This weekend, I attended two masses. Saturday night was my scheduled service to lead the congregation in song. Went really well especially the closing song, “Let there be Peace on Earth.” I don’t know what it was but I felt a strange tingling and actually gave into the sensation and closed my eyes. Normally, I would consider this a HUGE faux pas IF others could see my face. Since the loft is behind the congregation, my momentary lapse was not that great of a deal. Maybe I had an angel on my shoulder.

The choir sang at mass this morning. Since this was unscheduled, I was informed that there was not going to be many members singing this morning so I said if I was up in time to be at 8.30am mass, I would be there. The group was actually singing a song that it had never done before but has always been a personal favorite, “Preciousl Lord, Take My Hand.” So, doesn’t happen regularly but I made the effort and went to church twice in one weekend. Happens occasionally especially when Christmas falls on an unusual day of the week (I have actually attended mass twice in one day). But it is good for me and if I didn’t want to I would not have. My mother attended mass every day when she attended Catholic school. The fact that my siblings and I never attended the same school has always puzzled me. Perhaps our proximity to the public school (right out our front door) had something to do with it.

I did get to catch a nap before I had to return to church for our chicken festival complete with bingo and dish washing (hooray). I won $1.50 after only 2 games (of bingo, not dish washing) at a quarter a pop. This was after only a few rounds had been called. Later, I heard the caller announcing $8.50 or $9.00 to the winner. My 12 year-old nephew was playing beside me. For his final game, Joshua laid down a dollar bill and played 4 cards at one time (not that it did him any good). Is bingo a huge Catholic thing nationwide or just around these parts? I remember that years ago, bingo was played on Monday nights in the church basement. No creamed chicken sandwiches for me… although they sold them at the concession stand under the bingo tent.

Let There Be Peace On Earth (Let It Begin With Me) By Jill Jackson, Sy Miller, arranged by John Brimhall. Single for voice, piano and guitar chords. C Major. 5 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing. (AP.5-BMP651) See more info…

Yes three of us ventured into a haunted maze again. Again we ventured in 3 times. Why do we do this? I’m not really sure. I will admit I did have a bit of fun.

As jamiahsh also wrote a blog about this, you can check his site for the links. I’ll just make a few observations from the evening.

It was great walking through actual mazes. Especially since you could get turned around and head back the way you came. With angry clowns and some creepy creatures who will chase you through the mazes, this make for an entertaining evening. At least for me. In these attractions, I will say that I don’t often get “scared”. I do get startled, and I do occasionally get grossed out. Some of the stuff just looks nasty. Once I get into the haunting, I really want to join the team that is doing the haunting. I’m always looking for where they can hide and where the best places to scare are. I think I would have added a couple to this attraction. There was a fairly long stretch of corn row walking that didn’t seem to have too many ghouls. Maybe this was a ‘breather’ area, or they just didn’t have enough actors to cover it. Not sure, but I thought it would be a good spot for some spooky noises, or just someone rustling the corn.

The one area that really gets to me on a very physical level is a walk through tube. My friends were very loud through this. Me, I almost shut myself in. To me, it is that unnerving. I imagine if I opened my mouth too often in that area, a visceral scream would emerge. I’m not sure exactly what about that gets to me, but it hits a very primal cord. On every trip through I arranged to be in the back of our little group. I lagged behind a bit, and actually walked through this section a bit slower than the rest. Even though this area was clawing at my core, I went as slow as possible. Each trip was a release of some tension. The relief felt when exiting was a soothing balm. I imagine the only thing that would get me more is if I had to crawl through the thing… That does remind me of one place where I did crawl through something very similar, only without the pressure from all sides. This place had multiple textures in a pitch black crawl through… That also got to me.

