Scraps (n. ,fem., singular)

Holy cow but I’m beat, my head is pounding, and the dissipating adrenaline rush is causing a low blood sugar attack.

But it was worth it. Oh, my, how it was worth it. Trans-Siberian Orchestra in concert for nearly 3 straight hours. I have pictures (crappy cell-phone pictures, of course) but they will get downloaded/uploaded another day. I have no idea how they’ll look being that they are (again) crappy cell-phone pictures but I think they might be okay, really.

The concert was awesome. I now must download their other 2 albums (Lost Christmas Eve and Beethoven’s Last Night) as well as track down some Savatage because I recognized one of the non-TSO songs they performed after the not really an intermission (seriously, there wasn’t much of a break even though some people must have thought it was over when they started introducing everyone) from the radio and now must find it and listen to it some more.

Dude… they so rocked…

Tags: Trans-SiberianOrchestra, music, concert

My birthday isn’t just around the corner and the approaching new year does not inspire the thought, it’s the events of the past weekend that make me feel positively ancient: Spectrum and I went to the fair
It started simply enough, we wandered through the animal and community exhibits, surveyed the food offerings (ah, the Brown food group!) and then checked out which rides we were interested in before buying tickets for them.

[Sidebar: holy cats has this thing gotten expensive!!! We were given passes that covered the admission (which wasn't that bad, only $7 per person, less than a movie) but the ride tickets were $1 each and most rides took 4 tickets! No wonder there were hardly any lines for the rides!]

We rode two rather harmless rides I remembered fondly from my last visit (some 4 or 5 years ago), the Himalaya and the Scrambler (now known as the Sizzle, apparently). And then we were done. Spec looked positively pale when the Scrambler/Sizzle came to a stop! Both of us were a little wobbly and we decided that we were definitely too old for this.

Still, all was not lost. There was still the Brown food group and we ended the day with foot-long corn dogs, a funnel cake and palm readings. Went home and Spec was asleep before 10pm. It was a good day.

So. This weekend was my first Con and overall it was a very pleasant experience. As usual, the trip over there was half the fun in itself, but that’s a road trip with Palmie and I.

We finally got to Panama City and had dinner in a Pirate Ship (that the 70s forgot) before heading to the hotel. Palmie’s all like ‘I see nerds, we must be in the right place’ and right until we saw the land speeder and I braked to stare at it, we seemed fairly normal. SO much for that! I also ended up with the first guest sighting (Brian from Ghost Hunters) as we entered our building.

The Con Registration Desk had closed by the time we wandered over there (right around 8:00). And, well, this is the one main issue that I had this weekend: a lack of organization. Now, no registration hours were posted on the website prior to the Con BUT since there were film screenings going on into the wee hours and a poolside mixer that evening until around 10 or so, it seemed logical that reg would be open later in the evening. Uh, no. We were told to come back in the morning, 8am to be specific. (Found out later that the volunteer that told us that was supposed to have gone to get one of the head people to check-in “stragglers” but was too lazy. Regardless, it was an issue.)

Saturday morning we make sure we’re up and dressed and headed over to the Con area right around 8am. Yeah. No one there. Finally a staffer walks up and we ask about picking up our badges and she rummages around a bit and tells us that Reg won’t be open until 10am. Uh… the first panel starts when? Oh, right, NINE. See the problem? Turned out to be some sort of mega-miscommunication and it was 2 minutes to 9 before they finally got the box of badges and list of pre-regged sheets (because yes, we were prepaid, all we needed were our badges and bags). It wasn’t just us, of course, there were some vendors who couldn’t get into the dealer room yet, either.

Thankfully this was the only real hiccup. They could have used a tighter ship when it came to scheduling and making sure the panels ended when they were supposed to, but they were pretty good about posting revised schedules as the day progressed. Palmie and I have different opinions on this matter. She says that all cons run this way (though that’s not entirely true as Spectrum had a different experience at GenCon, but whatever) but I look at it from a basic, event planning 101 stand-point: you set a schedule and you do your damnedest to stick to it. You have people available to get your attendees what they need to enjoy the day they paid for. I don’t care if some actor is running a workshop that people paid $20 a pop to attend. They paid for an hour, clear the room after that so the next group can get in. Also, having planned wiggle-room to change over areas is a really good idea–think back to high school when you had so many minutes to change classes. It is, literally, textbook.

