Happy Halloween!!!

 

 

Ah, I simply love Halloween. Why? Because I get to act like a little kid, dress up, and be goofy, just like the rest of the world, all without being judged. Such fun. I always said I am always going to be a Toys ‘R Us kid forever LOL.

 

For those of you who do not understand this holiday, let me explain it a bit better. Halloween is also called All Hallows’ Eve, and was the original New Year which used to be November 1, aka All Saints’ Day, each year. From what I understand, it had to deal with a holiday known as Samhain that the ancient people of the British Isles, the Celts, participated in. They believed that on October 31st each year, that the boundaries between the two worlds of the dead and the living became thin or blurred, allowing ghosts and shadow people to cross back over into our world to damage crops and cause great sicknesses. They also believed that faeries and other such creatures could play horrible tricks on them this day of the year.

The idea of dressing up in costumes began in this yearly festival in order to try and trick the “evil spirits” into thinking the living were actually one of “their own.” It was a way the ancients sought to appease those evil entities. Jack-O-Lanterns were carved in the image of the human face to scare off these superstitions, but were originally carved from turnips and rutabagas, not pumpkins.

To me, Halloween means great fun for kids, lots of bobbing for apples, or at least eating caramel or candied apples, fun costume parties, lots of carved pumpkins, ghosts, goblins, witches, and skeletons for decorations. It is also a time of fun haunted houses, scary, nighttime hay rides, and rediculously, crazy-long mazes, sometimes made of corn. It also means LOTS and LOTS of fun horror movies. My favorite genre of movie is horror, so that is a MAJOR plus of the holiday. All sorts of fun movies, films, and tv shows on during the month of October.

I have especially grown fond of watching the tv shows Most Haunted Live (http://www.travelchannel.com/) and Ghost Hunters Live (http://www.scifi.com/ghosthunters/live/) during October, and it never fails, one of them will be live Halloween night. That’s at least 6 hours of live, scary content on television plus being able to watch the cameras online LIVE. Sometimes you catch stuff on them, and sometimes you don’t. And yes, I do believe in ghosts and spirits, I have seen them for as long as I can remember. I do not know if this is due to my Native American heritage, due to nearly dying as a baby from double pneumonia, or a combination of both. It doesn’t matter, once a believer, there is no going back.

 

 

(above image courtesy of Most Haunted Live, at www.travelchannel.com)

For those of you taking your kids trick-or-treating or heading out to your own costumer parties, please have a fun, but safe time! I will be home, watching Ghost Hunters Live this year, especially since I am having an eye enhancement laser procedure on my right eye earlier that afternoon. My little brother’s reaction was, “You are letting someone operate on you on HALLOWEEN?!?!” I am like, dude, it’s LASIK enhancment on one of my eyes.. which means, when I have to wear those funny looking aviator, bug-eyed eye goggles, I’ll fit right in with the rest of the USA that day!

 

 

    Trick or Treat

Okay, well, I have obviously been big time MIA.

So here are the excuses part… Sorry folks, I just got busy and got sick for a bit. Work has been a big stress inducer. I understand why we give flu shots in the pharmacy, but I do not know why people don’t read all of the pages or at least skim them when you give them paperwork. Do they do that at the doctor’s office? .. just ignore the parts that say “patient to fill in here.” *sigh* Also, I have been working a little overtime here and there when I can get it. It doesn’t come around often, so when it is offered, I run with it. Then, for the past two weeks, I have had a severe sinus infection. It hit me on a Saturday morning, and by Monday, I just felt plain crummy, and went to the doctor. Well, it seems, it affected my ears more so than I originally thought. Saturday night and into most of Sunday, I came down with my first ever case of vertigo. If you have never had that.. don’t wish it on your worst enemy. I even had to call into work, which I try to almost never ever do.. I felt like I was on a merry-go-round headed left that would simply not stop. I had to lay down, or it was “toss the cookies” time. Perhaps that is TMI, but it is simply how my last 2 weeks have gone. Plus, a co-worker at work had surgery today, so my mind has simply had a sign up that said “Sensory Overload, others need not apply at this time…”

As for being sick, I mentioned on a friend’s blog that I have dealt with the customers from hell these past couple of weeks. I lost my voice most of last week… and even had a customer ask me if I WAS CONTAGIOUS! That being said, he’d dropped off his prescription to me in the first place, and sat in the waiting area for the approximate 20 minutes it took for us to get it filled, etc., rubbing elbows with several coughing, sneezing, hacking-up-their-lungs people… and he was worried about me contaminating him? I wasn’t running a fever and I use hand sanitizer constantly. I am notoriously known for sneezing inside my work coat or inside my shirt simply to keep FROM spreading germs. Some people can just be plain moronic idiots. I should have asked him to fill out the I D 10-T form.. for those of you who may not get the joke.. just smoosh it together.. ID10T and you see what you get. Now onto better things…

So I was thinking, what can I write a post about..and I thought HEY, what about music…? I listen to a little bit of everything, but am not particularly found of new country or hard rap. That being said, I don’t fit the look of my favorite band’s genre.. heavy metal. I don’t wear all black, gothic style clothing (not since occassionally in high school), I don’t have tattoos or any other body piercings except my ears, although there was a time when.. never mind LOL. Yes, my favorite band is.. drum roll please…. Metallica! That being said though, my favorite all time song is “Take My Breath Away” by BERLIN.. not Jessica Simpson. She just plain ruined it with her version.. she should stick to making Dukes of Hazzard movies, and leave the real singing to those who can carry a tune. I can say that because I couldn’t carry a tune to save my life if the truth be told. Other favorite bands include Stone Temple Pilots, Aerosmith, Celine Dion, Beyonce, Shakira, Enrique Iglesias, Garth Brooks, George Strait, Louis Armstrong, Nelly, plus many others.. As you can see, it’s pretty well diverse.

Part of the diversity would be due to my trumpet playing abilities. I started playing the trumpet my 5th grade year of school and played in school continuously through my second year of college. I even wanted to minor in music until a car accident ruined that for me. To make a long story short, I tore a tendon in my bicep in a car accident that some teenage guys caused when they failed to yield. It was either hit them, or another car head-on on rain-slicked roads. I simply cannot play my trumpet now for long periods of time, but I do play for the enjoyment of it these days. Some of my favorites to play are classical music and holiday music. There is just something about holiday music that pulls me in. I also love watching marching band competitions, and would love to be in a drum and bugle core, but I simply do not think my tendon would hold up to those rigors anymore. I even know how to do the work for flagcore, although I was never in it, but had a best friend that was, so I positively know my arm will not hold up for that. I had to go through extensive physical therapy for a couple of years, getting my nerves desensitized as they called it, and now get nicknamed the weather woman at work. My arm is a great weather predictor.. if it hurts, rain is almost 100% guaranteed. If my ankle hurts though (unrelated injury on campus), the weather is simply going to switch between hot and cold fronts. It does make our life amusing at work, to see just how accurate my aches can be.

Back to music, what are some of your favorite bands, songs or genres? I love the website projectplaylist.com. I can listen to songs all day long from all sorts of choices. Also, I am into very soothing, folk music at times too. I love listening to Native American folk music and Celtic music besides classical pieces. When I cannot sleep, I simply turn these on, and they melt away my tension so that I fall asleep before I know it… which is where I am headed at the moment…

) g’nite