Pumpkin Lobotomy

Halloween is like my Christmas... by far my favorite holiday of the year. Here are some shots from our carving session Wednesday night:

#1 Listened to Misfits Collection I & II on vinyl during the whole process.




Removing the guts:

Braineaters:

Maeve and I had an informal dance party. She pogoed on the bed listening to "We are 138". She really digs the Misfits.


Maeve, the official jack-o-lantern quality assurance inspector:


Light it up!

Usually Amy and I would watch Sleepy Hollow too, but it was game 5 so we did that instead. Happy Halloween!!!

Phinally? Too Cliche....

When I was one, the Phillies won the World Series. I was way too young to remember anything. Since that time, I've seen many Philadelphia phlops. When I was a freshman in high school, I remember watching Joe Carter send Mitch Williams pitch into another zip code and realizing that it could be a while before the Phillies win the World Series. Since then we've watched the Flyers, Sixers and Eagles all make it to their respective championships only to lose in the finals. While I could really care less about the Eagles or the Flyers, it would have been nice to see Philly take one home.

Out of all the Philadelphia Phranchises, the Phillies are my phavorite and to phinally see them win was such a great experience. I felt like I was going to throw up for most of the game last night, but once Lidge threw the last pitch, I was euphoric. The excitement was huge, even more so than when Christian Laettner hit the game winner against Kentucky for Duke in the NCAA tournament or when Pete Sampras won his match after puking on the court (Two of my top sports memories of all time). It just didn't seem possible. With each series, different guys stepped up to contribute, making it a satisfying effort from all members. Plus, minus Myers, the team seems like a bunch of nice guys. I'm especially happy for Jamie Moyer, the pride of Souderton.



Thanks to my grandfather, I've always rooted for the Phillies. He was a great baseball player and a diehard Phillies Phan, even back to the days of the Philadelphia Athletics. There would rarely be a summer afternoon where I would show up at his house and he did not have a game on the TV or the radio. I'm sure somewhere he is smiling.



It would sound really good to say that this picture was taken during the game, but I am pretty sure Maeve was watching the Backyardigans.

Poppin' bottles in celebration. Maeve and her milk. Notice the '83 Phillies shirt.


A better shot of the shirt. So Maeve is right around my age when the Phillies won with Carlton in '80. I am looking forward 2037 when we can celebrate another Phillies victory with her son or daughter!

Mantra

Words to live by...

I Wish I

This man is coming to Metuchen, NJ soon to speak:

London Calling

Sea Monster

The front that blew through last night and brought a ton of rain, delayed the Phillies game for ninety minutes and made for a soggy Halloween party departed and left us with head high waves for most of the day.

I didn't hit it until the afternoon, allowing the tide to fill in a little bit, but when I got to Strathmere, it was still a little low, causing every other wave to detonate rather than peel at the head high level. Luckily, there were three guys out already and four trying to paddle out, but I think that only the other guy and myself actually made it out to the line up with the other two.

From there it was a fun afternoon. You really had to choose your waves carefully because there was a healthy mix of closeouts along with the head high peelers, plus it was a pain in the ass battling to get back out. Mostly lefts to be had, but the best ride of the afternoon came for me on a rouge right that came out of nowhere. Rode my Tucker banana board and it performed so well. Easy to paddle, loose and fast. I was glad that it paddled so well when the occasional outside set would pop up and we'd be scratching to make it over them.

Later in the afternoon the wind got on it a little bit and things started to chop up a bit, so it was time to call it an afternoon. Despite the cold water, it was the best session I've had in the last few weeks. I didn't have my camera on me so I grabbed my cell phone to grab a pick of this tree that washed up on the beach and some of the swell in the background. Some lady told me there was a line of trees that were washed away at the Point and were showing up all over the beach. Weird.

Black Wave

Tonight is the annual Halloween party, so I thought I would put up last year's flyer, which was far superior to this year's. I always loved the black background flyers that I would pick up at double decker, like for the Circle Storm show, FP at Scarlett's way back when and more recently the Atari and Floorpunch reunion flyer. Dave Koenig makes some sick flyers, so that was kind of what I wanted to do. I printed out a bunch of old horror movie characters and made the collage you see below. The lettering sucks, but I don't have a whole lot great fonts on my computer, unfortunately.