“If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.” ~John Tyner

No one looks forward to traveling for the holidays. I'm in that group. But when you're 3,000 miles from your family, it's what you do.

This year, being the first Xmas since my father passed unexpectedly, I felt it was even more important to try and get home for the holidays. I was very excited that my job was giving us the week off between Xmas and New Year's Eve, as I had not one vacation day left after exhausting them around the funeral.

I wouldn't think twice about the crowds, the traffic, the hustle and bustle of holiday travel.

Been there...done that.

Then they started touching people. But only if you choose to not be radiated with low level xrays, first.

I'm not sure WHERE I gave up my rights to not have my naked body end up on youtube. I'm pretty sure when I buy a ticket to fly, I didn't give up my rights. I don't have to show my naked body when I buy a ticket to a concert. I don't have to have someone, in a room somewhere, inspect my fat rolls when I buy a ticket to a movie.

And if I DON'T want radiation and xray porn...I have to have a pat down, which includes, someone putting their hands in my bra, in my pant waistband, and in my crotch.

I'm pretty sure the last time I saw a pat down like that it was a MSNBC show called "Lock Up". Now I know....THEY don't have any rights.

A USAToday/Gallup Poll conducted in January found that 78% of the American public were in favor of these new measures, expressing a strong sentiment that so-called "invasions of privacy" are a small price to pay for greater security aboard passenger airplanes. 84% of the persons polled felt that the machines would prevent terrorists from entering planes with explosives.

WTF?!?!

How many folks have been stopped at the gate so far? None. So I'm going to assume that our need for more than a metal detector...not really needed.

You know where they get stopped? In the plane. By other passengers who rat them out. Not even the TSA agents that are supposedly hidden on the flights have caught anyone.

Hey...84%! Let me tell you WHY you have these scanners. It's not for your SAFETY. Hoooooo noooooo. Please. Do you think the big ol corporations that slap these things together, never testing the level of radiation they are pumping, care about your safety?!?!

Remember Michael Chertoff? He was Mr. Bush's Homeland Security Czar. As of January, his consulting agency, the Chertoff Group, counted among its clients one of the machines' manufacturers.

"There is no evidence these new body scanners make us more secure. But there is evidence that former Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff made money hawking these full body scanners," Rep. Ted Poe (Texas) said from a speech from the House floor.

Anyone heard of the 4th amendment?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Wake up America! You're letting them take away our rights on the basis of fear from the boogie man!

If I don't see you for the holidays....you can see ALL of me on youtube as "fatladypassengerTSA.wvm"

I think I've written about the family cabin, my folks mindlessly tossed on the market and sold out from under us kids.

It's an open-wound....still.

And I think I've mentioned that I've had problems dreaming about my dad, since his death. I can admit I'm still not ready to open myself up completely to him 'visiting' me in some dream world. I've 'visited' with other relatives after they have passed, but this...this is still so fresh and raw.

The closest I've come to having him in a dream was seeing him in reflections while everyone else saw him clear as day.

I don't need my dream analysis book to figure that one out.

Last night I dreamt my folks and I were setting fire to our family cabin to get rid of it. My dad telling me where to put wood and paper to spread the fire that would burn the place to the ground.

My waking moment came when I tried to write on an exposed beam, "Poppa, don't be mad." Cuz you see...he built it. My grandfather, so the story goes, "Carried the main beam on his shoulder while Nan read a book on 'how to build a house' to him."

This is the same cabin my folks decided to sell and never bothered to ask us if we were even interested in keeping it in the family.

As I tried to finish my dream note on the pine beam, under the stairs, the ink ran out of the marker before i could finish the message.

I woke to tears and wondering if my parents asked for my grandfather's forgiveness before the heartlessly sold our cabin.

I know they sure didn't ask it from us kids.

"You know, it just occurred to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment." ~Dr Ray Stantz, Ghostbuster

I've collected a few pieces of ghost detection equipment over the years. The simple fact is...I've never been able to use them. Thankfully...our house is NOT haunted.

Well what better time to use them, than when a friend moved into a former funeral parlor, with the back story of an old woman falling and dying in the snow.

Really....none better!

The weekend before Halloween, a group of friends met for cocktails, cuz what grown adult can get up the courage to stand with digital recorder in hand and ask silly questions into the air without liquid courage? We descended into the basement of the now two apartment flat.

The basement is where they would embalm the bodies. Spooky enough on its own. I had gathered up all my haunting materials into one big tool box: EMF, dowsing rods, digital recorder, flash lights, candles, camera. I mostly packed it for the comedy effect that I actually had a "ghost hunting tool kit", but it came in handy to haul suff around.

Beverages in hand, we attempted to be hunters. Mostly folks jumped out at each other. My friend who lived there decided to put fake limbs and hanging props to be released at the right time.

It was fun, but certainly not serious.

We moved up to the second floor, which was the family residence when it was a funeral parlor. The first floor was the viewing rooms. The couple downstairs, unaware of what the building was, had felt cold blasts of air, as if someone had passed by and one of their dogs would track empty space in the thin air, as if someone was walking to the back of their apartment.

We went back upstairs and four of us sat at the dinning room table As we talked, I felt cold air at my back. I decided to turn on the EMF meter sitting on the middle of the table. There is no reason the needle in this contraption should move, unless there is electro magnetic waves. There weren't any on the table, till we started talking again, and the needle started responding.

The needle would pop up and down with the conversation. We started asking questions and getting some responses. I pulled out my camera and snapped random pix around the room. When I looked at the pictures later...there was actually stuff in the picture! The front of the apartment having the most 'activity'.

