It's Classic Star Trek in the style of Monty Python and the Holy Grail! "On second thought, let's not go there. It's a silly place!"

Many thanks to Noumenon for sending me this link a zillion years ago :-D It never fails to make me giggle!

In more cheerful news, my new Combat! fanfic story, "Finders, Keepers", is finally finished and up on Fruit Salad :-)

And the Guard Duck is getting into the Halloween spirit :-D(Click on it and it'll turn bigger so you can read all the words)

:-( My Betta fish, Archie Goodwin, died today :-(

I had him for over two years and he was a very sweet Betta. He knew just when I was going to feed him and would always get very excited about it and do the Fishy Dance of Joy for me.

:-( Didn't know I could get so attached to a fish.

I don't think I'm going to be able to carve a pumpkin this year for Halloween :-(

Every year when I was a kid, Dad would get the most enormous pumpkin, and we'd carve something Christian in it. Back when I was really little, he experimented with words like "God is Love", but they were too difficult, so after a couple years he settled on carving a big cross. I was always Dad's enthusiastic helper with this project. Although he got to do the actual carving, I got to scoop out the squishy, slimy insides. My little brother Johnnycake, on the other hand, loathed scooping out the pumpkin -- we have pictures of him when he was probably three years old, standing next to the pumpkin with a handful of innards and bawling. He never has liked getting his hands dirty.

Anyway, when we moved here to Ruralsburg, I picked up the pumpkin carving tradition again. I don't get enormous ones like Dad does (when I was two or three, he carved a pumpkin that was big enough I could sit inside it!), but I usually get a nice one that I can get a good-size cross out of and stick a candle stub inside. One year I even got a cool idea for a story while carving my pumpkin here, and it turned into a Halloween fanfic story called "The Carver".

But this year we had this ferocious hailstorm at the beginning of this month, and I think it ruined the pumpkin crop. All I can find are little stunty pumpkins, and most of them have pockmarks from the hail. We did get in some nice-sized ones at work last week, but they want $14 for them! No way! I can usually get that size for like $6!

So it looks like I won't be sitting on the cement floor of the garage wielding my trusty knife this year :-( I was hoping the price might come down after a few days, but no such luck.

Due to popular demand, here is my AAR on the Atlanta Fanfic Recon '06! It seems I have lurkers after all ;-) How cool! (Oh yeah, AAR means After Action Review...)

Friday, September 22
I arrived in Atlanta feeling very losted and scared. What if no one else showed up? What if we didn't get along after all? What if DKoren's plane crashed and I was bereft of a bestest friend and left to my own devices all weekend? I picked up my little green suitcase at Baggage Claim South (I think), then started looking for the Delta carousels, because I knew that's what DKoren was flying. And there weren't any. No carousels for Delta (oooh -- cool title!). I began to panic.

Then I raised my tear-filled eyes and saw that waaaaay over yonder was Baggage Claim North, all Delta all the time. I hustled over there, heart pounding and nose running (I hate the aftereffects of colds!), and there, beside a shiny silver fence, stood DKoren! And some people that I had never seen before in my life... but who were all wearing something C!-ish. DKoren turned around and saw me and grinned and... I gotta tell you, she may only weigh 37 pounds, but she about knocked me over with her hug.

Eventually other people joined up with us, and we comandeered a bus to take us out to the parking garage. Then began the great Clown Maneuver. These people were seriously convinced you were going to get 9 people, 18 suitcases, and a guitar into that van. DKoren and I had far too much fun watching the van sink lower and lower and lower as they crammed into that thing -- I'm glad we stayed behind for the second wave, because those tires were seriously bulging. The seven of them headed off for the hotel, and DKoren and I caught the bus back to the airport. We had a nice lunch and met up with a the stragglers. Then it was off to the hotel for us, where I got to meet the rest of the bunch, including our intrepid Third Musketeer, Jambi :-D She was sharing a room with DKoren and I all weekend. After supper, the twelve of us congregated in the ever-popular Medic's Foxhole and I got introduced to megas! They DO exist! (Megas are these ginormous M&Ms that I could never seem to find).

Saturday, September 23
I didn't think I was going to sleep very well that night, what with trying to switch over from night shift and being all excited about finally being at Recon, but I actually managed 6 hours of snoozing, I think. Good thing, because Saturday was chock full of wonderful fun that required every ounce of my energy.

First off, we went to an American Legion hall outside Atlanta and got a chance to interact with actual WWII weapons... and you know me and my love of weaponry! I got to handle a German Mauser rifle, an M1 Garand and M1 Carbine, several Lugers and .45, and a Thompson submachine gun!!!! My Combat! hero, Sgt. Saunders, carries a Thompson, so that was a very special event for me. We got to try on WWII helmets and jackets too, and get our pictures taken. The Carbine was lighter than I'd expected, the Mauser and Garand were heavier than I thought they might be, but that Thompson? Honestly, it felt just the way I'd always imagined. The weight, the balance... it was like I'd been handling one for the last ten years. Made my little heart glow.

After lunch, Belle arrived, even though we'd about given up on her -- poor thing, driving in all that rain! So we played Combat! Trivial Pursuit, which DKoren and I made up!!! Everyone had a blast, and I got about a million compliments for the playing board, which I made all C!-ish.