Now onto the room that disoriented everyone but me. I’m not sure why I could manage my way through. The visual clues, messed up by the strobes were interesting to me. Finding the proper path and keeping balance were like solving a puzzle. Once the solution was arrived at, I had no problems navigating the room. And it did not cause any disorientation. Finding the hiding spot or spots of the resident ghoul was also part of the problem. Avoiding him, and my companions was the bigger challenge. 😉 I did find another challenge to crafting one of these haunted attractions, the multitude of hidden doors needed by the actors to move in and out of the rooms at will. As an community theater volunteer, I can tell you the hanging of that many doors can be quite a feat.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, and I’ve been wondering why I don’t get frightened at these haunted houses. I know there was a time when I did get a little more frightened, as an adult, but that has been a few years. I think real life frightened me more than I can ever be frightened by an actor in a haunted house. I’ve worked late night shifts at a gas station, and worried about the guy robbing stations in the area. That was scary. I worried when my wife had a miscarriage, and didn’t come out for a very long time. Or when one of my daughters was in a car accident, or when my youngest was born 7-8 weeks early. These things are scary. Seeing death first hand is scary. A part of life, but a troubling part. Being the only parent to my daughters is scary. No one to bounce thoughts and ideas off of. No backup. That is scary. Haunted house, that is a walk in the park. Well except for that one area.

Thursdays are the busy work days at the store.  This is the day on which we get our weekly truck of grocery, frozen, meat, and dairy.  Unlike my former place of employment at which they get multiple trucks every day.  Anyway, last Thursday was an experience.  While the truck driver was trying to move his power electrical jack, he encountered a problem: it would not work.  THAT’S A PROBLEM!

As we were waiting, our manager came along and asked what the problem was.  In my infinite wisdom, I said… “He died.”  To which she replied, “Well, that is not the first time I’ve lost someone on my shift.”

Apparently while she was working at one of our sister stores, an older gentleman had been waiting in his car a little too long.  The man’s grandson entered the store and asked if they ever checked the parking lot.  In the car, the old man had died.  I’m not sure if he was waiting for his wife to shop or why he was sitting in the car.  I’m not one to check the parking lot unless it is for loose carts at the end of the day or to help customers out with their purchases.  I guess the poor guy had been in the car for like three hours before he was found.  There was at least one other unfortunate demise at the store; however, it did not happen on Di’s shift.

The closest thing I can recall happening in my years is a young lady who decided to rush her way through cleaning the meat grinder.  Once again, this did not happen during my shift.  But I can tell you that it occurred in December a few years back.  I was on my way home from holiday shopping and saw the ambulance at the store.  Still a topic of conversation once in a while.  Or going down into the basement.  NOW THAT WOULD MAKE A GREAT ADDITION TO A HAUNTED HOUSE!!!  Just wear your boots.

Once again, a group of close friends gathered together tonight to venture to another haunt. This time it was the Leader Family Farm outside Napoleon. Earlier, we traveled to Sandusky’s Ghostly Manor (which is nationally recognized and year-long). The Leader Farm is locally owned and run seasonally. In fact, this was the opening weekend for the attraction. Although many of the workers commented that they were not at 100% (a few bugs to work out), this was sooooo much more entertaining. The area was actually more of a complex, there was a play area for the smaller children; a LARGE corn maze to walk through, and ScreamAcres Haunted Corn Field. C, justj, and I were the only three who dared to take on the ghouls.

What I enjoyed most about the experience was that most of the frights were done by actual people, not too many big scary, animated devices to jump out and startle. Some of my favorite scenes were a tunnel room which was immediately followed by another equally disorienting room (to two of us, anyway). There were plenty of other nifty frights throughout and it lasted over a half-hour as opposed to the 15 minutes spent in Ghostly Manor.

The three of us went through the gallery of terror three times. Once again, it was really fun to see the actors attempt to do different things as we made our way through each time. Especially during our final crusade, when two of us became slap happy with either fatigue, euphoria, or something that was placed in the tall stalks of corn. Before we left the complex, we were given four passes to visit again later in the season when they had more people visiting and they became more accustomed to the atmosphere. I hope to once again visit before the season ends if it only gets better.

I think it would be fun to go through the corn maze. Our other companions attempted to do just that but did not seem that they enjoyed themselves quite as much as the three of us self-appointed “professional haunted house aficionados.” If there is such a job, SIGN ME UP!!! Or just get me into one as an actor. That would be so cool. Aren’t friends the greatest?

