adventures of a recent kind

Here's what I've been up to lately. No rest for the wicked, apparently.

Ryan docked in San Diego again, so he visited and we stumbled upon an area where a dozen cats and a handful of skunks live together.

He and Nick also did this.

Nick and I drank this.

My pets were adorable.

There are now more dogs than people at my parents' house when I visit.

This isn't even all of them. 

Addie decided she wanted to sleep like a person.

Nick and I were zombies for the first night run for Run For Your Lives. I got shoved to the ground multiple times, head butt, my thumb twisted, and almost got punched.

The living can be so mean sometimes.

Said goodbye to Breaking Bad in style.

Relax, it's candy. WINK.

This is my best friend.

And she bought Wreck This Book.

Went to Catalina for a friend's birthday.

Celebrated Dad's birthday by going to A&V.

This place always scared me as a kid. It still kind of does.

And then Steamers.

She did a good impression of Billy Holiday. Not as good as the one David Sedaris does, but still good.

Visited the Whaley House.

Yankee Jim's grave, who was hung for stealing a boat.

We finally used the free Sea World passes we got for adopting Addie.

This Walrus' eyes looked like death.

One second after this photo was taken, the girl on the right started crying because it scared her how close the Beluga Whale got to her.

Baby dolphin! I got to pet him!

Nick is back in school. Ha.

Another moment where my life flashed before my eyes.

We went to Prohibition, a hidden 1920's themed bar.

These guys asked people to swing dance. Nick and I were the only ones who obliged. 

Visited the Ranch Buena Vista Adobe with a ghost hunting group and got a weird photo. (Blue thing in top left corner).

This is the rest of the wall where I got that weird, blue thing.

My favorite story of this place is that while it was being fitted with electric wiring, the workers found a body in the wall. Then instead of reporting it to the police or giving it a decent burial, they apparently decided the best course of action was to just leave it in the wall.

Went to Delusion, where I had to pretend to be a body on a gurney to break into a morgue.

This year, it was set in a church, which did not allow them to serve alcohol. They did, however, allow a Tarot card reader.

The Buchanan side of the family finally remembered I was born and we had a party.

Emily had her engagement party, but I just want to remind everyone that we were engaged first.

Heidi and Erin's birthday! We went to a 1920's themed dance show in LA.

All of us around age 10.

Now age 24!

Green Flash Brewery tour.

My new favorite thing that I learned here is that after brewing, they send the alcoholic plant leftovers to farms for feed. The pigs can't handle how alcoholic it is and just black out, but the cows love it. As soon as they smell it on the property, they refuse to be milked until after they get to eat it.

Our pumpkins this year. Mine is the left, Nick's is the right.

And our costumes of a cryptozoologist mermaid and a sailor. I'll let you guess who is who.

much love,
hedgie

unusual words

One of my friends sent me a list of unusual words that don't get tossed around in everyday conversation. I really love these lists because it amuses me how oddly specific their definitions are and I like to imagine what scenarios one would have to be in to actually used words like vigesimation--the act of killing of every 20th person, mytacism--the incorrect or excessive use of the letter 'M', or mallemaroking--the carousing of seamen on board Greenland whaling ships.

As much as I love words like this, they will probably never accomplish much for the English literary world other than creating these entertaining lists. They are too specific. One of the things I love most is when a book takes a sensation or action I have experienced but never really paid attention to before. It makes me suddenly feel it while I'm reading in a way I never did while it was actually happening to me. It gives us something wonderful to picture. If we actually used these specific words, we would lose those moments of clarity because instead of the description surprising us, it would just be another vocabulary test. They would become as matter-of-fact as words like 'spatula' or 'happy'.

We would have sentences like:

"The girls were very abderian when she said that."

Instead of:

 "That did it. The girls in my troop tuned elastic: Drema and Elise doubled up on one another like inextricably entwined kites; Octavia slapped her belly; Janice jumped straight in the air, then did it again, as if to slam-dunk her own head. They could not stop laughing. No one had laughed so hard since a boy named Martez had stuck a pencil in the electric socket and spent the whole day with a strange grin on his face." 

--ZZ Packer, Brownies

This:
I had a case of mulligrubs.
Instead of:
"I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
--Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar


This:
"Her hair reminded her of ruska."
Instead of:
"When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheaded girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing in her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the gold highlights in the strawberry hair. It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors."
--Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex


This:

"That day of the funeral was full of apanthropinization."

Instead of:

"I remembered the morning of my mother's funeral. I'd been given milk to settle my stomach; I'd pretended it was coffee. I imagined I was drinking coffee elsewhere. Some Arabic-speaking country where the thick coffee served in little cups was so strong it could keep you awake for days."

--ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

This:
"I felt numinous when I thought about him."
Instead of:
"If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything."
--Joyce Carol Oates, First Love: A Gothic Tale


Or this:
"I had yoko meshi when I tried to learn how to speak French."
Instead of:
"On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From dog owners I learned "Lie down," "Shut up," and "Who shit on this carpet?" The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. "I want me some lamb chops with handles on 'em."
--David Sedaris, See You Again Yesterday


It may seem strong to claim these words as less vibrant than full sentences, but that's how I feel about them.
Or maybe, I'm just making a pettifoggery about hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian words simply because I am cursed with ultracrepidarianism. 






much love,
hedgie

haunted places in orange county

A long time ago, my Dad and I worked on this article for Orange County Magazine. We traveled, interviewed, and took photos and came out with this guide to some of the more haunted areas in Orange County. I hope you enjoy another spirit serial:

And later tonight, I am going to Delusion: Masque of Mortality, and this happened last year:

So I can only assume it will happen again.





much love,
hedgie