Ok, so I am behind on posting for the New Year, like it’s surprising. To be honest, my New Years wasn’t all that memorable. In fact most of the last week wasn’t that great at all due to my being sick. One of the days prior to the 1st, (I am not sure which one as they are all a blur now) I didn’t even make it off the couch. Have you ever had one of those days? I felt sapped of all energy, was having trouble breathing due to congestion, had a sore throat, etc.. This, of course, made Amy overjoyed as she then gets to take care of me all day. It did give us a great excuse to pop in the extended versions of Lord of the Rings to sit and watch. Lets face it, we weren’t going anywhere for a while.

New Years Eve was spent driving up to the airport to pick up Andrew as he got back from his moms at 10pm that night. This left us just enough time to come back home and open a bottle of Champaign and watch the NY ball drop. This made for a really lazy Sunday as well. What a great start to the new year eh? The only really interesting thing that came from Sunday was that Amy decided to try and play WoW. She created an Undead priest and, so far, is having a good time with it.

Monday was an entirely different story. First stop was the comic store. It had been just over a week so I needed to catch up on the latest titles. As an added bonus I picked up 1602 to read (haven’t gotten to it yet). After that it was off to Potomac Mills mall to shop at IKEA! Andrew needed a new desk and shelves and I wanted to finally pick out a bed frame. I am sick of just the mattresses and such without the headboard and frame. I guess that the bachelor lifestyle is grating on me. I need real furniture! Goodbye wagon wheel coffee table! So long Cinderblock shelves!! Indeed, Ikea is the place to find everything! And I really mean that. We filled the truck! New nightstands, Dressers, etc.. Needless to say, the rest of Monday was spent assembling! The rest of the week will probably get covered in the next post, unless I forget!

You know, I always wanted to use that as a title. This would have to be the first chance I have really had to make use of it though. I know I haven’t updated in a while. Really, I have a good excuse for it! I have been super busy. I mean, normal people get busy, and super folks get really busy, but I have been SUPER busy! All of the pre Christmas stuff had me overwhelmed for a while, but that was expected. Christmas was probably the most relaxing part of this whole time, but who wants to blog or read blogs on Christmas! There is actually quite a bit to update so I will try and keep it chronological.

To continue on the “13 year olds have no brains” train, I have quite the doozy of s story that happened the other weekend. This happened one simple Friday evening. I was driving home like normal, except for the newly acquired Best Buy gift card that was burning a hole in my pocket. I had planned to come home and pick up Andrew and go shopping, that’s when I get to about 3 minutes from the apartment and I get a phone call from Andrew.

“Hello?”

“Hi Dad, can my friend come over for a bit?”

“I’m almost home, can this wait for a few min?”

“I was just wondering if he could come over for a bit.”

(kind of flustered now as I am dealing with traffic too) “Umm sure why not.”

So, no biggie, I can take both of them to best buy and we can still have fun. I get home and start taking off my jacket when there is a knock at the door. Eric, Andrews’s friend, is there with two big bags in his hands.

“So, Eric, how long you staying with us?” (said sarcastically)

“Umm just till morning” (not said sarcastically)

“Pardon?”

“Is that ok?”

“Yeah, yeah , ummm That’s fine. Andrew can I see you for a minute?”

Yeah so, that was an interesting evening. Andrew claims that he didn’t know it was an overnight stay, I have my doubts but I will give him the benefit. We still went to best buy and I was inches away from buying an XM MyFi. We all played some games until late and got up Saturday and had some breakfast. That’s when the next big event happened.

Amy got into an accident. Don’t worry, it was nothing bad. She is ok. She had borrowed my truck to go to a Dr’s appointment sat. morning and was on her way back. She rolled through an intersection and was bumped by an SUV making a left hand turn into her lane. The driver of the SUV claims that Amy ran a red light and she says the guy ran the light. The cop on the scene didn’t cite anyone and there is a big fat ZERO damage to my truck. I was quite surprised really.

The SUV hit the left hand rear fender of my truck and I think it just brushed some grime of his vehicle because the few scratches that are there seem to wipe off. We have been dealing with the Insurance companies now and it looks like everything will turn out fine. What a pain in the but though. The guy was very obviously making an illegal left hand turn so no doubt he wanted to throw blame on Amy. She, of course, has been freaked out and scared to drive. We are taking care of that though.

