubted it for the briefest flash of a second…

I am An American Girl.

Hallo-Weenie! Into the Gender Blender: JOdY-iSm #82

Weekly Writing Challenge: Halloween Warnings!

 BEWARE!

HALLOWEEN is creeping up on us.

This seems like an appropriate time to issue some vital 

LIFE WARNINGS –

Let’s call them Terrestrial Training. 

(I’ll limit them to 3 to keep us focused.)

1. BEWARE of those foul sorts who show up at ball stadiums and parks across our country, known as fair-weathered fans. These vampirish types are to the ‘sports kingdom’ what a parasite is to the plant kingdom. They’ll cling tightly to a host team while the host is vibrant and lively. When the host is feeling worn down from giving all it has to give, the parasitic fan will suck the final life out, then creep away to cling to another host team, despising the one who fed it for so long.

2. BEWARE of alien beings who are constantly making extravagant claims about their lives or towards you. Carl Sagan had a fairly decent rule of thumb: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Such claims with weak evidence in the scientific world are classified as “quack science.” It should go without saying, then, what we might use for classification of characters of such ‘extraordinary’ measure.

3. BEWARE of monstrous middle school parents who rent Hummer limos for their beastly kids’ 8th grade dance. If you’re one of these extravagant creatures, I’ll be more than happy to introduce you to some people who are starving to death in the world and could use some of that frivolous spending — because you aren’t going to be able to buy any common sense with it.

Author’s Notes:

As the week draws to an end (though it felt more like it scribbled), I thought I’d have some fun with the Daily Post ‘Weekly Challenge.’ I also thought things like:

What are the due dates on these things anyway?

Do points get deducted for late assignments?

Can I get placed in ‘Wordpress detention’?

The challenge was to try composing something completely new & different in my personal little Blogosphere – to write about something unlike what I usually might.

Since I’ve only been in this time-warped world for a whopping one month, that description seemed a little vague to an amateur newbie like me…though I’m sure it made sense to all you professional bloggers out there.

To meet this challenge, I decided I would become an Advice Columnist. Now, I feel the advice I’ve dispensed here is quite solid, mind you; but the idea to advise seems a far-fetched stretch to me, since no one I know ever listens to anything I say.

‘What’s that,’ you say?

If you’re still listening, here’s the link to the challenge if you’d like to give it a whirl:

 http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/weekly-writing-challenge-and-now-for-something-completely-different/#more-10548

or take this shortcut

…but if your assignment’s late and you have to sit in detention, don’t blame me!

(You might, however, strongly suspect that I didn’t want to be there alone.)