1183

One Thousand One Hundred and Eighty-Three! It looks impressive when it's written out. It is also impressive looking when it walks up your walk way and yells, "Trick or treat!" 


That is now what I am confirming as the official number of Halloweeners who came to our Haunted Yard this evening. The first arrived at 4:45 and we shut everything down just before nine with the last candy bar.


I'll have more details to come. Right now, we are tired!

One Day to Halloween 2011

We have had a very busy weekend preparing for the scary festivities to come tomorrow evening. Since it was the weekend before Halloween, there were lots of parties to attend as well as preparations to attend to.

Friday night was our Punkin Carving Party which had a much smaller attendance this year but still accomplished our goal of getting a bunch of our punkins carved.

A few pictures:

I completed the fence around the flying ghosts so now there will be little doubt that one should keep the EFF OUT!

Saturday night we went to a couple of nearby Taverns to hang out. Nothing big, just a brief night out. You know they keep beer there!

I dressed as a Pimp Vampire

Susan's cat outfit was so effective she attracted another cat.

Another party we attended last night was the annual Corbin Park Neighbor Party. Susan was a firecracker and I was a Lighter.

This is always a great party where we get together with neighbors whilst eating and drinking.

I'm working a half day tomorrow and Susan will be home early as well. We have a lot of gravestones to get into place and pumpkins to arrange.

And then of course, there is the candy.

Closing in on All Hallows Eve

I got home from work last night and got right to work on the ghosts. I had to re-string the whole thing, which I planned to do anyway this weekend. The line broke the night before which forced me to re-string early.

But it is done and up and running and ready for tonights Pumpkin Carving Party

The video appears much darker on the blog than in my camera. Nonetheless, the effect is tres bitchin'!

I know that pride comes before the fall, but I am very pleased with myself right now.

Giant Punkins

We have friends who have friends who grow large pumpkins for the pure joy of growing large pumpkins. At the end of the season, he has no use for them and so our friends take them. They spread them in the woods near their home for the deer but this year, they brought them to us.

Now we have large pumpkins and we are ready to use them. We will be carving them up on Friday and preparing them for our display of many punkins.


Conditions must be just right today because I returned home to find nary a leaf in a tree in the front yard. The work I did the other day to clear the sidewalk and walkway is history.

It's pretty amazing how deep the leaves are. I need to break out the snow blower. There is a sidewalk out there.


Finally, if you picked October 26th (my sister's Birthday) for the day we turn on the furnace, you win! Congratulations! Send in your winning ticket and we'll send you the ten thou...no twenty thous...ten million dollar winning prize money.


This is a record, breaking the previous milestone by eight days. I'm so happy about the money we've saved that I'm going to crank up the thermostat and go nuts for the next twenty minutes.


Heat in the privacy of your own home. What a country!

Artificial Punkin Retrieval

We broke out the pre-fabricated custom carved pumpkins that we stow away every year in a very secret place. I think there are 21 or 22 of them there on the couch.

They look pretty good on the stairs too.

Halloween is days away now. I had a minor catastrophic failure with the flying ghosts last night. I tightened the line that the ghosts hang from but my knot failed. I think I'm going to re-string the whole thing on Saturday. 


We continue to live without the furnace. It was below freezing last night and it will be again tonight. And yet, we are doing okay just using space heaters. 


But the time has come to fire up the boiler. I only need to place a couple small pieces of trim and then I can replace the radiator, fill the system and fire it up.


I'll try tomorrow!

One Week until Halloween

Opening night is such a C.F. Here's a video from today. I find that three ghosts makes all the difference.

I got a little yard work done but it won't last long. I expect this clean and semi-orderly setting will be gone by tomorrow.

I woke up this morning and thought a smelled a slight essence of wine. When we got into the kitchen this morning, we found this sight.

The little yeasty beasties have really been active. You can see lots of churning and bubbling going on in the bucket. The gravity reading has already dropped several points making this a 7% alcohol fluid at this point. It still has a ways to go.


The top of the bucket is a mesh bag containing all the grape skins, a few vines, and probably the remains of several spiders. The bottom is all juice. It still tastes very sweet which brings me back to my previous statement...it still has a ways to go.

Presenting the Debut of the Burke Version of the Axworthy Flying Ghost

The Boiler Game

We have begun the decorating for Halloween this week. Susan has been all over the inside of the house and I have been getting stuff outside. Here's a nice shot of the porch.