Christmas it self wasn’t bad at all. Andrew and I finally got some time to get out and buy presents. We really did a whirlwind trip through the mall. Since Andrew was leaving on Saturday morning to go visit his mom for Christmas, we decided to have his official Christmas with dad on Friday evening. He made the decision for us to open up most of our stuff as well because he wanted to see our reactions to stuff. So we really had our big Christmas that night. Of course, Andrew made out like a bandit. He scored some more memory for his computer, some more magic cards, T-shirts, toys, etc etc etc. Amy got me a really cool fountain that does the cool mist effect. It has light and everything. The coolest thing about it is that it has a remote!

Lastly and most importantly is Amy’s Christmas present. Andrew and I had bets on whether or not she would cry when it was opened. I knew she would. She is still glowing. Amy and I have been dating for almost 2 full years now, so I bought her a promise ring. It wasn’t the easiest thing to find either. I wanted to get her a Claddagh ring. Mostly because I really like the style of ring, and it’s her favorite style as well. Also because one of Amy’s favorite shows is Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and in the show, Angel (Buffy’s love interest) gives Buffy a Claddagh ring.

She cried.

The next morning we took Andrew to the airport and went about a few errands that we needed to do. That night was Christmas eve and we sat down to watch a few holiday favorites on TV. We watched Elf, Amy had never seen it, and I had wanted to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.” This would be when I learned the unspeakable (but I will speak it anyways)

Amy had never seen “It’s a Wonderful Life”

How do you go through life and never see one of the most widely publicized Christmas movies of all time? From here it gets only worse. It’s 11pm on Christmas eve and the last showing of the movie was an hour ago. THE LAST SHOWING!!!! It won’t be playing at all on Christmas day!! HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE!! I had a new quest. I needed to find this movie so that Amy could watch it! From my old Video store days I remembered that Blockbuster is open 365 days a year so we headed out to see if we could find it. NOOOOOOO They closed early!! Wait, CVS is open, maybe they will have it. NOOOOOO they have all the crapy new cartoon movies, but no classics! I hung my head and we drove home with only the XM Christmas channel to comfort us.

Christmas day was the ultimate lazy day. I don’t even think we made it out of our PJ’s. Around mid-day I started making a special Christmas dinner for Amy. We had smoked ham, stuffing, garlic smashed potatoes, green beans, and for desert apple cheesecake. Believe it or not, it came out really well. I made way too much and we have lots left over still. In the evening we snuggled on the couch and watched a few other movies. It was a very good Christmas. Here’s hoping that yours was good as well.

That’s right, less than a week away! What did you get for your friends and family? What do you think you will be getting? I know that I have made it a pain for people to buy me gifts. My problem is that, if I want something, I usually just go out and buy it. The things I pine over and wish for are things that I really don’t need or I can’t afford. And if I can’t afford it, I really don’t expect someone else to go buy it! So I did manage to get all of my shopping done. Unless, of course I forgot something for someone. So here goes a little sample of what I got:

Amy:
IWVo njuBNKI UG;lkn;
JKb uwsn;o aciUB UBlkl
L KJ Biuw cdbL JIHU GY F;nh

Andrew:
kjBA**nbnbIh
Jnb;loms *YT7golnhd

Of course you will need the special Wizzer Decoder ring to read that list. You can order yours today and I am sure it will be in before Christmas (of 2006).

One thing I can let on is that today is Amy’s birthday! A year or so ago she mentioned to me that she had never worked in a place where she could actually receive a gift delivered to her office. I filed away that bit of info and saved it for a day like today. For her birthday I had a bouquet of flowers delivered to her work. On top of this, Andrew and I are taking her out to eat tonight at the Texas Roadhouse (can you say revenge?) Will post some more later this week.

This last weekend we had an interesting little incident. Saturday we spent the day out in the DC area. On the way home we stopped by the comic shop (of course) and while there, I asked Andrew if he wanted to go to the game shop. He likes to go there and play Magic cards with his friends. This gave Amy and I time to just sit and relax for a while, and Andrew got to have fun with all of his new cards. When it came time to go pick him up, Amy and I both went.