Okay, now that that’s done, let’s get to the fun stuff. The hotel was pretty nice, not too crowded despite the various things going on (if there were more than 200 people at Wrath of Con I’d be utterly shocked), and the restaurants never had a wait (which was crazy… I don’t know exactly how folks managed that). The only panels I was planning to attend were the Ghost Hunters panels at 9 and 10 on Saturday. Everything after that were stars of shows I didn’t watch. The Ghost Hunters were fun though did start (and end) about 30 minutes late. Ended up going to the Jerry Doyle Q&A with Palmie and Spectrum and it was an absolute riot! Man! I sorta want to watch Babylon 5 now. Later that day I took in the rescheduled Art, Comics and Manga panel which was pretty cool and chatted with the moderator afterwards, being brave and self-promoting a little bit Not sure how many of my flyers got picked up, but a few did. Hey, they aren’t exactly my target audience, not really, so it was cool.

The dealer room was jam packed and kinda small BUT very fun to browse. I ended up buying a set of marabou-trimmed horns and had a watercolor caricature done on Saturday and then picked up some books on Sunday, signed by their respective authors. Not exactly sure when I’ll have a chance to read them, but I’ll add them to the stack. Also picked up a lot of cards and flyers of things to check out later and follow up on if they prove interesting.

Sunday morning I really didn’t have anything I wanted to do other than that last trip through the dealer room. That accomplished, I found a comfy chair to commandeer, took out my art supplies and penciled two pages of a Random Acts… side project (more info when there’s concrete data on that, I promise) while Spectrum and Palmie did their thing for the morning and early afternoon. Due to some interesting schedule issues and a missing Jerry Doyle (temporarily) we didn’t end up hitting the road until 4ish. Later than I’d wanted to leave, but I was getting so much work done and they were having a blast so it really didn’t hurt anything.

After stopping at IHOP for an early supper we rolled into Tallahassee a little after 7pm, exhausted but happy. Nice first Con. And I know, I know, Dragon*Con will be vastly different. I’m looking forward to it.

So! The birthday was wonderfully low-key and surprisingly perfect. Spec and I had lunch at the park with the obligatory feeding of the ducks, followed by various shopping and then dinner with the family and Palmie. Afterwards, Palmie came over and played Disney Scene It (a birthday gift from Spec) and we watched a movie. As such, not much got done on the comic site revamp, but that’s okay, the comic went up as scheduled.

Thursday it was back to work, sluggishly, and then squeezing in Friday’s comic before and after the SCA meeting. Once again, it got done, but I really need to start working and working ahead now that I’ve got to 3x per week. But at least I have until Tuesday night to upload the first one of the week.

This evening I started revamping the site’s logo but was gratefully interrupted by Spec’s arrival to watch tv and hang out. Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day in the morning, followed by an SCA event in the afternoon for me. In deference to the comic and the need to start on my articles for the month, not to mention finishing the banner recreation, I’ll only be going out for the afternoon and court. Sunday I’m supposed to meet up with Books who is in town for her baby shower (which I will miss) before she heads back down to Tampa. Busy weekend!

Script Frenzy is done for me! Well, I crossed the 101 page mark around 1:30 am Monday morning (I was so close at midnight I decided to plow on through), validated and closed the file. I have about 10-15 pages yet to go to finish Act I but I’ll do those in the next week or so. No hurry. So tonight I finished up tomorrow’s comic (last one of Year 1! Woot!) and spent some time working on the site stuff for Random Acts. Hopefully I’ll get all I need to done tomorrow night so I can totally have my birthday off from everything. If not, I’ll spend Wednesday (which I took off from work) morning finishing all that up and playing hooky all that afternoon. Is anyone planning to join the fam and I for dinner Wednesday night? 6:30, El Jalisco on N Monroe. Just shoot me an email or comment so I know how big a table to ask for when I get there.

Wow, so far I’m being very productive. But, then, I’m also going to be turning on the television soon so that could change.