Everywhere we go, I get the comment, “You must have your hands full.”  Since I usually only have my younger two with me while the older two are in school, people have no idea how right they are!  Here are some recent pictures of my angels – they grow so fast and this is for relatives and people who haven’t seen them in awhile:

Christopher is a Cubs fan, of course!

Good thing I checked on Christopher during his “tummy time” – this is what I found and he wasn’t even making a peep!

Disney loves her Homer doll even though she calls him “SpongeBob”

Here are all 4 of them together: Disney is almost 2, Sammie is 4, Taylor is 8, and Christopher is 2½ months

Christopher doesn’t have the hang of holding his own bottle yet

Everyone says Sammie and Disney look like twins, years apart.  Sammie really wanted us to take this picture
of them holding her Samantha sign – no one had the heart to tell her it was backwards

My daughter Disney is not yet 2 and has already entered the question phase – a time of life when a child asks questions about anything and everything.  It seems a little early for this; I don’t seem to remember her two older sisters entering the question phase until about 3½ or 4 years old.  Heck, at Disney’s age Samantha was busy painting with poop!

But as we know, all kids are different (thank goodness for that because we already have a Sammie), and so we welcome Disney’s transition into the question phase.  Since it’s just beginning, she doesn’t yet ask questions about how things work, but rather about where her favorite people are.  It’s really cute since she gets this little inquisitive look on her face and because she’s not even 2 yet, her questions aren’t very well formed.  We know what she means though, and try to answer the best we can.  Some of her favorite questions are:  “What Daddy doin’?”  “Where Taywer (translation: big sister Taylor) go?”  “What Sammie doin’?”

I guess most of her questions do revolve around the whereabouts of her loved ones…  an example of her super-sweet nature.  Disney truly cares about other people and she is such a sweet little girl – always saying please and thank you even when it’s not expected of her.  So this isn’t a full example of the questions phase – that title will be reserved for the sometimes difficult-to-answer questions that revolve around “why”?  Like…  Why is the sky blue?  Why does Sammie get more candy than I do?  Why can’t we have a kitty?  Why do I have to go to school?  Why is Mommy’s hair turning gray?

Disney’s inquisitive face:

Wait- that’s not quite how the saying goes of two boys comparing sizes, is it?  Well, in second grade apparently that is quite the appropriate comparison for comparing the lengths of their pencils.  Literally speaking of course- how can you even think…! 😮  Oh, never mind.  Anyway, the lower grades can prove to be quite interesting as the way a small child thinks is so alien to adults.  In the case I mentioned, two boys were in competition to see who could use the shortest stub of a pencil.  The clear winner was the one who sharpened his pencil so much only the metal eraser band was left with only a small point at the other end.  The next day, there was a boy who would break the point on his pencil on purpose and just use the broken tip.  I guess that actually beats the stub from the day before.  Including last Wednesday, I kind of just worked my way down the hall from one second grade room to the next.  Each room had its own challenges and own interesting characters.

Umm, ‘scuse me a minute while a close my window.  A skunk just walked by…  There.  Whew.  Where was I?  Oh- characters.  The latest room had a boy who liked to fight and apparently did so at recess time yesterday.  He was supposed to spend lunch with the principal today, but he didn’t show up.  Did his mom keep him home?  There was also the hearing-impaired girl who required me to wear a microphone.  I had to try to remember to take it off when I wasn’t talking to the whole class or to her.  For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to stuff it in my shirt pocket when not in use.  Bad idea of course.  Instead of getting me talking to others, she got the scratching of the microphone against the material of my shirt.  She never told me.  Only during the afternoon today did she tell her one-on-one assistant who told me.  Apparently Pokemon is still in fashion, as one boy showed me his small book of cards he would take with him to lunch.  And you already read about the pencil boys.

