Watch Me Time Travel

Tonight we’re supposed to set our clocks back an hour, the bi-annual proof that time is only a human concept set up by those trying to bring order to chaos by measuring existence against whatever stick we can all agree on. Not that I mind a little order to the Universe, except when it involves an alarm. At least this time around we’re borrowing the hour we give back in Spring. An extra hour to sleep is as cool as finding $5 in your jeans from last week, except it's 60 minutes in your pocket instead. So I was thinking if I post this entry before 2am, then the clocks all automatically turn back an hour, technically I will have posted it in the future. All these years we've been trying to find a way to travel through time and we've had the answer all along. Go figure.

Bee Here Now

Cool - check that shit out. I just traveled back in time. :D I wonder if this one will show up under or on top of the other post from 1:59.

A few days ago the saying “You attract more flies with honey than vinegar” came up in my thoughts, and I had to wonder why you would want to attract flies in the first place. Flies generally hang out at poop piles and they barf on everything they land on. I can think of insects with better manners that I might want to attract. I think maybe the saying originally was about attracting bees, which isn’t much better when you’re allergic to them like I am, but it makes a little more sense in the big picture. Bees do some cool stuff for us and we haven't really appreciated them like we should, swatting them away from food and drink, killing them with spray cans and pesticides. I wonder if all us humans started being nicer to each other if the bees that are disappearing would come back. Our thoughts create our reality after all. Maybe the bees are "mysteriously disappearing" because we've mostly viewed them as pests so our thoughts have driven them off. My other theory is that the worker bees, who are all male, just finally got tired of the Queen's bullshit and split.

Damn, I've got all these snippets I've been writing down all week so I remembered to expand on them for posts, and now I'm so tired it's hard to continue writing. I gotta stop watching so much TV. I think we sat there for 3 hours tonight, which is why I started writing late, which is why I can't finish my thoughts now. TV sucks the life out of you. I really enjoy the shows we Tivo because they make me laugh, but there are just too many funny ones this season which equates to too many hours spent watching contrived lives on the tube instead of living the real one. It's addictive too - once you start watching a show it's hard to give it up unless the writing gets crappy (like Lost). Once you stop watching you're constantly wondering if you're missing something cool going on with the characters. Eventually you're so far removed from the story line tho you don't care anymore so you lose the urge to watch it, but that's exactly how an addiction goes if you think about it. Junk food for your brain - sure, it stops the nagging to fill it, but in the end the content will make you a big pile of useless flesh. When I lived in my own place I hardly ever turned on the TV so I didn't know what I was missing anyway, and that was fine with me. Now we have this 65" monster in our living room and Mark and I succumb to the laziness of plopping down on the couch as something to do together. Now that I'm thinking about it, aside from going out to eat, it's become the primary activity we share. That's not good. Not a good example for Kaytee either. I gotta talk to him about that. It's nice to have the big screen to watch a movie or something, but if it were up to me alone, I might ditch every TV we have at this point. I'll bet the bigger and more numerous the TVs in the house, the bigger the addiction will be. It's like they're an alien race invading our planet. Attack of the killer TVs! I'm not sure if you could refer to them as silent killers, but they kind of are since not too many people are aware enough to admit how detrimental they can be. I'll bet they're in league with plastic and artificial sweeteners.

Ok, I'm literally falling asleep on the keyboard now so it's time to inhabit the body of the Dreamtime.

The Wind in the Hallows

4:44am. The house is finally quiet and the day ends like it began with me lying in bed listening to the wind playing in the treetops. It’s been a long day, but I’m still a bit wired and I can’t fall asleep so here I am writing.

We had a most triumphant Halloween costume party tonight. We’ve been planning for weeks, buying decorations and making arrangements, coming up with ideas for games, prizes, and decorations.

I woke up at 8:30 this morning to a huge tree crashing down in our neighbor’s yard thanks to the Santa Ana wind that’s made its way from California to our side of the Island. I’m glad to host the winds over here because it’s given the firefighters a chance to get things under control over by San Diego.

I went back to sleep after making sure nothing hit our house, and didn’t wake up again until noon, then the race against the clock began. Even with the best planning there are things I always forget so I had Katy and Mark running out to pick up stuff all the way up to the party hour. They were a huge help.

Jessica and I worked on the decorations most of the day and it came out really well.

I’ll probably be picking the cobweb stuff off of my furniture for days, and I might still be finding little silver skull and crossbones at New Year’s, but every time I find one I’ll think back to tonight and smile. It looked great with the pirate flag Rog painted for us hanging as the backdrop to the food table, and my huge old dictionary doubled as a very impressive spell book.

We kept all the alcohol on the kitchen island and it’s a good thing judging from how the floor looked by the end of the night. There will be much cleaning going on tomorrow, but I don’t mind that part a bit. The more cleaning to be done, the more fun you know you had and this place is a mess!

I labeled the party “DeathFest 2007” and explained this was to celebrate the death of all the things we’d like to let go of in our lives this year. I wrote in the invitation that everyone should bring a list of the things they wanted to “put to rest” and we burned our lists at midnight in the firepit on the patio. I was impressed at how many people remembered to bring a list, and glad that I could provide a way for them to at least take a step towards letting go of things that were no longer serving them in their lives. It wasn’t quite the ceremony I pictured in my head, but I think we made our point under the just-past-full moon.

We went through five boxes of hors d’oeuvres like it was nothing. The Jello shots were a big hit, as were Katy’s “Black Death” shots. Our magician friend, Ray, worked the party beautifully, freaking people out with his tricks left and right. He’s excellent at his craft. There was a good mix of guys and girls, and I think everyone moved about pretty well. I didn’t see too many sitting in one place for long. That thing I read about putting food in one room and drinks in another works really well to keep people mingling.

The costumes were great! There were several pirates and fairies, Dorothy and Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, and Gene Simmons in the Kiss make-up days. We had a geisha, lots of ren faire costumes since many of us are into that, a bee, a clown, Johnny Depp from Pirates, and a military guy. My costume was Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Even though the dress wasn’t quite as slinky as the dress in the movie, I think people got the point with the big pearl and diamond necklace, elbow-length gloves (big mistake to wear gloves as the hostess - I can’t tell you how many times I had to whip them off to deal with appetizers and party fouls) and the long cigarette holder that was kind of the hallmark. I had a lot of trouble getting my hair in the up-do, but I think it was passable. Mark was a Rabbi and Katy was a pirate wench. They both looked fabulous although Mark had trouble with the beard and finally gave up and ditched it.

Overall I think the party was a great success - high five! I may not have stuck with college long enough to get a degree, but I damn sure learned how to throw a party. It is definitely a lot of work, but at the end of the day, when you’re laying in bed listening to the wind and reviewing the night in your head, and you can’t get to sleep because it was all just so cool, it is totally worth every detailed effort.

Pictures here.