Last night I worked on getting an article drafted after dinner, then Spectrum came over after spending his day unpacking his kitchen and bathroom. What follows is how we got from the cable guy (not the movie) to A Mighty Wind (the movie):

Spectrum tells me about his day which includes the partial installation of his Cable service. Extra cable needed to be run into another room and it was almost done when the crawlspace needed for access was found to be inhabited by a snake which took off farther into the crawl space when Spec tried to snag it (by the tail… he’s lucky he didn’t get bit!). This reminded me of Sneaky Snake, which is a song by Tom T Hall on a record of barnyard songs that I had a child that I’d recently rescued from Mom’s closet. Todd had never heard the song (and, of course, I could only remember two lines of it) and while I was in the ladies room looked it up on You Tube. While we were listening to the various TTH songs on there I grabbed the album cover. Well, there were some songs on there that we’re online so I proceeded to dig out my ancient stereo with the turntable on top and–lo and behold!–actually was able to play the album on it! That led to looking through the rest of the albums on the shelf and I found the one with the Battle of New Orleans on it. Which then put me in the mood to watch A Mighty Wind (which Spec hadn’t seen) so I dashed off to Blockbuster for the DVD. Unfortunately the DVD was very scratched but we were able to watch most of the movie without too much interference. Gotta love the way an evening can develop.

Today I finished up another article for eHow (one left for the month) and wrote about 16 pages on the script. I’m up to 77 pages now, the winner’s bar is totally reachable in the next 4 days. Now, though, I’m going to layout Tuesday’s comic (the last of Year 1!!!) and work on that last article for a bit.

Holy cow on a snowboard! So, last night as I was attempting to fall asleep it occurred to me that I have 7 days to finish up my eHow articles for this month. Why does this always feel like it sneaks up on me? After momentary panic I reminded myself that not only do I have all three remaining articles titled and planned out, I have the weekend to wrap things up as needed so really there’s no cause for worry.

Of course, when I then add in the two comics that needed doing for this week and the three for next week, plus the banner revamp the site conversion to the new theme, various housework and, oh yes, Script Frenzy which ends in 9 days and which I totally intend to win, well, okay– things start to get a little hinkey. What do I do? I make a list. Because, really, what better motivation is there than being able to cross things off said list with a tremendous flourish? None, that’s what.

Tonight, after dinner, I managed to detail tomorrow’s comic, sketch most of Thursday’s while palmie came over and chatted for a bit, clean the kitchen and take out the trash after she left, do an entire series of in-progress pictures for one of the eHow articles (the most labor intensive, I assure you), chat with Spec about his impending moving schedule and spend some time on the stationery bike (though that was earlier in time than it appears on the list). Now I am determined to finish the sketch for Thursday before turning in. I won’t let myself cross it off early! One more panel to figure out the angle for the backgrounds and I’ll be good.

Tomorrow is looking just as hectic.

Probably because it us. Had a great weekend visiting Drew in Orlando. Spent a pretty penny at IKEA for some organization stuff, kitchen supplies, and some more linens and such. Lots of fun and we apparently lucked out crowd-wise which was good on several levels. Saturday night we wandered through Downtown Disney, which Mom had never been to in it’s current incarnation (the last time she was at Disney there was a small shopping area known as Lake Buena Vista that we _think_ is what is now The Marketplace) before getting a late supper at Outback.

You’d think that living and working in Orlando would be hell as far as traffic and such goes. For some, maybe, but Drew managed to find an apartment that is right next to a major shopping center with just about anything you’d need on a regular basis (and then some) and is within 3 miles of work to the point that he doesn’t have to get on any toll roads or the Interstate for his usual business. Go him!

Since Mom wanted to drive, I got to spend the trip down there and back blocking the pages and panels for the Script Frenzy project. Now just to transfer them from the scrawled notes into Celtx and I should be able to reach goal with no problem. But first, time to finish the comics for next week and work on the next eHow article. Back to the merry-go-round!

I wanted to go out tonight and Spectrum wanted Chinese so we went out to Rice Bowl for dinner. Oh, so much food, so much good food. And, yes, some sushi as well

Writing-wise I drafted an eHow article and then maybe got another page or so done on Wedding Tarot. I admit, I was not incredibly on-task tonight but I did get a soupcon of work done. It counts. Relatively unforunately, Spec is planning to sign a lease on an apartment tomorrow so that means he’ll be going back to Louisiana again (sigh) so I want to hang out with him as much as I can. If that means pecking away at something on the couch next to him, so be it, and I’ll work like the devil when he’s away. But, you know, the sooner her leave the sooner he’ll be back for good, then we can figure out how to date in the same city when we’re not temporarily cohabiting. Whee!