And below is a shot of the overall house as depicted in height. One can sort of see the skeleton hanging from the peak of the roof if one look carefully.

I will be starting to put up the Flying Ghost set up this weekend. It will be interesting to see if I can make it work from three posts.


In the meantime, we are still going through our day to day lives without any heat. The boiler remains off and it is getting chilly. We are using are space heaters in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom so we really aren't suffering too badly...yet. But it's coming. Turning the boiler back on will be one o my other priorities this weekend.

Anniversary Number Se7en

Thursday night we bottled a batch of wine from grapes we bought last fall. It's a zinfandel and we got 29 7/8 bottles out of it. We have tasted it and are very pleased. I don't know how much it will mellow in the bottle, but if it mellows not an stitch, I will not be disappointed. It is very good as is.


It was an urgent item on our agenda to get this wine bottled as we wanted to take one with us this weekend as we ventured back to Prosser for another 100 pounds of grapes.


This year, we are making a Temparnillo. It's red, it's fruity, and I'm looking forward to making it and then drinking it.

Susan and I left town Friday morning and drove three hours to Prosser, Washington. It right there in the same fertile valley as Grandview, Sunnyside and Yakima. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in Sunnyside and really enjoyed it. We didn't feel like we were in somebody's house, the breakfast was great both mornings, and we watched two movies we haven't seen. Plus, we had a giant bathtub in our bathroom.

Again,we bought a LOT more wine than we planned on but this time, we didn't drink as much. It is very easy to get a buzz when you are going from tasting room to tasting room. We managed to avoid that this year.

We made a 20 mile journey to Columbia Crest Winery which is a giant winery in t6he style of what you might find in Sanoma or Napa Valley.

I got a bunch of pictures of trucks delivering grapes

We ended up buying a case of wine there because they were having a big case sale and it only cost us $30.00.

We picked up our grapes on Sunday at Vineheart, the same winery we purchased from last year. We gave Patricia a bottle of our Zin and we opened our 7/8 bottle to have her try it. She said she was impressed.

I don't think she was just blowing smoke. I know one thing. Susan and I both really like our Zin. That's all that matters to us.

We made it back into town by two, which allowed us to attend a company party at the Caterer Susan works for. Fabulous food and drink...a great way to end a road trip.

We got home and immediately set about the task of getting ready for Halloween.

It's just one thing after another.

Title Goes Here

The Countdown continues and we are harried, but it's nice to have something to do.

I discovered I have to be careful when writing the word "countdown" as I have a tendency to drop the "o" in a critical spot.

We successfully completed the skywalk job and did it in two days. We did two skywalks on Sunday, working until 9:30 or something. We got the third one finished on Monday night, and even made it home in time to watch "The Good Wife", which we DVR'd on Sunday...so it didn't really matter what time we got home and now I've wasted valuable vowels on a superfluous sentence.

Susan has not yet finished her wall papering in the Hall Alcove so I haven't returned the radiator to service so we still have yet to fire up the boiler. Mark October 2011 as a record setting year cuz I don't see the heat coming on before next week. I'm pretty sure that beats the previous record but I guess I ought to research that before making some outlandish claim.

A Mess o' Countdowns

I've been trying to remember to write something here but life in the real world has gotten in the way. That's why I will not be getting involved in any social networking on line. I spend too much time in front of a computer as it is. 


Autumn has finally arrived in the form of drizzily wetness. It has gone from gentle misting to a good driving rain. It's been pretty constant. Today was the first day I wore a coat as I went off to work this morning.


We have two countdown clocks going right now and a third more urgent countdown clock was just added.


The first clock is the Countdown to the Heater. I will look back but I believe Oct 8th is the record.


We have added a complication to this years Countdown to the Heater as the boiler is not ready to be fired up. I have a radiator off line and do not want to hook it up and fill the system until Susan finishes her wall papering in the hallway.


The approach of Halloween is also counting down and soon I will be working on the ghost in the front yard.


The new monkey in the Countdown is a skywalk window painting project that was thrown at us yesterday. It is for an event on October 22nd, which is just over two weeks away. We really didn't feel we have the time to do this but we also don't want to turn it down and have someone else waltz in and get their paint stained feet in the door.


So we are going to do it starting Sunday and are scurrying around to get some projects done before we loose the three days.