I am not sure you have ever been to your standard game store. There aren’t many girls there. I don’t want to knock the stores or the clientele of course, but it’s true. It’s like going to a Victoria’s Secret and seeing a ton of guys. So, Amy and I walk in, and at first everything is normal. Andrew is still playing his game so I walk over to see how he is doing. Amy starts talking casually with the lady running the store. After about 10 min of me sitting and watching Andrews’s game, I glance back and see your standard geeky gamer in a vampire shirt and dirty black trench coat standing by the counter where Amy and the Shop lady are. He is laughing along in the right spots of the conversation and glancing at Amy now and then. I sit and watch them for a while before I intervene. I walk over and nicely put my arm around her and say “he’s almost done, just finishing up a game” then kiss her on the cheek and walk back to the table.

Within 1 min, gamer dude vanishes. After we left the store I let Amy know what happened. I don’t think I ever realized how bad game stores wee until I look at them from the outside. I have to wonder if I had ever got as bad as some of those people. I like to think that I never did. Isn’t it possible to recognize that gaming is just a hobby and not an obsession? Sometimes I wonder about some of the people there. I know I have hobbies. I know that they might be considered “Un-orthodox”. But I don’t obsess to the point of missing payments or time with loved ones or god forbid hygiene. I would say that some of it is just a phase that kids go through, except that I see guys there that are my age and older doing the same thing. Again, don’t get me wrong, I loved gaming, and still do, but I just don’t see getting to the point that some of these people get to.

Ok, the surprise is here!! One of the new costumes I have been working on got delivered! I had some of the pieces of it a while back but I actually got the full costume piece recently. I think I am really going to have to work out more now. I knew going into this project that it would be spandex and spandex is very un-forgiving. I guess with my Spiderman costume it was all black and with the full mask it offered some anonymity. While I have a mask with my GL costume, you can still pretty much tell it’s me. Given that the convention isn’t until February, I think I have a good amount of time to tone up a little and trim down on the ol’ gut. I also plan to add a little to this costume. I don’t want to pull of being “Hal Jordan” or any other known Green Lantern. Since the new comic series goes over how there are now 7200 GL’s in the universe, I plan on being just a random one. This allows me to modify the suit a little. I was thinking of maybe adding a vest/jacket, boots, maybe even a belt.

Apparently my Green Lantern has already sky-rocketed to internet fame. A few weeks ago I posted a picture of the mask and ring on my buzznet site. Last time I checked, there were a large number of track back links to the pictures. One of them I followed and it led me to this site. According to this guy I am some sort of Mr. X. Who Knew? The guys at work are getting a big kick out of the pictures as well. I guess that’s what I get for living my life like an open book. The thing that gets them the most is that it really doesn’t bother me. I like my hobbies and what I do. Who knows what the pictures from the convention will do eh? So anyways, here is the latest costume The Green Lantern.

Well, Thanksgiving went great! Andrew and I had a great trip down to TN to visit with Lee and his family. There are also a large number of things going on that I realize that I haven’t filled anyone in yet. Also, I am sorry I haven’t gotten around to posting much, I have been pretty busy with all of these things. Now that the torrent of stuff is starting to die down I may have a little more time.

One main thing that happened recently is that I have gotten glasses. I have joined the ranks of those who have issues seeing crap when it’s not right in front of his freaking face. Amy finally talked me in to going to get my eyes checked and the Dr. gave me a halfway decent prescription. I don’t know exactly what the eyesight is (I.E. 20/20) but I have problems with distances. I have now had my glasses for about 2 weeks and I have really gotten used to them. Sadly I don’t think I have any pictures of me in them just yet so you will just have to check back and see if I post some. I really like them though and they are very stylish. When I first got them I sat there for like 5 min putting them on and taking them off. I was astonished to learn that I had bad eyes! (Funny, I thought the stuff far away was supposed to be blurry!)

One of the Thanksgiving events that I hadn’t reported on was that Amy got to go home to TX for her Thanksgiving! She spent the whole time there with her Dad and her kids. From what I have heard (and seen on video) they are doing wonderfully well. The main reason I didn’t say anything is that it was a surprise to some of those people back in TX and I didn’t want to ruin it.