Plus, I totally have him hooked on Real Housewives of New York City

So, after one week of ‘behaving’ myself food-wise and getting a little bit more movement in my day I have managed to knock off 4 pounds. Yay me! Yeah, yeah, I know full well it’s mostly water weight. I’m just happy to see the scale go down.

Saturday was J&S’s wedding and it was very sweet. I have to say it was a bit difficult to tamp down the irreverence with the well-placed thunder during the Eucharist (oh, yes, surprise! it was a full Mass! whee!) but what do you expect from a lapsed everything? Precisely. Then we came home, vegged out in front of the tube while I pecked a few more pages out on the WT script (up to 20 pages now), ordered pizza and enjoyed the evening.

Sunday was spent mostly working on this week’s comics. Not that they were incredibly difficult, it was just me warring with myself. It’s tough to stay on task when I have someone around I would rather be snuggled up with on the couch instead of hunched over a sheet or two of bristol. But they got done. And we made cookies last night!

Tonight I had to introduce him to the hilarity that is Madagascar. (I like to move it, move it!) Figured he could use the laughs after a day of apartment hunting and he was already watching Cars when I got home from the office Now that the comic is done, I think the major thing is going to be decided how best to waste the rest of the evening. (move it!)

Since the weather looked like it would stay dry (relatively speaking, you know, what with the rising humidity) Spectrum and I went for dinner at Renaissance Coffee & Tea and then wandered the open galleries and shops. Well, two-thirds of them probably. It was humid and dusty and we were both getting tired. Still, it was fun and I’m glad I made it out there again. Soon it’ll be too hot to even consider it, sadly enough. *wilt, wilt, wilt* Found a cute blue and gold sun mirror for the bathroom, the presence of a (small) Tallahassee ‘zine scene, and some very soft tweedy (colored) green alpaca that I think will make nice soft socks. Time will tell what it actually becomes, though.

Scripting will wait til tomorrow but I did get the lettering done for next week’s comics and started to read my recently-arrived How to Make Webcomics (Artist Edition Guigar with a totally sweet! sketch on the front page). Might get some writing done before the wedding tomorrow, depending on what time we get up, but definitely some after.

Spectrum has arrived and that, plus the SCA meeting tonight, means I’m taking the night off from Script Frenzy. I’m still a bit head so it’s okay, but I will have to spend some time on it this weekend to keep from falling too far behind

You know? It’s tough getting back into a habit when you’ve been slacking for so long. I can say I just needed a break or was too busy, and that was certainly sure at first, but then I was just out of the habit. Now trying to get back into it is going to take some time.

But! It’s April now so that mean’s a new month of articles, more Random Acts… strips and Script Frenzy! So far, so good, but I’ll need to really be disciplined to not slack while Spectrum is in town again Have to get used to him being around more than just for special visits since he’ll be in town full time very, very soon!!!

And speaking of Random Acts… I made some announcements in the blog section with today’s update and I think I’m going to need to say ‘no, really, I mean it’ in Thursday’s update because today is, of course, April Fool’s (worst. holiday. ever.) or, as I’ve started calling it: Grain of Salt day. But no, I mean it, I’m going to have to bust my ass to manage everything, but there will be site revamps and an increased update schedule on May 1st. Whee!

K’s boyfriend managed to pull off an early surprise birthday dinner for her tonight that Mom and I went to. Quite, quite fun and I purposefully only ate half my steak and loaded potato so I’d have lunch for tomorrow. Such good birthday cake.

Before dinner we needed to kill some time and pick up K’s gift certificate for a pedicure so at the Mall I found something majorly surprising: a denim skirt, knee length, in a blue that doesn’t look dirty or stone washed. ON SALE. Rock on! There was also a funny moment when Mom and I picked up identical jackets from across the room. The hounds tooth pattern was too large to look right on anyone our size but still, that was a bit too freaky.

Palmie has also informed me that our travel plans for next year will preempt the Memphis road trip in favor of hostel-ing it in England for a week. Hey, who am I to argue?!?

Whoops! Tuesday was insanely productive: I drafted almost an entire article before work (yeah, I was up _that_ early) and wrote another one once I got home, plus did visuals for one of the articles. There was actually video involved but something pesky happened when I resaved it and the audio just went absolutely horrible. Oh, well, took alternate stills and got those edited tonight. Article 3 of the remaining 4 will be knitting related and I’m working out a kink in the pattern but should get it done tomorrow night.

