Hunting for Nerdy Costumes

I was moderately excited for Halloween this year. A friend and I decided to go as Sherlock and John from BBC's Sherlock, mostly because the costumes would be fairly easy to find since it's set in modern times. Unfortunately, somehow I just couldn't manage to find the pieces I needed to be John.

"Well, okay" I thought, "I'll be the Eleventh Doctor! All I need is a button up shirt, suspenders, boots and a bowtie!" But I didn't have much luck there either.

I ventured off to the college town's thrift stores, and one that's very popular for finding cheap last minute costumes. At this point I was just looking for some sort of costume, but I got entirely overwhelmed when I walked into one to find massive piles of miscellaneous clothing, some random sparkly accessories, and people milling about, squeezing past each other through the piles.

As a last ditch effort I stopped at one of those stores that pops up around town around Halloween just for selling costumes, and seems to be vacant the rest of the year. I was a little amused to watch the owner (who happened to be wearing an Eeyore costume) wander around and vaguely hit on college girls. I attempted to piece together a non-slutty pirate costume, and while I found a couple of pieces that I really like I couldn't find anything for the bottom or a decent pirate hat.

So... another costume-less year for me. Since I started working when I was 16, I haven't really done anything for Halloween, either because I got stuck working, or was so tired from taking too many classes and working too many hours, and just enjoyed sleeping in on the weekend.

But, as an entirely different subject, I'm getting some couples portraits done early tomorrow morning. While this means that I'll need to be in early tonight, it's nice to have something else to look forward to after my costume fails.

Happy Halloween!

Bah Halloween

I really like the idea of Halloween, dressing up and eating sweets and scaring little kids but I don't actually like it in practice. I don't think I've ever really had a good Halloween. And I guess as I've gotten older they've gotten more sucky. I'm like the Scrooge of Halloween. Only no ghosts will try to show me the spirt of Halloween.

So this year I am not going out and I am not dressing. I had been offered to go to a couple parties but really it was a bit too late to even think about getting a proper costume put together. Which actually leads me nicely to one of the things I hate most about Halloween: slutty costumes. It's pretty much impossible to find a female costume that doesn't leave you showing off everything and it really bugs me. I remember a couple of years ago I wanted to be Claire from Heroes but I couldn't find a cheerleading costume that wasn't slutty.

But I don't want to put a downer on everyones Halloween so I will say that so enjoy carving the pumpkin on Halloween, in fact it's probably my favourite part. Although I should point out that here in the UK our pumpkins are tiny compared to the ones you guys can get like seriously pumpkins here aren't much bigger than maybe the size of my head.

Really all I'm just look forward to some extra chocolate this week.

Hocus Pocus

One of my favourite Halloween traditions is watching the movie Hocus Pocus.  This was a tradition that two of my friends and I started back in junior high, and carried out through high school.  We were having a sleepover at my place one year and it happened to be the weekend before Halloween, so my friend Sarah brought Hocus Pocus with her so that we could watch it.  She had seen it a bunch of times, but Lindsey and I had never seen it before, so she had already assigned who was which character.  (This was a thing that we did at the time.  Not just us, but our entire class.  We'd assign all the characters in movies and books and things to be people we knew, usually based on what was the most hilarious.  There were two people in our class who were especially prolific at this, there were a bunch of different movies and things that they did for everyone in the class.  When they did Harry Potter I was Moaning Myrtle, and in Finding Nemo I was the anglerfish.  This is a long aside.)

Since the main characters of Hocus Pocus are three witches, and there were three of us, Sarah had decided we were the witches.  She was Winnie, the bossy one; Lindsey was Mary, the kind but clumsy one; and I was Sarah, the ditzy one.  While we watched the movie we assigned all the other characters to be the rest of our friends.  It became a tradition, and we watched it around Halloween every year for three or four years in a row.

Hocus Pocus isn't the greatest quality movie, but it's pretty hilarious, and it always reminds me of my friends.  Even though it's been quite a while since the three of us watched it together, and we don't even keep in touch very much any more, I still watch it every year if I have time.

Seven Days...

It's Halloween in a week!

I'm really excited. I was working a late shift at Starbucks last year on Halloween. Really depressing. I have super special plans this year, unfortunately.

I wish I could go to Salem this year on Halloween. Last year I went on October 30th and it was crazy. They have all sorts of events around Halloween and the streets are just filled with people dressed up. I primarily loved the old buildings and my favorite was the House of Seven Gables, which is also known as the Turner House.
They give pretty interesting tours there this time of the year.