My trip, however, I can give much more details about. Wednesday morning was a rough start for us. We woke up at 3am (ugh) so that we could get Amy to the airport on time for her flight. We really did try and get to sleep early on Tuesday but you all know how that works. We dropped her off and started out on our Father Son road trip. This trip took us down I66 to I81 to I40 to I440 to I65 then to Lee’s place. Most of it was I81 and I40 as they are a straight shot to Nashville. The excited start to the driving petered out around 8:30am as I started getting sleepy. So sleepy in fact that I made the intelligent decision to pull over and take a 30 min nap. It’s amazing how much that will help you on a trip. We finally arrived at around 4:30pm Nashville time. Thankfully we have XM in the truck for those long drives. It’s nice not having to channel surf through areas.

Thanksgiving Day was interesting to say the least. We started the day with a nice cup of Chai and went about helping Missy with thanksgiving dinner preparations. Andrew and Damon got to play games a lot over the few days. We had a lovely early dinner with Lee’s parents and after diner many of Lee’s extended family came by for desert. It was kind of awkward for me because I really didn’t know many of them at all. I let Andrew hide upstairs. I did my best to fit in and follow along in conversations. To round out the evening we sat and watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow on Lee’s giant 50 inch TV.

Friday we had quite a number of plans. We started out with lunch (yes, lunch) at Sonic. This was ½ because Andrew had never had Sonic before and ½ because Amy always wants sonic. Problem was, if you remember, Amy wasn’t with us. So to involve her we took many cell phone pictures and sent them to her so that she can enjoy Sonic as much as we did. (Yeah, she wasn’t that amused). After we finished off our Coney Specials, we headed to the theater to catch Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire. Overall it was a good movie, but very very very long. I think the movie started at 3pm and we got out at 5:45pm. Next stop was a little pub named McCreary’s in old town Franklin. We took the whole clan with us so they could get the chance to eat, but the overall feeling from them was that they wanted to go home. Missy was nice enough to take them back (with their fish and chips) so Lee and I could stay and have a few Ciders. They had what had to be double pint glasses of Woodchuck Cider on tap. It was glorious! We each had 2 and finished off Missy’s. Needless to say we were feeling quite happy. The sad part came when we decided to go home and drink some more while playing a little bit of WoW. Thankfully Saturday was a light day.

When I finally dragged myself from my bed and poured about a gallon of water into my stomach, I started feeling somewhat normal again. We took this opportunity to venture out to the local comic book shop. I have been searching for some past issues of stuff and thought a whole new state might have some of it. No big luck. We also did our gift exchange for Christmas. Lee was nice enough to go through all of his old Magic the Gathering cards and give some of them to Andrew. We rounded the evening out with lee and I going to TGI Fridays for dinner.

Sunday meant back on the road again. We started out at 6am this time and the trip sucked! We were on the road for a full 13 and ½ hours. We managed to stop a few times to stretch and rest and eat. The most memorable one was a small Antique store. They had an interesting stock of stuff. Most of it was Nascar, but I figured that was because of where we were. The last part of the trip was filled with the sound of yester-year as we found the Old Time Radio station on XM was playing The Adventures of Superman! This had to be from the 40s to 50s time frame. It was fun to listen to how dramatic the actors get. We got home and around 7:45pm and were thankful for it! Amy met us at the door with lots of hugs and I think I fell asleep early because I was wiped out.

There is one other surprise coming, but that will have to wait for the next post.

Ok, so apparently I haven’t been updating as much as I really should. Mostly that’s because of all the stuff I have going on. Ok, well, that’s not all that true either. I just haven’t gotten around to posting. The sad thing is, it’s not going to get better right now. The holidays are coming and there is a lot to do! Lets get you all caught up before that though.