Also, after I posted Monday night I actually completed Thursday’s comic a few days early and just finished the pencils for _next_ Tuesday–holy cow, y’all, I’m actually crawling ahead again! If I can keep it up I might build up enough to increase my update schedule again. That would be sweet! It would also tighten up the lag (possibly, I could also end up extending occurrences into arcs, but then again maybe not) from it’s current 8-9 months to maybe only 3 or 4. Dare to dream, right?

Also got the taxes mailed off, several of the shipments for the Vegas welcome bags in at work, and a fair amount of work done on a variety of projects. Tonight, since I was ahead on the comic, I went to dinner with Palmetto and then we stopped by Target because I wanted to pick up the next season of Girls Next Door and then wandered Kohl’s because I hadn’t been since before Christmas. Found 2 shirts and a red case for the iPod. Best thing about the case? 2 things, actually: 1)80% off and 2)it’s made so that all the ports are accessible! No more having to take it out of the case to charge it or transfer tunes! Rock on!

Having someone (professional) do my taxes this year. A rather expensive experiment. Granted, I came out ahead by a little bit when all is said and done and I did learn some things from the tax dude and got to ask some questions about the self-employment tax estimates, etc. The system wasn’t set up to prepare those forms so I still have to do that on my own, but he gave me pre-addressed envelopes. (*mutter* for what I paid them they should be pre-stamped and filled with cash */mutter*)

Will I do it again? Not sure. I feel slightly more comfortable about my ability to do it myself but I really do like the fact that someone with WAY more experience than me is the one who scheduled the business deductions, etc. And at least I know now what this sort of thing runs and won’t face the same sticker shock. Not to mention I get to take today’s fee as a deduction NEXT year. I suppose it all washes out in the end.

In other news. Yay for a weekend spend mostly snuggling with Spectrum. Despite the rain we did manage to hit all four comic shops on Saturday along with Word Traffic. A couple of ethnic restaurants and Comedy Zone Saturday nights, some movies at home and dinner Sunday night with Mom and Molly rounded out our long weekend together. Oh, but I hated to see him drive away this afternoon! He did make it home safe and sound, though, so all’s well. And Vegas is only 2.5 weeks away

Coverage of my glorious weekend away is suspended for a bit to announce that I have a new baby sister! (No, y’all who know Mom haven’t missed a major occurrence) Her name is Molly, she’s 8 weeks and 5 pounds of Buddah-ful-bellied French Bulldog. I’d post a picture of her but my transfer cable is missing. I think it’s actually at the office, attached to the computer from when I brought it instead of the iPod cable.

The weekend was just absolutely lovely, though. New Orleans is as charming as ever and I’m definitely looking forward to my week-long excursion come May. Hopefully by then I’ll have some of the rewrites done and know more of what I need shots of. I also hope to get an interview or two with some gallery owners, so I can understand how they work in general and put on shows. Of course, I could do that here, too, I suppose. And may well.

And Spectrum was charming, too. We had a wonderful time just hanging out, wandering the city, and his work party was fun, too. You know, sometimes they can be odd if you don’t know anyone or your date abandons you (which he didn’t), yadda yadda yadda. But it was fun! Of course, some of his coworkers wanted to check me out, make sure I was making him happy, etc. I think I passed muster And then there was the food: Friday night we wandered into Cuvee for dinner, Saturday lunch was at the Lazy River (which is, apparently, an offshoot of Pat O’s), and Sunday brunch at Palace Cafe. It was really tough to leave but we managed to tear ourselves apart long enough to drive to the interstate where he went west and I east.

After stopping to meet Molly I finally got home just after 9ish. Long weekend. But I think I’d do it again in a heartbeat. A very particular heartbeat.

But now I am cold and alone in my apartment where the ambient temperature is so low that the liquid ganache in my truffles has solidified. Off to upload tomorrow’s comic and then to bed.

As of mid-morning today. Whew! That feels good. What’s weird is that I am only making one gift this year. This has a lot to do with the fact that I am still not finished with some from last year. Seriously. So this year I chopped the gift list to pretty much family and near-family and skipped everything else. On the one hand I’m kinda eh about the abbreviated plans but on the other I like it. The simplicity appeals to me, and we know that’s an aberration of ginormous proportions.