Of course as is normal for primary grades, there was the ever-present “this is how we do things and so you’d better get it exactly right.”  Okay, it wasn’t that bad but small children really aren’t as flexible as older ones when it comes to routine.  speaking of routine, it was nice how the teachers worked together and had their classes doing a lot of the same things.  Some of the stuff I got to teach more than one class, making it easier for the second since I already knew what I was doing.  All-in-all, it really wasn’t that bad working the five days with second grade.  Experience normally has me dreading multiple primary days as so much extra focus is required compared to the older ones, but this wasn’t bad at all, perhaps because the teachers were still there (doing testing) and checked in from time to time taking some of the pressure off.  I don’t know.  Tomorrow will be a little different in any event.  I have two half-days for music, but I might drop the afternoon because there’s a job fair going on at that time that I should attend.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the “does this look like the face of a guilty person” look of innocence one of the boys gave me when I asked him to change his card (behavior system).  It reminded me of when a sixth-grader tried this a couple of years ago with another teacher.  It failed then too- the teacher just said (a little sarcastically), “aww- how cute”  then gave him his punishment anyway.

I received an email today and thought it was one in an endless stream of useless waste of time pieces of junk. Even reading it I was hesitant, but after following the link and following the instructions, I found it to be very accurate although I do have to question one of the qualities it listed:

• “Fruity and adventurous” the adventurous DEFINITELY; however, fruity? I don’t think so.

Which brings me to the big topic of the day. Who cares who sleeps with whom? I think there are much more important issues in the world than the fact that Clay Aiken came out of the closet. I was TRYING to watch the new Knight Rider (which is one of the best NEW offerings this season… which usually means it will be gone within a month) last night and I swear I heard the news at least 5 times in one hour. Live and let live.

Ok… back to the topic at hand. Follow the link, follow the directions and see if you find yourself:

Http://DNA.imagini.net/friends

I saw the movie Lakeview Terrace yesterday, and I decided to merge it with the title of another movie, Fireproof, for my post title because Fireproof almost stole the show.

An action thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson, Lakeview Terrace is about a tough Los Angeles cop who does not like his new neighbors, seemingly because they are an interracial couple.  He makes indirect threats, among other things, and the couple has trouble at first determining whether or not they’re making something of nothing.  As the tension escalates however, it soon becomes clear that their neighbor is in fact mentally unstable, and as he comes closer and closer to cracking, the couple has no one to call for help because of the camaraderie between police officers known as the “blue wall of silence”.  The movie was entertaining to watch; it wasn’t as good as I had hoped but just as good as I expected – one of those movies where they showed most of the good parts in the previews.  It was very predictable yet also very good at establishing mood throughout.  For instance, at times, the tension that was built in the movie – and the theater – was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.  They did a nice job of setting the mood of the neighborhood also; a nice homey-like cul-de-sac, complete with barking dog nestled in the California hills gave it both a nice family feeling and also played up the isolation factor.  I thought Samuel L. Jackson was really good in this movie – the way he delivered some of his lines was effective in subtly portraying his disdain for his neighbors.  And the reason for his racial prejudices was surprising and an interesting addition to the plot.  The movie did put the spotlight on many racial issues in a thought-provoking manner.

Overall, a very entertaining movie, even though some of the events that I think were meant to surprise the audience did not because the movie was predictable.  The other criticisms I have with it are that none of the characters were likable – it was difficult to root for the couple who was being picked on by Jackson because they each had some serious character flaws.  Also, it was not believable that an LA cop would have enough money to be able to afford the house where he resided – nestled in the hills outside of Los Angeles, the houses featured in the movie had spectactular views, gorgeous landscaping, and the neighbors had a beautiful in-ground pool.  How the neighbor could afford what would probably be a multi-million dollar house as his “starter home” on a grocery store management position’s salary, I do not know.  Hey, Jamiahsh, when you get your house in the hills of LA with your in-ground pool and luxury patio furniture, can we visit?