Last Wednesday Amy and I decided to have a hooky day. We haven’t had all that much time with just her and I. She has her classes after work and I have been taking care of Andrew (and probably gaming a bit much). So we scheduled to have Wednesday off and just enjoyed the day. That is, until we realized that we had a bunch of errands to run. Isn’t that always the case? Amy had some paperwork to fill out and an eye appointment. I had some things I had to pick up at the store. So we did a lot of running around, but we did it together! Doesn’t that count? We did manage to get over to the comic store and pick up the latest batch of addiction. Amy is really hooked on Birds of Prey and Super-girl. Meanwhile, I have been getting more and more into my Green Lantern. I also have picked up a few of the latest Batman issues. Good timing too, it would seem that someone is back in play.

This weekend wasn’t all too terribly exciting. Saturday Andrew and I stayed home and did some more deep cleaning of the house. By the afternoon time we had the house looking great! Of course, I was feeling like crap again (I had caught a small head cold over the last few days). Andrew had a friend come over to do some homework and that’s about the time I handed things over to Amy and just went to lay down. Hooray! The migraine fairy has come to visit again! After a good medicine induced nap (read 2 ½ hours) I was feeling much better. So what do I do at this point? I game of course! Lee and I got in and ran a few missions to help him catch up in levels. I only did this until about midnight.

On Sunday the unprecedented happened. I woke up at around 8:30am. I know, I was amazed too! I just wasn’t tired so I woke up! We had a few plans set but I didn’t plan for anything that early. We mostly just curled up on the couch and watched some TV until around 10:30ish. After that we went out for some Christmas shopping and to get Andrew and new pair of shoes (he tears through them quick!) After all of that, we up and went out to Georgetown in DC. It’s actually a nice little shopping district with a few cool things to see. We walked along the canal there and also along the Potomac River walk. Paul met up with us and we visited two local comic book shops (go figure). I hope that very soon I will reach the point where I am caught up as far as stories go and can just go on the normal release schedule for comics. I have been buying a few Trade paperbacks to catch up on the current stories and that gets a little pricey if it keeps up. One book that I was happy to pick up was “Red Son.” It’s an Elsworlds title about Superman. The basic premise is what if Kal-L’s ship crash landed in the Ukraine on Joseph Stalin’s farm. Think about it, Superman is an “All American Hero.” What if he were suddenly a Communist Hero instead? It’s an excellent read and I suggest you go get it.

The next few days are going to be nucking futz. Andrew and I are taking a father son road trip down to TN to visit with Lee and family. This will start at Oh god early on Wednesday morning. This means an early night on Tuesday night, which means, everything needs to get packed up and ready tonight. The trip itself is going to be great fun though. With us leaving so early means that we will arrive fairly early in the evening. Granted that I will probably be pretty tired, it still gives us some time to recoup and visit. We will be there all day on Thursday, all day Friday, and all day Saturday. The drive back is scheduled for early Sunday morning. I know Lee has a lot of thing set that he wants to do so I am pretty sure that there will be lots of fun. If I get the chance to blog while I am there I will. If I don’t, Happy Turkey Day!!!

As I have stated in previous posts, I have gotten back into comics. As we all know all too well, when I start getting into something, I go full boar. I have been debating with myself about getting a reserve box at the local comic store (Phoenix comics). The problem is, they want you to select 10 monthly titles to start your box with. Every week when new comics come out, they pull the titles from your list and reserve them for you. I can understand why they want you to have 10 titles thought. This is because it’s not feasible to only pull one or two titles for people. It’s too time consuming. The benefit of course is that by having a box there I get 10% off everything (not just the 10 titles). Now, the question lies in what 10 titles? Obviously I have been reading a lot of Green Lantern and Spiderman, but what else? After conferring with Andrew and even Amy I came down to this list:

1. Green Lantern
2. Green Lantern Corps
3. Amazing Spiderman
4. Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman
5. Marvel Knights Spiderman
6. Batman
7. Infinite Crisis
8. Flash (For Andrew)
9. Green Arrow (For Andrew)
10. Birds Of Prey (For Amy)

Yes, that last one on the list is a comic just for Amy. We have been talking about this for a while now. She knows that I really like comics and such and was trying to find a new way to relate to me. On her own she started looking at some of the different comics (all be it that I steered her towards some I thought she might like) and she decided to try out the Birds of Prey. This one deals with Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl, AKA, Oracle, as well as some other famous Gotham women. Suffice it to say, she loved it. She has already read through two of the trade paperbacks for the title and one of the issues.