CCK is everyone's hero for providing tasty pizza for our supper Saturday night! And I think we even managed not to leave tooooo many greasy fingerprints on each others' fanzines as we signed them! Oh yeah, we created a fanzine that came out at the same time as Recon. It has 347 pages and 16 fanfic stories, including one co-written by DKoren and I. If you're interested, here's a link to a little more info.

Sunday, September 24
A whole bunch of us got interviewed about our love of Combat! for a possible Veteran's Day Marathon of eps on the American Goodlife tv network (I think it might have a new name now, tho... can't remember for sure). That was pretty scary, but we knew the questions in advance and were all there to provide (silent-ish) moral support during the taping :-D

Sunday was a sad day, though, because several people left. I hate goodbyes. But we managed to have lots of fun on Sunday night during our extreeeeeeeemely long supper.

Monday, September 25
Then it was Monday all of a sudden, and I was sitting in the (empty) bathtub writing in my journal about how sad I was that it was all ending so soon. We definitely need to extend the next Recon -- arrive on Thursday and leave on Monday? Yes, we're planning on doing this next year, possibly in Vegas, baby!

Although I managed to get myself slightly losted at the airport, my squaddies found me after a brief handy-talky conversation, and we began the sad business of parting. I was so loath to leave, I almost missed my plane! Good thing DKoren had my back :-)

I'm a very shy person. I don't like meeting strangers very well -- but these Combat! fanfic friends I'd made online were all just as wonderful in real life as they were on the internet, and I cemented a lot of friendships that weekend. In fact, I just had a little reunion with one of them this past weekend, a mini-recon near home here that was tons of fun! And I truly can't wait for Recon '07, wherever it may be!

I think I found what's been stinking up my kitchen for the past four days!

On Saturday morning, I noticed this peculiar smell when I came home from work. So we took out the trash. Sunday after church, the smell was still there. But there were a bunch of dirty dishes on the counter, so I thought that might be it. On Monday, however, there were no stinky dishes... but the kitchen still reeked. Mom suggested it might be a dead mouse, but I've smelled dead mice, and this was not that kind of smell. This was kind of sweet and rancid. So I thought maybe some piece of food had fallen through the top of the stove and was rotting under the burners. Tuesday morning, Cowboy opened the top of the stove. No weird food. But the smell was starting to permeate to the whole Crypt.

So this morning, I turned into a bloodhound, sniffing and silent. And I discovered that the can of liquid grease on the back of the stove was stinky. Quite stinky. About the same stinky as what I'd been smelling all week. I took it out to the dumpster and burned a candle in the kitchen. If it's still not stinky when we wake up tonight, we'll know I found the source of the stench. I sure hope so! I was beginning to fear we'd have to move the stove. Or that something had died in the fan above the stove, and we'd be stuck with the smell forever.

Ohmanohmanohman! Not only is Jack Hogan (aka Kirby) reading our fanzine... Pierre Jalbert (Caje) is too! Reading it and liking it!

You know, when we were signing the fanzines that we sent to the four remaining stars, I never thought they'd actually read the stories. I figured they might flip through and read the little messages we wrote them, then toss it on the shelf or in the garbage. Probably while rolling their eyes and muttering about the obsessed psychos that still care about work they did 40 years ago. But it sounds like they're kind of flattered. How cool is that?

Wow. Wow. Wow. I'm floating around in a haze of awe. And of awwwwwwww.

Jack Hogan is reading the Combat! fanzine we put out for Recon. Jack Hogan, as in the guy who played Kirby on Combat!.

See, when we were at Recon, we autographed a copy for each of the four stars that are still alive: Jack Hogan, Pierre Jalbert, Tom Lowell, and Conlan Carter. And DII sent those 'zines to them. And Jack Hogan emailed her and said that he's actually reading the fanzine and finding it very interesting and enjoyable!

He might even be reading the story DKoren and I wrote together for it!

Oh man oh man oh man oh man. That's a thought that's both exhilarating and scary. What if he doesn't like the way we portray the character he created? What if he does?

Anyway, it's very cool and awesome that he's even reading the fanzine. It makes me all tingly happy :-D

A Nickelback video made me cry! It's the one for their new song, "Far Away", and although you'd think the whole firefighter = hero thing would be getting hackneyed by now, nope, I cried. Just a tiny bit.

Oh, and loved the FX they were using on the stage for the lights behind the band, the way they looked like white starlight fingers reaching out.

You know, Columbus Day was a whole lot cooler when I was a kid. We got to do stuff for school like color pictures of Columbus and his ships, read books about his voyage, or make little models of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, depending on how old we were. It was a special day, a mark on the calendar that meant a break from the ordinary autumn education routine.

Now, it's like, "Oh, Columbus Day. No mail." End of story.

Hmph. Wonder if there are any downloadable pictures of Columbus and his ships I could print up and color?

Vacation was amazing. I thought Recon would be fantastic, but it exceeded my every hope. We all got along swimmingly (even when in the hotel pool!), and the whole weekend was like a really long sleepover that revolved around Combat!. I have so many wonderful memories of Recon, but most of my readers here have heard them already, so I won't bore you with further elaboration.

And after Recon, I got to spend a whole week with with my parents and Grandma O. We went on a few short excursions, but spent most of our time relaxing and lolling about in the sun. It rocked!

Now we're trying to readjust to living at night and, for me at least, it is not going well at all. I seem to be sleeping in little 4-hour chunks here and there. I have to work tonight, though, so maybe that will help straighten me out. Grrr.