Another thing I found strange about Lakeview Terrace was the impending wildfire that threatened the neighborhood – I didn’t see the point in it.  Maybe to further illustrate the isolation the couple felt as their neighbor tormented them?  I don’t know, but it fits in well with the title of my post because of another movie that’s coming out called Fireproof.  As we bought our tickets, the worker at the movie theater asked if we had heard of Fireproof and gave us a flier.  We hadn’t heard a word about it, and she said that some church bought up all the vouchers they were selling for the movie.  They weren’t going to get the movie if they didn’t sell enough vouchers, but apparently they sold well over what they expected.  I was intrigued because I hadn’t heard of the movie before and wondered why it was getting so much underground buzz.  Since we got home late last night and went right to bed, before I had a chance to look it up it was talked about on the Dr. Phil show this morning.  Apparently it stars Kirk Cameron, and it’s about a firefighter who tries to save his marriage by doing a 40-day experiment called “The Love Dare”.  Hmmm, I still don’t really get it, but I think it’s neat that it’s getting so much buzz without being a mainstream movie and showing previews and all that jazz.  It’s supposed to be a really good movie, thought provoking and well-written, and that isn’t just coming from Kirk Cameron – it’s on imdb.com.  Hopefully it will be at the theater for longer than its limited run so I can check it out.  A bit of interesting trivia I found out about it – Kirk Cameron made a promise to Chelsea Noble, his wife of 17 years that he wouldn’t ever kiss another woman, on screen or off.  So in the part of the movie where they needed a shot of him kissing his movie wife, his real wife was a stand-in so they could get the shot of the husband and wife kissing.  I think it’s sweet, but some people used it as a reason to pick on Cameron saying he doesn’t understand acting…  Oh, well, you can’t please everyone!

Last night I was a bit exhausted from work, short nights of sleep, choir on the weekend, small group… Well, you get the picture.  So it is understandable that when I read a news item about some new Vista Ultimate extras and I went to Windows update to get them and saw SP1 asking to be installed instead, I decided why not?

Well, as it turns out, the answer to that question is the reason it showed up for me so many months after its release.  I forgot that I rejected it a while back due to problems I read about.  What problems you ask?  Failed installations for starters.  No problem, right?  I can always restore if there’s a problem. Why not just forget for the moment this is the infamous Microsoft we’re discussing?  Yeah, sure, I did. 🙁

I didn’t remember I rejected it, and I didn’t remember the installation issues.  So as I said I started the installation, which by the way said could take over an hour and did even on this fast machine of mine.  I should say unsuccessful installation.  It seemed like it worked, but then it rebooted, disk activity for a while, then… blue screen of death.  Great…  Okay, rebooted to try again, same results.  Starting to feel the dread coming on I chose to repair next time and it asked me if I wanted to restore.  Sigh.  All that time wasted.  I clicked yes and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Eventually, I looked at the hard drive activity light and no activity.  What?  I unsuccessfully tried a few other things and eventually wound up at the restore application itself (the other was the repair app) and noticed all the points I could choose from.  All one of them that is.  The SP1 installation created a point and decided, hey why not delete the old restore points?  Gee, thanks Microsoft.  Well, I tried the one restore point and started the process.  Things were looking good until it got to the end where it was “finalizing the restore.” At this point (no pun intended) all hard drive activity stopped and the finalizing animation kept going, and going… Clearly, this was the point where the repair program failed.

I looked online on the other computer and found out that this was a common problem, and there were few solutions.  I wound up downloading a Vista recovery CD and a Ubuntu (Linux) CD in case I had to restore the entire system.  With that, I could hopefully move critical files to the D: drive before reformattiong.  You may have noticed in the headline I wrote near disaster.  As it turned out, I didn’t need the Linux CD because the Vista recovery CD worked.  Not that I expected it to after I saw it just had the same tools as on my HD that I already tried.  I tried the repair, and it actually found a problem.  Maybe.  It said the boot record was corrupt and repaired it.  Reboot.  Nope.  Now it seemed worse.  Wonderful.  I booted the CD again and tried the restore program just for kicks.  Well, surprise surprise- no, really- it actually finished the restore!  By now the computer had my full attention as I watched it reboot, start loading, get past the problem point, get to the GUI, and… LOGIN SCREEN!  YES!!

Lesson learned- no service packs on this computer, a big thanks but no thanks.  Security updates, but no big service packs.  And I think my next software purchase will be a good backup program that is hopefully mostly painless unlike the basic one included with the OS.  Ghost maybe?  During yesteryear it was supposed to be a good program.  Now…?

Well, back to the regular posts next time.