Andrew decided to contribute to the box with Green Arrow and Flash. He had read a little about GA in some of my Green Lantern books and picked up on him. I know Andrew really likes Archery so it was a natural fit for him. The Flash title kind of came from left field, I guess I will find out more about that as we go along.

So there you have it, I am back in the comic book world! Of course, this comes at a point where one of my favorite characters has the choice to evolve or die and DC comics is apparently pressing the reset button! There will certainly be more to come! (And yes, I did pick up Batman: Hush. It was awesome and one of the main reasons that Batman is on the list! Thanks of the referral Erin!)

This weekend I went into over drive and took everyone with me. The house had gotten to be too much of a mess. It was really dragging me down when I would walk in and just feel down. So Amy and I talked about it and we tore through the place like madness! I even had Andrew doing some deep cleaning. Speaking of Andrew, I have another great store for the Tales of Teenage Years.

Let me set the stage. It’s Friday night. I have to go into work Sat. morning because of a special project. Amy had just bought me (and Andrew) Battlefront II, the new star wars game. We were up pretty late playing like usual. Around 11ish I decide to go to bed because I have to get up early. Not want to take away his fun, I stop by his room and tell him “Don’t stay up too late.”

“Ok dad” come back with shouts of “cover my position” from the pc speakers.

I head to bed and, since I was pretty tired, was out like a light. This is all well and good until my eagle ears hear someone walking to the bathroom at 5am. “No biggie” I think, it’s not like I haven’t had to go sometime in the middle of the night. Wafting in and out of sleep I look up and notice the light on outside my room. “Hmmm its 5:30, did he forget to turn off the light?” I get up and walk out there to find that the dining room light is on, Andrew’s door is wide open, and his light is on. Why? Because he is still playing Battlefront! “What the heck are you doing!” This is where one of his best lines comes in…

He looks at the clock and exclaims “When did it get to 5:30?? Last time I looked it was only 2!”

“2AM IS TOO LATE!” I screamed. At which point he jumped out of his street clothes and into bed hitting the power button on his PC in one fell swoop. It really was impressive. We made a point of waking him up around 9am for cleaning day. He knew it was coming. The whole day he kept trying to convince himself that he wasn’t tired. Needless to say he was out fairly early sat night.

Sunday was an easy going day. We had a great (somewhat late) breakfast cooked by a wonderful woman I know. Andrew and I made our way out to the Game Parlor (local gaming store). He wanted to play Magic the Gathering with some other people. We soon learned that Sunday is not the best day for this. Ah well, we might try again on Friday or Saturday. After that we did a little geocaching. We actually found two of the local caches and it was great to get out of the house and see some of the surrounding area.

I finished off the day playing some WoW of course. I do have to say that I was really proud of myself this weekend and last weekend. I avoided getting sucked into the game and playing all day long. This week looks to be a short week as I am off for Veterans day on Friday! WhooHoo!

So here we are, on November 1st again. It’s getting close to 2 whole years that I have been blogging. Amazing huh, yeah I thought so too. The cool thing about it is that I can look back now and see what I was doing last year and compare it to this year. I should probably step back and go over the whole weekend. Believe me there is certainly a lot to cover.

Friday: When I got home we decided that it was time to carve the pumpkins that we bought. This year we each had our own pumpkins and set out to carve our own designs. Andrew picked a basic jack-o-lantern face, Amy actually drew her own pumpkin face, and I went with (of course) a Green Lantern symbol. At first we were going to do all this outside but it just got too cold. So instead we opted for the kitchen floor. After getting all of our basic designs down I remembered a trick that I had learned a while back. I had seen someone who had carved out a really cool Haunted house. In the back of the pumpkin they carved a few ghosts. When you put the light in, the ghosts would be projected onto the wall behind the pumpkin! So I decided to try this trick on mine. What’s the best comic symbol to be projected? The BAT SIGNAL! Andrew and Amy both liked the idea so they did projections of their own. Amy did some hearts and Andrew tried to do an S for his old baseball team. (He forgot about the reverse projection problem) You can see pictures of all of them in the gallery of course.

