PipesDreams

This morning is my coworker’s wife’s funeral. It’s happening even as I type this. Poor man. I went to the visitation yesterday, which was sad but it was good to be able to give my friend a hug and see that he’s still capable of standing, smiling, walking around after all this. I have to say though – no matter how I die, please please do not let anyone talk my family into an open casket visitation. Just don’t let that happen.

On a more capricious, less grave, more live-in-the-now note, I realized I’m stupidly overbooked this weekend for Hallowe’en things that I haven’t thought about all week. Two parties Friday, two Saturday, and I’ve only RSVPed to a pumpkin carving evening on Friday with . All of these events are, of course, beginning and ending at the same time, and are not what you’d call conveniently near one another, so party hopping is going to be a challenge. I’m tempted to say that I’ll go to ‘s place Friday and then ‘s place Saturday, but both Saturday parties require full costume, and I’ve got NOTHING.

Earlier this year, Justin and I were playing around with the idea of dressing up as the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I would be Frylock and he would be MasterShake, we’d force Kari to wear a MeatWad costume, while our friend Aaron went as Carl. This idea, however, would be nearly impossible to pull off last minute, and I just don’t feel like I have the energy to fashion a 6-foot high milkshake container and straw out of… whatever, and then sew myself two dozen yellow french fries and a red fry package with a big-ass jewel on the back before the weekend. I also doubt that Aaron is committed enough to Hallowe’en to shave a bald patch on top of his head, shave his beard leaving only the moustache, and put on a fat suit with a stained wifebeater over top. I don’t even know how the hell we’d try to emulate a wad of ground beef big enough to envelope Kari from head to toe.

Plus, neither Kari nor Aaron actually know or hang out with any of the people whose parties I’ve been invited to, so you see the whole idea is a bust.

Other thoughts I’ve had over the course of the last twelve months include me as Drinky Crow and Justin as Sock Monkey, but oh my god, so many feathers for the one costume and a billion miles of knitted yarn for the other… it’s wildly unfeasible. And I hate copping out and throwing a bedsheet over myself to be a lame-ass ghost, or buying some shitty supermarket Spider Man outfit. I guess I could just wear my good old Star Trek uniform and admit, once and for all, that I am a) a loser, b) a total loser, and c) a complete, utter, unbelievable loser, but I don’t feel I’ve reached that nadir of self-esteem yet, so I’ll hold off a while longer.

Ideas welcome as to how to overcome either or both the scheduling and dress-up issues.

**Edited to Add: I guess Justin and I could do a more manageable homage to the ATHF, paint some cardboard, and dress up as Ignignokt and Err. However, a) that would really only be funny to the two of us, since nobody else we know (Kari and Aaron aside) watch the Aqua Teens, b) it’s been done — see photo, and c) would be almost on-par with the Star Trek uniform idea in nerd-ranking.**

Well, some good news at last: my coworker’s daughter is still hospitalized but seems to be improving – they are recommending that she be read to as much as possible, so some people from our branch will be going to buy books for her at the World’s Biggest Bookstore this week. I’m heading out to the funeral home visitation for his wife this afternoon. The last time I went to one of these was almost a year ago, for the mother of one of Justin’s high school friends, where I met Justin’s ex-girlfriend Megan for the first time.

I also heard from this weekend that she has relented her decision to spend Christmas alone in BC, and will now likely be flying in to spend the festive season here in Ontario. This is excellent – it will be nice to spend some quiet time with her over the holidays.

Saturday was quiet. K-Jo made a delicious roast beef, and Justin and I did our respective things (recording and photo retouching) on our respective computers in our respective adjacent rooms. Sunday was the last day of my catsitting duties, which my Mum kindly drove me down to while we were en route to the Oak, and I repaid her by introducing her to Bulldog Coffee, one of Toronto’s most delectable beverages. We missed Dad, as he was getting showered after lunch, but Mum did a noble job of cleaning out his shaver, and then we went home for a cup of tea and I got help with some knitting.

Yesterday was also the day that Justin, Aaron, K-Jo and I finished watching season 2 of Veronica Mars, ate a prodigious amount of biscotti, stir-fry and apple crisp (we are beginning to seriously fear the onset of gout), saw episode 2 of the new Battlestar, and I uploaded the first four parts of ‘The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales’ to LibriVox. I’ve also begun a thread for reading ‘Roughing It in the Bush’, and will have to make time to complete my chapters owing of ‘The Faerie Queene’ later this week.

We had a lovely, but all too brief visit from our friend Steph, who did a bang-up job of cutting my unruly mane of hair into something that looks like this… except without, you know, me having the face of Linda Evangelista. But that’s really not Steph’s fault.

I slept really fitfully last night; I kept having weird bad dreams about breaking eggs and other bad omens. This morning I woke up and started browsing the Internet. I took a look at the graduate studies sites for UBC’s SLAIS, U of T’s FIS and realized that an MLIS/MISt will take a minimum of 16 months to complete. That’s a little longer than I had in mind to be sans-income, but the deadline for domestic students to apply is February 1, so I have some time to think it over.