Back to this year...

I have no costume planned this time 'round. I might go digging through the closet, though I'm pretty sure I'll end up being a pirate-fairy if I do. I actually want to be Marceline from the Cartoon Network show Adventure Time.

She seems like she'd be a simple enough costume to make, all I'd really need is the face paint, a really long wig and a tank-top. I have boots that are similar. However, costumes seem to have gone up a bit in price, I hope it doesn't turn out too expensive just to get those couple things.

Actually, I could use some advice now that I'm thinking about this, anyone know any good face/body paint or makeup that wouldn't lead to a disaster on clothes or skin?


Finally, Halloween snacks. I'm planning to do my best to make some really good snacks this year. Butterscotch and chocolate chip cookies, butterbeer drinks and cupcakes (for an added HP theme), pumpkin seeds, brownies with frosted cobweb designs, etc. And the usual bags of candy from the super market.


That's my Halloween rambling for tonight. Hope you guys have a great Halloween this year.

My Happy Place

So this might sound a little weird, but my happy place is oddly specific. I think it started as a teenager, when I was getting increasingly busy - particularly my senior year of high school as I also went to college and worked far more hours than I really should have.

During the summer when I got a break from most of my busy-ness, after a morning or early afternoon shift at work I'd often snuggle up in my bed for a nap. The air conditioner would kick on, gently humming me to sleep, and I could nap without any worries about setting alarms or getting up on time for something else.

My happy place is curled up in my bed for a nap, without need for an alarm, and preferably with either the heat or air conditioning coming on to give me some white noise to fall asleep to. This has become my default reaction - when it's possible - to stress and strong emotion as well, since it seems like I always think clearer after my mind's been reset from an hour or two of sleeping (or maybe I'm just more well-rested and able to deal with it).

Safe in my room

When I was a kid, I grew up in a rural area, just down the road from a dairy farm.  Much of the land in the area belonged to the farm and was used for hayfields.  My house was surrounded by fields on all sides, and the fields furthest from the road were bordered by forest.  There was a tractor path leading through the forest, and beyond the first little stand it became a mixture of forest and fields.  From the age I was old enough to walk the path on my own, this was my happy place.  Whenever I just needed to get away from things, I would walk to the end of the path and back.  It was so familiar, and the fields and the forest were always so peaceful.  At the very end of the path and across the last of the hayfields, you came out at the ocean, and this was also a good place to be.  Along the way, off the path and into the woods, there was a stand of boulders, which is where I would take my journal to sit and write if that was what I needed to do.

A little over four years ago, we moved out of that house, and I've moved another six times after that, so I don't really have that kind of dedicated happy place any more.  Mostly now it's just my room, wherever that happens to be.  Even though the actual room, the furniture in it, the decorations, and everything else, have changed quite a bit, my room is always my sanctuary.  It has a door that can shut out the world, and a bed where I can either sleep my troubles away or curl up to lose myself in a book or a movie.

Other than that, just Halifax in general is kind of my happy place.  I used to hate the city, but now I just like to wander around and experience all the familiar sights and sounds and smells and watch all the interesting people.  I also have a few favourite stores and coffee shops that I like to go to and just hang out for hours even though I don't really want anything (especially used clothing stores and this bookstore (it looks like this)).

Anywhere but Here

I don't know if my "happy place" is normal. I keep thinking that the answer people expect to hear or what people are most likely to say is a certain room in their house, like their bedroom, kitchen, library if they have that much space for books.

My happy place is anywhere away from home. I really feel at peace in hotels, to be honest. It's just something about feeling like I'm traveling and therefore in the world. So if I feel like I'm out there and doing something, even if I'm not really, I feel calm. Does that make sense? It probably has something to do with moving and living overseas as a kid. I need to be in different settings in order to feel like everything is right and good, so hotel rooms might be the obvious choice, it's like moving into a new house, minus the fact you leave a lot sooner.

That's where I can feel relaxed and safe and happy. In new and unfamiliar settings. The same sets of walls every day tend to get me anxious so I need variety. But I can't often just find a hotel room and sit in it, can I? One, they are expensive. Two, there aren't many I can go to where I live. Three, I get the feeling there's a negative connotation with hotel rooms and feel awkward to say that I like them. Four, I am not twenty-one (the legal age to rent hotel rooms here). So most of the time I just have to pretend I'm traveling somewhere else and use my imagination that I'm nowhere near my house. Books help.

