From: matrix29@charter.net   
      
       Been interesting this Halloween.   
      
       Went to Niles Haunted House (still great after all these years) in   
   mid-October.  Spooky thrills still great, the kids from the school in Niles   
   and their parents and the volunteers do an excellent job keeping the crowds   
   moving and on the attractions.   
      
       Went to Splatmandu (paintball park in Three Rivers that does a haunted   
   woods once per year with volunteers to raise money for a good cause) and   
   performed as 3 characters -- a mad doctor I named "Doctor Healthscare", got   
   under the plastic tarp to play a lively dead person amongst dummy bodies,   
   and even got to be a "tortured patient" on the table with intestines made of   
   nylon stockings filled with oatmeal + chili sauce + red syrup = washing   
   laundry with cold water and lots of soap.  Whew, got there around 6 PM   
   because of slow food restaurant service and my idiocy of forgetting my   
   costume lab coat (Chad was a great soul and was willing to turn around and   
   grab it which would have killed my costume if I lacked it).  At any rate   
   that went on from 7 PM to 2 AM (the last couple of hours flew by, but it was   
   FRICKKEN COLD even with portable iron-oxide heat packs + my wearing thermal   
   undies with a layer of jeans + dress slacks over them for the costume with a   
   long sleeve thermal top + T-shirt + dress shirt + lab coat (replaced by a   
   sweater when I switched roles with Kristi).  Not too bad an experience being   
   on the other side of the scares, but I wished I could've done a walk-through   
   on the park and seen it all in its glory).  Chad was great a Grim Reaper   
   trail-chaperone and I wish he'd have gotten moved around a few times to keep   
   from getting bored.  Kristi swapped around in the roles too and played the   
   mad doctor role pretty well and a great under-the-tarp living corpse.   
      
       Still pretty whooped from the character's hollering role parts.   
       Thankfully I still have some precursor ATP energy drink mix for   
   bodybuilders left over and that got me going after all of my ATP depletion   
   while doing the scare roles the previous day.  I slept to 3 PM today.  Used   
   my old slow ILO MP3 player (damned thing won't read my new 4 GB SD memory   
   card, but it does read my 1 GB SD memory card so I used that) to play   
   Halloween music through an external speaker and stuck it in an inflatable   
   pumpkin-scarecrow.  Shuffle feature stinks on the ILO, looking for a new MP3   
   player with a low nonsense/breakability factor.   
      
       Set up my house per usual for Halloween and the weather, though cold (no   
   rain thank goodness), at around 45 °F and dropping to 38  °F at the end of   
   the Trick-or-Treating.  Got lots of kids coming by the house.  Probably   
   around 150 this year (missed a bunch of it doing set-up kind of late and   
   carving pumpkins).  My sister, her husband, my nephews, and my niece's   
   boyfriend and her child all came over and helped out on the candy dispensing   
   to the Trick-or-Treaters.  Oh well, not too bad for a rather chilly   
   Halloween and it was rather nice to have a saner City Council starting the   
   Halloween Trick-or-Treating from 6 PM to 8 PM.  Halloween is not nearly as   
   fun at 4 PM (though the lighting is better) until the streets go dark and   
   all of the decoration lights can be decently seen.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)