Don't Tarry in the Town
Oct. 27th, 2019 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatMy grandmother died on Friday night. She was ninety-seven, and hadn't been doing well. I'm never sure of the best way to announce sad things, and putting it at the beginning of a mostly unrelated post is probably not it, but that's what I'm doing anyway. I don't know why, but I've never really been someone who cried at death, and it's not because I don't care, and I'm pretty sure it's not because men are taught by society not to show their feelings, because I'm generally open about them. Maybe it would be different if it had been unexpected. She's being cremated, and I don't know when the funeral is yet.
I'm going to write about stuff Beth and I have done for Halloween in the past month, but for some reason I can't transfer my pictures from my phone to my computer in the way I have before. They come up as an unreadable format, even though they're all JPGs. I guess I'm going to have to rely on my Facebook uploads for this post, although I understand they're lower quality.
Our first Halloween event was actually at the end of September, the Night of Terror at Creamy Acres, to which Beth's cousin Dorothea accompanied us. We got a few pictures taken against their backdrops.
This was a few different events, albeit fewer than last year, when I believe they had two different haunted houses. The hayride was the last one we did, and it was fun, except for the obnoxious teenagers who seem to be a staple of such events. This time, there was a white girl who used the N-word for no apparent reason.
Last weekend, we went with Dorothea and Uncle John to another hayride, this one at Miller's Mulch, which has been running for years. They always have a hearse blasting music near where you line up. I'm not sure what else to say about this one, but it was fun. There's a maze as well, which is always really dark. Then we brought Uncle John up to Brooklyn that night, and went to Governors Island on Sunday. Beth and I had just been there the previous month, just to see it, but this time was the Night of 1000 Jack O' Lanterns. It was also raining, which sucked. This has been a particularly rainy October, I think. I don't think there were anywhere near 1000 Jack O' Lanterns, although there were a lot of smaller ones, so I guess I couldn't say for sure. Many of the larger ones were depictions of licensed characters, many but not all of them Disney.
Beth thought there were too many of these. I did like the ones with cute versions of horror icons.
Other themes included optical illusions and tributes to celebrities who died this year.
Finally, on Friday, we went to Sleepy Hollow with Tavie and Stephanie, like we had last year. This was the first time Beth, Tavie, and I had been to the storytelling at the old church, where a guy told an embellished version of the Washington Irving story, complete with voices and sound effects. It was pretty fun. Then we walked through Horseman's Hollow, where what I remember most is a part where all these webs and other things were hanging from the ceiling where you'd bump into them. I really think they overdid that. The Jack O' Lantern Blaze was largely the same as before, including the sea serpent and the Pumpkin Zee Bridge, although they don't call it that anymore since they changed the name of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
One thing I think was new was a recreation of famous paintings in pumpkins. There was a Frida Kahlo (interestingly enough, there was a Frida pumpkin at Governors Island), Rene Magritte's The Son of Man, Edvard Munch's The Scream, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, one of Andy Warhol's (Warholloween?) soup cans, and another I couldn't place.
We ate at a nearby diner on the way back to the city, got back late, and Beth and I got up late on Saturday. And really, that's about it. I should probably mention that we took our cats to the vet a few weeks ago, and they hated it, although Regan was pretty subdued. Oddly, at home, it's usually Wally who's the calmer one and Rea who's loud and complains a lot. Their bloodwork was good, but we do have to take Rea back in November for dental surgery.
I'm going to write about stuff Beth and I have done for Halloween in the past month, but for some reason I can't transfer my pictures from my phone to my computer in the way I have before. They come up as an unreadable format, even though they're all JPGs. I guess I'm going to have to rely on my Facebook uploads for this post, although I understand they're lower quality.
Our first Halloween event was actually at the end of September, the Night of Terror at Creamy Acres, to which Beth's cousin Dorothea accompanied us. We got a few pictures taken against their backdrops.
This was a few different events, albeit fewer than last year, when I believe they had two different haunted houses. The hayride was the last one we did, and it was fun, except for the obnoxious teenagers who seem to be a staple of such events. This time, there was a white girl who used the N-word for no apparent reason.Last weekend, we went with Dorothea and Uncle John to another hayride, this one at Miller's Mulch, which has been running for years. They always have a hearse blasting music near where you line up. I'm not sure what else to say about this one, but it was fun. There's a maze as well, which is always really dark. Then we brought Uncle John up to Brooklyn that night, and went to Governors Island on Sunday. Beth and I had just been there the previous month, just to see it, but this time was the Night of 1000 Jack O' Lanterns. It was also raining, which sucked. This has been a particularly rainy October, I think. I don't think there were anywhere near 1000 Jack O' Lanterns, although there were a lot of smaller ones, so I guess I couldn't say for sure. Many of the larger ones were depictions of licensed characters, many but not all of them Disney.
Beth thought there were too many of these. I did like the ones with cute versions of horror icons.
Other themes included optical illusions and tributes to celebrities who died this year.
Finally, on Friday, we went to Sleepy Hollow with Tavie and Stephanie, like we had last year. This was the first time Beth, Tavie, and I had been to the storytelling at the old church, where a guy told an embellished version of the Washington Irving story, complete with voices and sound effects. It was pretty fun. Then we walked through Horseman's Hollow, where what I remember most is a part where all these webs and other things were hanging from the ceiling where you'd bump into them. I really think they overdid that. The Jack O' Lantern Blaze was largely the same as before, including the sea serpent and the Pumpkin Zee Bridge, although they don't call it that anymore since they changed the name of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
One thing I think was new was a recreation of famous paintings in pumpkins. There was a Frida Kahlo (interestingly enough, there was a Frida pumpkin at Governors Island), Rene Magritte's The Son of Man, Edvard Munch's The Scream, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, one of Andy Warhol's (Warholloween?) soup cans, and another I couldn't place.We ate at a nearby diner on the way back to the city, got back late, and Beth and I got up late on Saturday. And really, that's about it. I should probably mention that we took our cats to the vet a few weeks ago, and they hated it, although Regan was pretty subdued. Oddly, at home, it's usually Wally who's the calmer one and Rea who's loud and complains a lot. Their bloodwork was good, but we do have to take Rea back in November for dental surgery.