Cookies, Commutes, and a Late Night "Oh Crap I Missed My Blog"

So I wrote this out this morning, drew some pictures, and took a photo of it. I've waited hours, but Blogger still refuses to acknowledge that I have that picture on my system. *sigh*. Here's the transcription I wrote out since my handwriting's messy; if I can get this to work, I'll put the picture in later, but I'd like to at least have something here!

UPDATE: Here it is! That is much messier/blurrier than I thought it was, so you may still want to hit up the transcription below.

I had a good Friday. I didn't have to leave for work until almost noon, so I spent my morning baking goodies for a potluck I was going to that evening and tidying up areas I'd let get messy during the week (drawing of a cookie that kind of looks like a deformed smiley face).


When I got to work, I remembered that I had a 3 1/2 hour break, which was unfortunate because I was in the middle of nowhere and my next client was even further from town (disproportionate map)


I decided to buck up and deal with the extra mileage and visit some friends. I had meant to write out my blog post in this time, but seeing people I hadn't hung out with for awhile, along with the lure of a free Mexican lunch, distracted me. After lunch I went back to work, spending more time in transit than I did actually working with the kid.


I had fun at our potluck that evening; it was just the right amount of people and all of them were nice to hang out with. REmembering that I had work the next day, I opted to leave fairly early and fall into bed when I got home.


At 2 a.m. the next morning, I woke up and remembered that I hadn't blogged. I promptly fell back asleep because I don't have the best attention span when I'm half asleep. When I woke up this morning, I had a nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something, and when I finally remembered, I wrote this (picture of me waking up, yelling "BLOG!", falling back asleep, and later thinking "did I forget something?")

I can't think of a title

In which I say "so" a lot

This is exactly what I've been doing.

I am really bad at drawing furniture so I'm not drawing the guys who came to assemble my brand new super amazing bed that creek when I move or stab me in the back every night with springs that have broken free of their poorly made mattress casing.

I am going to give you the drawing that has been taking up most of my life these past couple days. It's actually an English assignment, but I took the art option so I wouldn't have to write another essay.

Here it is.
Image import quality is bad.

I am not an art student, and I'm not very proud of this image, it's out of my comfort zone and preferred style, but I've had to spend a lot of time on it today and every other day so I think it counts. This is what I did today. What you see isn't the real background, I'm still trying to fix the original one.

But anyways, if we're drawing a picture of what we did. This is what I've been doing for a really long time. The actual background has skeletons in it. I hate drawing skeletons and it is incomplete, I made a very light/not dark version of this for the post.

Time Out!

At first, this question seemed really easy - I would've opted for Sophie's answer of teleportation and time bending (particularly now that I'm spending a couple of hours driving every day now), and as mundane as it may sound, it would be nice to pop back home for a nice, warm lunch in between clients instead of a cold lunch with whatever I hurriedly packed that morning. Or if I've run out of forms at work, no problem! Pop to the office, grab what I need, pop back. (Can you tell that I'm about to leave for work) Particularly with the time-bending, this would make my life significantly easier.

Except that I already don't exercise enough, and I'm pretty sure I'd abuse teleportation so that I'd never have to walk anywhere, and I don't know if I could keep all of my timelines straight with time travel.

I was also thinking about an answer I've heard someone else give, which is the ability to 80's montage through anything, but I'm pretty sure I'd use that too much as well and end up inadvertently skipping a lot.  There are times where I'm not looking forward to learning something or doing something, but the process of doing it is often better than the end result, and I think skipping that would cheat myself out of the experience.

There's a video I watched recently on this subject (which is NSFW, so I'm not posting it here), the gist of which is that any single superpower probably isn't that great. Having only super strength or telekineses means you'll have lots of people asking you to help with things, "spidey-sense" without the agility to dodge a blow just looks like paranoia, and flying without either invulnerability (to not injure yourself upon landing and/or get hurt by other flying objects) or super speed (to get away from people that might attempt to hurt the only person in the world who can fly) might be tricky.

So, I realize this is a cop-out, but I'm going to go with the same thing that they ended up on: the Saved By the Bell time out. If you haven't seen this, or don't remember it, here's a reminder (the main character, the one who uses it, is the blonde guy):

This doesn't draw attention to you, and doesn't have the possibility of getting lazy (I'm not saying that's necessarily an issue for you guys, but it would be for me), things just always kind of.... go your way.

