Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Happy Halloween!

Halloween was awesome this year. Gina, Zissou Gnome and I all dressed up for work, and met each other uptown and had a feast at Casa. We also got coffees and stopped by Atira's new soup cart, which I give FIVE GOLD STARS! Go there!

That night, Ben and I went to Uncle Tom and Aunt Sue's to help hand out candy. The East Side is the best place to go because there are SO MANY KIDS. The street sounds like some sort of street fair with all the tromping feet.

Afterwards, Mom and Dad had us over for meatloaf, which none of us had had in years. Mmm, and what a loaf of meat it was ! It was delicious.

Click here for photos.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Private Pumpkin Carving Party

Okay, so I thought four pumpkins was going to be enough. It wasn't. I had to carve just ONE more, so I had Ben over for a Private Pumpkin Carving Party.

Private Pumpkin Carving Parties are fancier than regular ones. You don't just get to each leftover pizza *or* leftover taco dip...

...you get to eat leftover taco dip ON TOP OF leftover pizza!

With WINE. Now that's class.

Ben made a scary spider!

And I made this little guy. He's an optimistic little fellow, facing life with eyes wide open, ready to take on whatever the world has in store for him. I named him Lil' Trooper.

Scary Spider and Lil' Trooper!

The next morning, in the sunlight.

Scary Spider and Lil' Trooper hanging out with the rest of the pumpkins!

And THOSE are seriously the last pumpkins I am carving this year. Unless someone brings me one of those fancy white ones I saw at Kroger's.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Team Zissou Fish Reunion

Last night, one of the Team Zissou halloween missions was to get six people to drink a small goldfish in a bottle. Summer ended up holding onto her fish, Abby, all night. At the end of the night, she left Abby at my house in a small fish bowl. Ben's fish, Chet, was also spared instant death when Ben left him behind at Linda's party.

On Sunday morning, we went to find Chet at Linda's house, and reunited the two fish.

Pumpkin Carving Party at MY house!

Even though I have already gone to three pumpkin carving parties this fall season, I can't seem to get enough! I decided to host one of my own. Mine was a potluck, and Summer brought along the movie Poltergeist in order to freak us all the heck out! The potluck was delicious and there was tons of food and fun.



Click here for photos.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Halloween with Team Zissou!

For Halloween, a bunch of us went as members of Team Zissou, from The Life Aquatic. We worked hard on our costumes all month long, and were a completely unified team. Since we had so much fun for so long on Halloween, I have divided the night up into chapters for your enjoyment!

















We also all got really nerdy and made matching myspace pages. In them we included our Team Zissou ID Badges:



And set our top 12 friends to each other!

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Pumpkin Carving Party at Linda's!

Tonight, Linda and Krista had a pumpkin carving party. This was my third pumpkin carving party invite! Each party has been slightly different.

This one was awesome because Dad let me borrow his bad-ass tools. These allow for some serious precision.

This party also had MOONSHINE! Linda's brother made it!

We all did a shot of the shine before getting started on our pumpkins.

Also, there was chex mix.

The lineup!

Linda made a mexican. You can sort of see the beer that he is drinking.

Krista made a cat!

I made a sea horse!

Ben made a shark! Rarrr!

Sea Life!

Krista's cat got in the window, which was pretty halloweeny.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Happy Birthday, Gina!

Gina's birthday was a total blast! We started the night off with a pizza party and birthday cake at my place, then headed uptown for beers and car bombs and whatnot. HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS, GINA!



Click here for pics.

Smashing Pumpkins

The victims:

Pumpkin #1:

Pumpkin #2 (a movie):

The carnage:

Friday, October 20, 2006

Cheese Cereal and Light Orange Juice: Two Experiments

Tonight was poker night at Mike's. Since Summer and I did not win, we decided to do some experiments in Mike's kitchen while we waited to see who would rake in the chips.

Summer was munching on some cheddar chex mix, and took note of the fact that eating it out of a small bowl like that felt like eating breakfast cereal, almost. Then she wondered if, MAYBE, it might taste good with milk? It was made from Chex, so, how could it not? She figured maybe it would be similar to macaroni and cheese.

We decided to find out.

Summer gave it the first taste.

This is her FLYING to the sink to spit it out.

She almost barfed. Her verdict was "NO."

This is me tasting it and trying to decide if i HATE it, or just don't really LIKE it. After the second bite, I settled for HATE. My verdict is, "It is okay for ONE BITE. Sort of."

Next up we decided to do a blind taste test! Tropicana Light OJ versus a pitcher of frozen from concentrate.

The frozen contender. Could Light juice really taste as good as regular juice?

Tasting blindly.

It is important to remember to cleanse your palatte between tastes.

I guessed incorrectly! One of the two juices was positively DELICIOUS, and I exclaimed, "This MUST be the regular juice!" I was wrong. The light juice was incredible! Here I am, shocked and excited about the results:

Next up, Summer demonstrates why blind taste tests aren't always such a good idea. Whoops!

Summer also voted for the light juice as being the more delicious of the two.