Holy crap…
Well, so I didn’t go to St. Louis because of car troubles…
Today, after much thought, I went to the car dealer, and looked at Ford Fusions. I’ve been researching them for about a month, and had decided that they were what I would go with when I finally decided to buy a car. Well they had an 06 on the lot with only 30K miles on it, clean, and in good shape, still under factory warranty. After some haggling about its price, and the value of my Tarus as a trade-in… including me threating to walk out… I went ahead and bought it.

I now own a very nice looking Grey 2006 Ford Fusion.

I was on my way… On 80 heading towards MO, and as I got up to “cruising speed” I noticed a lot of vibration that feels like its coming from my left front wheel. I then also noticed an odd sounding noise. noises are NOT good noises, in my experience. So, rather than continuing to St. Louis, and running the risk of my car doing something bad, like a wheel falling off I exited 80, and headed home. So, now rather than going to St. Louis, or even Camelot, I’m going to go tomorrow and have the car looked at. Perhaps, while doing that, I’ll see about running over to test drive a new car.
Oh, and I called at 6:30 to cancel the reservations I made at 4:30pm… and am still getting charged for one nights stay…
Seriously.. that’s just stupid…

Ok, I’ve waited till the absolute last minute but I’ve decided… I’m going to St. Louis for Pirate fest. Sorry all at Camelot.

OK, once again we have a mouse… (This isn’t that surprising this time of year we usually get one or two, its an OLD house) Normally I trap them quickly…
Normally…
I’m getting concerned though, this one is NOT a normal mouse… It’s VERY smart.

Its been able to clean the trap without tripping it most every time I set it. When the mouse does trip it, it’s never caught…

Tonight… this game has taken a turn for the truly freaking weird… What happens when a mouse starts using tools? I’m starting to fear for my life… Hell before I know it the little critters going to be setting traps for me…

I set the trap in a manner that I was sure would trip him up… Rather then do so though… the mouse somewhere rummaged around under my bed and found an elastic strap used to hold the sheets on the mattress. (I lost this one a while back…) It then took the elastic and wrapped it around the trigger for the trap I can only assume to prevent the trap from tripping.

How the heck do I trap a mouse that smart?

Thanks very much to . I now have four fully stoned tombstones. Opinions?
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Today I was able to make a lot of progress on the new props for Halloween. I managed to carve 2 more tombstones, and make some serious progress on the Talking Skull. The tombstones, except for one more, are all carved and their fronts are painted. I have attached the wood I will use to mount the stakes using Liquid Nails adhesive. Tomorrow night I hope to paint the back sides of all of the tombstones, then later in the week lifeonwry is going to help me make them look like stone.
The talking skull prop made a quantum leap today, thanks to a shopping trip last night with my lady. I have been struggling with what I was going to mount the skull on. Last night while at Target, we found a Halloween urn. I saw it, and knew I had to have it, it was perfect. Once I had it I knew I needed a platform to go in it to attach the skull. I made a trip to the hardware store, and forced my brain to reject things for what they were designed for and to look at them as “legos” so to speak. I knew I needed something able to support the weight of the skull, and yet be made of a material I could work with. I decided PVC would be the best bet, and wandered the plumbing isle. I found a flush mount toilet flange, and knew I had exactly what i needed. I stopped in the paint area picked up some mis-tint paint in the approximate shades of grey I needed. When I got home, I checked the flange in the urn and it was an exact fit. I drilled a hole in the center, mounted the skull and knew I had what i needed. I then disassembled it and gave the flange a good coating of black paint.
Later I drilled a couple holes through the urn into the flange to allow for 2 screws to hold it securely in place, and then attached some LEDs for up lighting. It’s really coming along.

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Ahoy ye scurvy lot! The bell’s been struck, and `tis now International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Anyone with plans best be sharing em, or I’ll keel-haul ya!

Ok, perhaps a bit morbid of a title.. but oh well, I’m feeling kinda morbid.
I give you Dentist Brown.

Stranger tread
This ground with gravity.
Dentist Brown
Is filling his last cavity.

I just wanted to post this picture, before I went back to bed… Long weekend.. I’m still exhausted… but this is the progress on the tombstones…

Opinons?