Also, tomorrow is the 52nd strip of Random Acts… TaDaa! I did what I set out to do and its still fun so I’ll be continuing. I would have celebrated more but I’ve managed to screw up my writing plans for the first half of the month so the deadline is pinning me down seriously. It’s okay, I’m on, like, Plan C at this point, but I think it’ll be the best of all of them and I should have no problem completing them before leaving town Friday morning for my weekend away.

My goal is to be totally caught up so that I can have 3 days without thinking about any of my work things–any of them! Not going to think about them replacing the office carpet while I’m gone. Not going to think about my articles. Not going to think about the comic. It’s a weekend of not thinking. Well, okay, not much thinking. I will only dally by taking pictures, if plausible, of the Arts District in NOLA for future reference for Wedding Tarot. And since I haven’t had time to ‘work’ on that in ages, it doesn’t count against the not thinking about works. I love my logic!

Um, yeah… a wee bit behind.

I actually caught up at the write-in on Saturday and then didn’t even open the file Sunday and today, well, today didn’t happen. Chances of me making Knit Night tomorrow are looking a leetle bit slim if I hope to not slip farther behind.

Of course, the reason for me not writing up a storm the rest of the weekend was a good one! Honest! Spectrum got to town about eight thirty Friday night and left around two-ish on Sunday. It’s hard to be sure of the exact time because I hadn’t changed the clocks yet so it was constantly look at the clock, subtract an hour, then subtract another hour for central time to figure when he’d get home. Wait, that would make it 3 my time he left. It was just a perfectly lazy weekend and very much needed. *tries to wipe dopey grin off face and fails terribly*

Tonight was just trying to catch up on stuff. I convinved myself into not walking after work because I still had to ink RA and do visuals for an eHow article before writing. Then I’d promised I’d get the Halloween pictures uploaded and I hadn’t finished the gallery upgrade and then the applet thingy needed some plug in I couldn’t find the first five times I went through the admin panel looking for it and then tried to upload the first batch manually only it stalled and stalled and stalled. So a sixth time through the admin panel (it was a grudge match by now) and finally found a tab to get more plugins (whew!) updated the applet and remote plugins (yay!) and went to the gallery to upload the pictures only to find out that despite the upgrading I had to manually activate the remote plugin and then life would cooperate. So now I’m babysitting the first 81 files (which are taking forever, probably cause the filesize for each is big) and then I have about two dozen more to add from another folder. But at least its working and I didn’t have to choose each file by hand: yay for drag and drop.

Once the second batch starts I’ll just turn off the monitor and call it a night. I’m sleepy and verging on cranky and, even though it doesn’t necessarily seem possible, wishing I’d gotten a few more hugs this weekend, lol.

Because 11pm would actually be the 23rd hour, but that’s neither here nor there at this point. Suffice it to say, it’s rather late in the evening and I’m just now finishing up the stuff for the NaNo Kick-Off tomorrow night. Granted, I got a boat-load of stuff done tonight (tomorrow’s RA…, 4 laps at SLMP, a website, and now the kick-off tickets) but none of it was quick! Oh well, it’s all coming together. The resource page isn’t exactly pretty, but that can be done after the kick-off tomorrow (when I go add the write-in information as well… oops!); the important thing is that it’s up and all of the downloads seem to work (go me!).

Tomorrow is said kick-off, followed by more work on the resource page (change color schemes, add an icon or two, add the write-in information). Maybe try for the Ned-related bit of fluff that I really wanted to do last year but didn’t have time for. Start work on Thursday’s RA… if there’s time.

The party this weekend was unbelievably fun. I mean, I really got lucky with the group that came: everyone really did mesh well together and the last four of us were going strong til just after eleven. I, of course, have enough Spanish Fork Chicken Stew to last me the entire week (good thing, because I go into a no-cooking zone after a party) and some treats and salads, too. But I also need to get the apartment back to normal because I’m going to have a houseguest this weekend and I’d rather the place be more than just presentable.

And, of course, NaNoWriMo 2007 starts in the wee hours of Thursday. How is it November already? I know I probably ask this every year, but seriously, folks, where did the year go??? Anyway, the holidays are in full-swing now that Halloween is almost here. I do love this time of year but I have absolutely no freaking clue how I’m going to survive until New Years! The next two months are looking exceedingly hectic in the best possible way, but still, folks. Come January 1 I think it’ll be time for a complete and total pass out. Seriously.