Saturday morning: Yes, I will need to separate out Saturday because of all that happened. We woke up very early (well, early for a Saturday) and grabbed all our gear. You see we had a parade to attend! The Annandale Fall Festival parade was going on and the 501st was asked to march in it. Andrew had never seen us do something like this so it was a new experience for him. We were meeting up at Lori’s place at 8ish to coordinate. When we got there, Lori offered to let Andrew mach in the parade dressed in a Spare TIE pilot outfit that she had. Andrew was very excited. We had close to 20 total troopers to march the 1 mile parade route. All along the route we were encouraged to toss out candy to the kids along the street. Lori had this roll around R2D2 which worked great for carrying all the candy, except when it started getting off its wheels. I was at the back so I grabbed R2 and kept going. Andrew had an absolute blast marching along in his Helmet. He sat and talked with some of the other TIE pilots afterwards as well. All in all, a good troop.

After the parade was over we darted home to take care of some other things. We had the annual Patton’s Halloween party that night and needed to prepare. I started making some of my world famous chili, Andrew took a break and played around on the PC, Amy took care of some school things. After I got the chili done, Amy and I curled up on the couch for a much needed cuddle nap. (Told you Saturday mornings are early for me.) After our little nap, we got up and started getting dressed. Amy got a really cute 50’s girl outfit, withy poodle skirt and everything. I got into a 50s Greaser costume, with the leather jacket and the rolled up jeans. And lastly, Andrew was dressed in a Grim reaper costume. To set the mood, on the way down to Fredericksburg we tuned into the XM channel 5 which is all 50s music.

The party was hopping already so we gladly joined in. Marc had set up quite a few things for the party. His house is always very well decorated. We of course had a wide array of costumed folks. Little Red Slaughter-hood came by, as well as HBO’s own Ali G. There were the ever popular Ghetto costumes. Marc got the chance to show off his latest creation, a total home theater in his basement! Andrew loved it, he got to sit down there in total darkness and watch a few movies that he hadn’t seen. The pinnacle of the party came with Marc’s, ever famous, Haunted Woods walk. Last year it really just consisted of a bunch of drunken people wandering lost in the woods trying to scare one another. This year he actually threw some effort into it and had the trail all laid out and decorated! We partied till close to 1am and about that time I was spent. This, of course, meant the hour long drive home. We had debated about staying the night there but decided to just head out instead.

Not too much to remark about for Sunday. Woke up late and tried to find a new comic store. Amy had an errand to run in Manassas so we thought we would find one of the comic stores down there. No luck of course. Apparently some of the smaller stores are just turning belly up! The rest of Sunday was spent recovering. I am not sure why, but I was exhausted all day on Sunday. For a special Halloween treat, Sunday morning we watched Nightmare before Christmas, and to round out the evening we finished with Hellboy. Sunday was an early night.

Halloween!!! Monday was Halloween. Since I normally dress in jeans and a polo for work, and they don’t really let us dress up in costumes, I decided to spice it up a bit and threw on the ol Suit and Tie for Halloween. I don’t know how many people asked if I had an interview lined up. The evening time was a little more hectic then usual though. Andrew had asked earlier in the weekend if he could go Trick or Treating with one of his friends from school. I was excited that he was making friends around the area so I thought it as a great idea. The problem was that I needed to pick up Amy at around 6:15. So I started the run around of trying to buy some candy for the trick or treaters, get my Son out the door around 5:30ish and then at 6ish go get Amy and be back in time to give candy out at the door. Amazingly I got it all accomplished! Not only that, but this year I had TWICE as many kids at the door as last year!!! (Yes I know that means only two people, but hey, improvement is improvement!)

One last bit of good news before I wrap up this post. I got my ring!! The Green Lantern costume is finally coming together! I believe it was Friday that I received the mask in the mail and then yesterday evening I got the ring. Only thing missing now is the actual costume! The mask is amazing! I picked it up from Xtreeme Design FX. It’s a very thick latex type material painted a bright strong green color. It fits really well. The ring was purchased from one of the Ebay sellers. Apparently they deal in a lot of silver type stuff. It came out really good. As soon as I get the full costume you can bet there will be pictures here.