Space and time bending please!

I can’t remember what TV show it was but someone said they wanted to have ghost powers because it was like having three powers in, invisibility, flying and walking through walls. I thought that was really creative but I don’t think I’d want any of those powers. Invisibility is cool but I don’t think it’s really that useful, flying is cool too but it’s a bit Superman and I’m not sure I could pull it off, walking through walls would be good, I was going to say for robing banks or something but it depends if it’s just you or you and the objects you hold that can go through walls.

If we lived in a world where everyone had some form of superpower I’d quite like the power to use other people’s powers. Which I know is cheating but really everyone knows that Peter from Heroes was the best and a total bad ass.

I think that on a regular basis that I wish I could teleport. Like when I sleep in and am running late for college be able to teleport would be good because then wouldn’t need to worry about the long bus journey. Or when I’m really tired I could teleport home. It would be really useful if I had to carry heavy stuff. And I guess if was able to travel through space I’d also like to time travel. Time travel would be pretty cool but I’d only use it to witness important historical events. And also to buy as many 1950’s dress I can. A lot can go wrong with time travel but I think it could help me with handing work in on the deadline, I could do the same 10 minutes until it was finished.

Yeah, so basically I’d like the superpower to bend space and time.

I could be anything

I had never really thought much about what superpower I would like to have, so I've been thinking about it pretty hard the last few days.  There are so many options to choose from!  And they all have their own advantages and disadvantages.  I was having a really hard time deciding, but I was leaning slightly towards flying, and figured I'd go with that if I couldn't come up with anything better.  Then Sarah pointed out that with terrakenesis she could fly on a rock, and I figured that there had to be something else like that where I could fly but also get other sweet powers in with the deal.  I still wasn't coming up with anything, but then today I was sort of wishing I was a jellyfish (I always wish I was a jellyfish when I'm stressed out or upset or anything.  I don't know.  They just seems so chill, and they probably don't have too much to worry about, and it would be nice to float around in the ocean doing nothing for a while) and I realized that the best superpower would be transformation.

I could be anything!  I could change into a bird so that I could fly.  Any kind of bird.  I could be a swift or something so I could go really fast, or I could be a hummingbird so I could hover, or I could be a duck and just hang out at ponds all day.

If I needed to cross a body of water, I could be fish.  If I needed to get somewhere quickly, I could just turn into a cheetah.  If I was trying to see over a crowd, I could be a giraffe.

And when I was stressed out or upset, I could be a jellyfish.

I would be able to fly on a rock

Does anyone else have those ten-minute to half-hour fantasies every once in a while where you think, "If I had this power in that situation, I'd totally... (insert actions) And it would be awesome."? I do it in my more non-exciting classes. Meaning there are tons of cool superpowers I'd like to have. But not Spider-Man's.

I thought pyrokinesis would be cool, terrakinesis even more if I got plants with that. Electricity/lightning could be the most practical, my computer, iPod, phone and other gadgets wouldn't ever die because I could zap them and they'd continue to work. If I lost power at my house I could just zap everything into functionality again.

But I couldn't wear metal.

Or go out in the rain.

Or the beach.

Or on an airplane.

In the case I lost control of it.

Hydrokinesis I believe to be the most powerful on account of how many things contain water. People, animals, plants, other organisms, the air, the ground, rocks, a lot. It'd be cool, you could probably surf a wave over a cloud if you wanted without causing any mishap on the ground.

But honestly, I think I want terrakinesis with the ability to influence plant life as well. I could climb any tree. It would be awesome. Gardening would be a cinch too. It would certainly make walking long distances simple, I could fly around on a rock. If I fell from a high height I could bring some earth or trees closer to me to break the fall before I gain too much velocity or momentum. I wouldn't want to cause any earthquakes, I would never want or use a super power that strong. Terrakinesis doesn't seem all that practical but it seems sturdy, fun and not so dangerous to have as lightning.

(As I wrote this someone started to play the Captain Planet theme and I did not know how to feel)

I kind of stick to considering elemental superpowers, partly because I'm not original and partly because if you have control over something basic, you get an even wider range of influence when you apply it to different situations and items.

So that's the superpower I would have and the thought process that got me to it.

Out of curiosity, do any of you watch(ed) and/or like the show Heroes?