Now I'm no expert, but I find it very interesting that there was all these light 'orbs' as we were talking and the EMF meter was very active. There doesn't seem to be a flash in the windows that would cause the orbs. There is no reflective surface that the light is bouncing off of.



It was also interesting that the 'ghost donut', which is zoomed in on above, was actually on the other side of the room in another picture, as if it traveled across the room. It's the same light anomaly, with the bright ring and a hole in the middle.



We decided to take our search upstairs. The EMF meter only went off at the front of the attic. We couldn't get another reading when we took a second sweep of the same area. This means that when we came up into the attic, something was standing in the front and then left. When I looked at the pictures, I had an orb when we first got up there and there were no more orbs in any of the other pictures there.



It was also interesting that the needle went completely flat after the initial spike that actually got the lights and sound to activate.

Probably the creepiest find, after looking at the pictures, was the profile peeking over the door. I've looked and looked at this one and don't see anything on the corner of the door and there is nothing that would cast a shadow at the height.



I'm going to say "not bad" for beginers! I would love to go back and do another sweep. I can see where this can get addicting. Good thing I've already made up my company name and logo. Now show me to your ghosts!

The wheel's spinning, but the hamster's dead

It's kinda how I feel today. Like a dead hamster, floppin' around in a wheel that just keeps spinning out of control.

My account is overdrawn.
My job doesn't pay enough.
My bills keep stacking up.
My exercise routine is null and void.
My sleep pattern is all screwed up.
My attitude stinks.

"Pity party for one? We'll seat you now, mam."

(ugh...he called me mam)

You know when you get in one of those ruts. Maybe it's the time change. Maybe it's the change of seasons. But it ruined my day when I looked in my new issue of "This Old House" with reader's before and afters...and I just know I'll never afford their 'before' to make an 'after'!

sigh

The week didn't start out right with the bank sending me a notice that I was worse than no money in the bank...there was actually negative money in the bank. I just sighed and thought, "Well if I didn't have it to begin with, I can't magically make it NOW!"

"Oh fiddle-de-deeee....I'll worry 'bout it tomorrow."

I was saying to my co-worker that it doesn't seem fair that you work and work and do a good job,and do extra stuff on top of that to bring good karma,and you still have nothing to show for it.

I have this lil radio show once a week, with a pal, and we are ALWAYS chasing the money. I had to layout a billboard for a local guy who makes hand over fist. Scads of cabbage for his show! He's on once a week, just like us. He has local sponsors, just like us. Of course he's pushing SU sports. And no one knows better than I that sports are where the money is at. Especially in this college town!

I said we should start calling ourselves the "SU Power Hour" instead of Irish Power Hour.

We'd be RICH!
And then sued.
And then right back to square one.

Sigh....have I brought you down with me? That wasn't my intention...but it really is true: misery loves company. So pull up a chair. I'll change the reservation. How many should I expect for our pity party?

And life begins again.

It's amazing, what takes weeks to set up, gets picked up in an hour.

After a successful night of scaring the peewaddy out of lil chillin', we pulled up stakes and turned off the lights and ended another Halloween.

Home made props and colored lights and fog juice by the gallon packed into the living room. Babba Yaga, my gypsy witch alter ego, exhausted and cold.

We didn't have as many kids this year, but winter came early. There was actually frozen rain coming down when I put Bryant in his ground breaking coffin. I made him two years ago, inspired by my lord and god pumpkinrot.com. He was scotch guarded pretty good, so he didn't care about the frozen pellets bouncing off his paper machie bones and torn panty hose skin. (hence his name...I used Lane BRYANT panty hose)

Four fog machines hissing scented smoke. My friend Scott, who was the gravedigger in the yard, stiffly stomped after kids, grating his steel shovel on the hard concrete.

"I ain't going up there!"

"I don't want to go to that house!"

"Don't you dare get up in here and come after me!"

"Come on honey...she's a good witch!"

"Could you scare my son. He doesn't get scared of anything."

Just a sampling of those that had to earn their candy from the Babby Yaga.

Three college girls came to the door while I was inside. I had left the cold stoop, strobe at my back, to warm up a little when they knocked. Three fuzzy college kittens. Way too old to be begging for candy. Practically freezing their tails off...literally.

"What do you want of the Babba Yaga?"

All three shot straight up! They hadn't noticed I was staring at them through the screen door.

"Oh crap." one of them whispered.

"Well....WHAT DO YOU WANT!?!?"

The front one moved to the back. The middle one croaked, "Candy?" I swung the door open and moved right into their space, cauldron of candy under my arm.

"Candy you say? Well you're a lil too old I say." They giggled.

"WHAT DO YOU SAY?!" I screeched. They all jumped back, clinging to each other.

"Trick or Treat?" the one in the back worked up her bravey to say.

"Trick or treat..." I put some candy into the first bag. "Smell myyyyyyyy.....??"

"Feet?" the second one says in a whisper, not looking into my face.

"Give me something....gooooood...." I offer to the third one.

"Too.....Eat?" the third one said, trailing off so that I could barely hear her finish.

"YES! HAAAAAAAAHHHAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!" I scream and fill the night air with my best witch cackle. It bounces off the neighboring house and fills the space between.

The three kitty's run from my stoop, shrieking and clinging to each other.

Just as they hit the sidewalk and slowed down, I heard one say, "I wish we had houses like that in my neighborhood when I was a kid."

Indeed lil pussy cat....indeed.