I need some names for my tombstones. I found some epitaphs I like, a couple have names in them, but I need names for the others… I like humorous names to go with the epitaphs.
For example I’m using, “M. T. SUIT” for the following
Lived a life of stress and worry
Rushing through it in a hurry
Didn’t stop to smell the roses
But now he feeds them as he decomposes

Make your suggestions by comment please.
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Ok, I’m to old for getting home at 4:30 a.m. Ugh… I can’t sleep in the daylight… The Seelie show was a blast thought and I’m glad I went. Next time theres a Delafield show though… I’m getting a hotel up that way somewhere…

Ok folks, I got to playing with OpenID last night. Instead of having to fill in all those fields to comment on my blog, you can now just enter your LJ account URL in the OpenID field below and it will let you post. LJ’s OpenID support is a little rickety… but it is there. I personally recommend creating an OpenID at http://pip.verisignlabs.com. Their implementation is leaps and bounds ahead of LJ’s, but I realize hey you are already most likely using LJ so why not jsut use that.

So, if your URL to your blog is: http://cap60552.livejournal.com/ just put in cap60552.livejournal.com in the OpenID field below, and fill in a comment. It should work. Try it! You know you want to be cool!

* Note: Comments are still screened at this point.. so you won’t likely see your comment until I have approved it.. and the 1st time you use openid you have to authorize my site as being able to recieve data from your open id provider.

I have started work on a new batch of tombstones for the Halloween display this year.

They are made from building insulation foam. I broke down and bought a foam cutter from Hobby Lobby for $20, and am GLAD I did. I have a few others to cut, then I will set about gluing the supports to the backs, and then painting.

The cross design, is based off one I saw on the web. I was going to try to freehand it, but couldn’t get it to look right. So I sat down with my graphics program, and realized what I wanted was just a series of circles that were cut at various points. About 3 minutes later I had a pattern printed, traced to cardboard and cut out. Then it was just a matter of flipping and/or rotating the pattern 90 degrees to make the full design.

I figured it out! I’m not going to explain it on here, but if you really must know IM me, and perhaps I’ll explain it…

Ok, so last night I didn’t sleep. I’m not sure what the deal was with that… but I didn’t.. Every time I dozed off I was assaulted with a re-occurring dream. Now frankly that’s odd enough in itself… I rarely remember dreams or anything… but this one was just NUTS… (read on… pun intended)

The dream:
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Yesterday I found a deal of the century at Lowes. Now I just need to get back there with a truck before its gone. They have sections of plastic fencing that look like the wrought iron fencing… This stuff is normally $56 a section for a 6 ft long section… The clearance price… $14… OOO OHHH OHHH I WANT!!! How freaking cool would that be to have real fencing to put up for my haunted graveyard!!!

Anyone got a truck handy?

Hey look its an update that NOT a meme.

I was looking at my blog and realized I haven’t updated it in a long time with anything other than a meme. I’ve been busy… Sorry…

Today, while working on swapping out monitors at work I had a little accident. I was working under one of the desks used for our internet stations. These desks have a long metal panel on the back covering the cable management tray. Unfortunately due to a design flaw, if students decide they can’t keep their feet off things they can jar this panel from its hinges. Well, as I said, I was under the desk, and as I moved a cable, the panel decided to give up on staying in place and came crashing down on my face. I’m lucky. It missed my nose by less than a 1/8th of an inch, and managed to NOT knock out any teeth. I did end up with a nice series of teeth shaped cuts in the inside of my lip though. Oh well, it could have been much worse.

Tomorrow, is the first Saturday I have had free since before Bristol started in July. Ok, free isn’t exactly true. I have set aside this weekend… ok Saturday… to get caught back up on yard work. My yard is beginning to resemble some form of forbidden forest. Granted thats cool for Halloween I suppose.. but I’d rather not end up with poision ivy, or be carried off by some killer man eating plant. To that end, I broke down and bought a 3 gallon pressure sprayer, and Roundup concentrate. This morning before work I put it together and mixed up a little over a gallon and sprayed the hell out of a number of undesirables. When I got home, things had started to wilt some. I took the sprayer and doused another area. The biggest problem with this is that I’m getting even more eaten by mosquitoes. Tomorrow I will attempt to dress in layers of clothes while I spray in a desperate hope that I wont be completely devoured again.

Stolen from the Shantyman…
Worship me?