10/29/2006 - Halloween in 3... 2... 1...

9/8/2006 - 1 month, 22 days, 16 hours....

Until Halloween and I haven't done a THING!  I blame my motorcycle for distracting me on every nice day that I'm not doing anything.

But Mortemus said that his wife and he are looking forward to start building so that's nice to know.  Now all we need is a plan.

4/14/2006 - April 14

So it's April and I'm dragging my feet on Halloween again... as usual.  I admire people who can build all year long but I just can't bring myself to do so.  Most of my builds start in August-September and of course I usually don;t get half of it finished.

Finished?  Last year's take-down is not finished!    Good thing we don't need the basement for anything or I'd actually have to organize and put away everything like I'm supposed to.  Maybe next weekend...

11/3/2005 - November

So it's November now, Halloween is over for another year.  We had over 950 people pass through our haunt with varying degrees of enjoyment.  We had the usual kids and parents who thoroughly enjoyed the display, the ones who thought last year's was better and longer, and people who just grabbed their candy and popcorn and left.  I was one of the most stress-free Halloweens we have had in the last few years probably due to the fact that we live in the house now instead of having to come over to the place when my brother was living here.

Leah, James, Justin and Angela helped out a lot this year as always and it was nice to be able to leave some of the decisions on decorations to someone else.  I have enough trouble with concentrating on what needs to be done next!  I'd go to grab something I needed and end up working on another task before I got back to the first.

The backyard and house are still a complete disaster but I did take down the graveyard today.  The mailman will be happy since he can cut across the yard again I'm sure. 

Just keep thinking to myself that by this time next week I will be landing in California for our trip to Disneyland!

10/30/2005 - Open

So we had the haunt open to the public tonight for the first time... and I am beat.  85 people, mostly Beavers, Cubs and Pathfinders and a few sent over by Lady Dracul (thanks!).  Tonight we had 5 people helping out (well 6 for a bit) which worked pretty well.  Tomorrow we only have Leah and me for most of the day and part of the evening.  That is going to suck!  Already thinking that we might have to scale back our display or change it drastically to enable the wife and me to be able to keep an eye on everything.  What I really need is a garage that I can do a maze in so I can build it well in advance and just lock the doors at the end of the night.  We spent most of today getting the last of the lights in place and setting out all the decorations and then after we closed we took most of them back into the house to make sure they don't 'walk away' tonight.

Time to get some sleep... it all starts again at 10:30 tomorrow morning!

10/27/2005 - Final Countdown

We are in the last few days left!  The Beavers and Cubs and possibly the Girl Guides are coming over Sunday night for their Halloween meetings.  This gives us a chance to make sure everything is working the way we want it to.  Starting around 10:30 Monday the classes from John Tod Elementary will be making their way over for a tour.  Last year we had the grade 3/4 class come over and they all had fun... this year it's supposed to be all classes!  We also are expecting some ESL students from TRU to come visit and see what we crazy Canadians do for Halloween.

As always everything seems to happen at once.  The power went out at our shop today causing our register to lose it's memory.  To make things worse we spent and hour re-programming the stupid thing to find out the battery backup is shot and as soon as we unplug it it happened all over again.  Tomorrow: Shopping for a new cash register!

10/23/2005 - Like 8 days left

Yesterday managed to get most of the crew together (Justin, Angela, James and myself) and pretty much finished the walls.  I came up with a great idea (I think) and hopefully it will work as well as I think rather than cause the problems I also think possible.  Yes I am being vague but I don't want to ruin the surprise.  Have some pictures of my niece Kaylee being what babies are... well not ALWAYS... but being cute rather than screaming banshees.

10/20/2005 - 11 days left (and nothing ever goes as planned)

Today was one of the first nice days we have had all week and I was supposed to be off early (like noon) from work.  I say supposed because as always when you have plans something goes wrong.  The other crew at work ended up spending most of their morning babysitting a machine becuase tech support at this particular bank is DUMB.  I have never dealt with a tech support group that seems to enjoy or be oblivious enough to send us back to the same machine time and time again for the exact same thing when we CAN'T fix it!

"The machine isn't working because it's empty."

"OK"

~not even 10 minutes later~

"Yeah, they want you to go back to the machine... it's not dispensing."

"Yeah... because it's FREAKIN' EMPTY!"

So I didn't get anything really accomplished this afternoon.  I did wash my motorcycle and go for a ride before it got too cold but that's about it.  Oh yeah, I stopped by a fellow haunter's display to check on her progress.  The weather isn't helping her either!  STOP RAINING ALREADY!!

Next few days are supposed to be nice.  Need to get stuff done... will try to post pictures soon!

10/19/2005 - More rain!

 Woke up this morning to go to work and to find that it's raining again. I can't believe how much it's rained this week and it's starting to worry me!  It's really delaying the build and if it keep sup we WILL HAVE TO build in the rain to be done by Halloween (which will suck... I hate working in the rain). 

10/14/2005 - Blah

Woke up and it was raining... lots.  Didn't get much accomplished for the build until almost noon when it finally decided to clear up a bit.  Managed to get some boards up over the front windows and it really makes it look creepy.  At least creepier than it was.  Still have about 300 candy bags to fill before that part is done.  Leah and I both have tomorrow and Sunday off together so we hope to finish the walls this weekend.

10/9/2005 - Sunday

The build continues.  It becomes harder to envision what things will look like and plan for the walls since we are using pallets scavenged from free piles around town.  Realized how lucky we were to get a whole pile of identical pallets last year!  James came over an hour early for work to help out which is nice.