Digital Masquerade

It’s October and it’s my absolute favourite time of the year. This makes me a very happy girl. Seriously what’s not to love about October. The leaves turn, the sweaters come out, gorgeous coloured scarves and of course…it’s the time of ghouls and monsters.

We’ve been blessed with some pretty amazing warm weather last weekend and we took full advantage of it. We started off by hitting up Canada’s Wonderland’s Halloween Haunt on Friday night. We went with the rest of the Rue Crew and got to have a little meet and greet with the organizers of the event. We went last year and while it was good, they really outdid themselves this year with the Haunted Houses and all out ghoul atmosphere of the park. If you get a chance I’d highly recommend going. The line ups were non-existent, the people were amazingly cool and overall it was a great way to kick off the long weekend.

We’re going again in a couple of weeks for an engagement party so I’ll be taking some more photos but I did take some (ok quite a bit) of photos during our excursion on Friday. So I figured I would share them with you.
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I’ve finally finished processing and resizing the pictures from Montreal and thought I’d do a little day by day run down of our time there. We walked a lot. We laughed all the time and overall we had an absolutely restful few days in a city we both love. I’ve put the rest of the entry behind a cut since there are quite a few pictures.
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I was meaning to write this on February 5th, our two year anniversary, but after our meal at Red Lobster and me slipping into your anniversary gift..well…things got a little bit…busy.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that it’s been two years since we started dating. Looking back I honestly can not imagine a happier time in my life. I won’t say that you complete me, because frankly, we are perfectly complete on our own. Instead, I’ll say that we we compliment one another.

You came into my life when I was not really looking for love. In fact, all I was looking for was a good roll in the hay and maybe a laugh or two. You gave me that and so much more.

You are, without a doubt the kindest, most loving and talented man I know. Every day with you is gift. My life with you has been filled with laughter, friends and treasured moments. You’ve given me a life I never thought possible.

Yes, I know I’m being cheesy, and I’m not normally a sentimental fool, but I do want to say thank you for loving me as much as I love you.

Love,
Me

I never realized how many muscles I have in my body until this weekend because every single one of them is now sore. I guess I should have expected as much because I have never played paintball before and I’m really not that athletic. But damn, was it ever worth it!

A large group of us from work went up to Sgt Splatters on Sunday for three hours of paintball fun. All of the girls from work had gone shopping beforehand and bought some army pants and camouflage shirts. Unfortunately we didn’t really take into consideration that the camouflage shirts we bought were for the arctic (they were black and white) but who cares, we looked cute. None of us wanted to ruin our good clothes, and damn are those army pants ever comfortable!

I have to admit that it was quite the adrenaline rush shooting people, running for cover and getting dirty. It reminded me of when we used to play cops and robbers as kids. I miss that kind of playfulness that I had when I was young. I hardly remember watching any TV. We would be outside from 10:00 am until 6:00 pm climbing trees, building forts, and playing on the train tracks. Looking back it was pretty dangerous but fun.

I guess paintball allows grown ups to recreate that kind of playfulness of childhood, but with an added layer of pain for more of an adrenaline rush. Would I play again? I probably would but only if it was a closed game with other beginners. I realized the horror of what it would be like to get slaughtered when you go up against advanced paintball players.

They way they have it set up is that you don’t play the full three hours straight. They would rotate our group with another group. You play one game, come off, then they play etc. So we only played about 6-7 games for the three hours. The other group was comprised of hard core paint ball experts. They all had their own clothes, masks, guns and insane look in their eyes. Our group was about 98% beginners who were inappropriately dressed with borrowed guns and not enough padding. The final game of the day was essentially a free for anyone at Sgt Splatters who wanted to join. I ran out of paintballs so I never went into that last game and I still thank whatever deity smiled upon me that hour.

Within 5 minutes after the start of the game our group was staggering out, limping and moaning in pain. Apparently there was some paintball fanatic in there who had two automatic guns and was just slowly walking around firing hundreds of paint pellets every minute. He would not hit you once but about 8-10 times until you were huddled in the sand weeping for your life. I think I would have kicked him in the balls if he kept doing that to me. Well, only after I was able to catch my breath from screaming, “I’m out!!! Don’t hit me! I’m OOOUUUUTTTT!!!”

Overall it was a lot of fun. I have some bruises but the worst welt and massive bruise is on my stomach from getting hit at point blank range. I had hoped I would be able to take some pictures, but after the first game my hands were covered in vegetable oil based paint and I didn’t want to touch my camera and ruin it. They took some group shoots of us though, and if you can actually see me in them then I’ll be sure to post them so you can see just how butch I can look in army fatigues and pigtails.

Edit:Added a photo. I’m the middle girl with the black and white camo top. I’m realizing that three shirts was probably not a good idea for the added bulk

I would like to thank everyone for their kind wishes regarding my father, it meant a lot to me.

I left work early on Monday and made my way down to Hamilton to see my father. The entire bus trip down my mind would not stop working, shaping the worst possible scenarios. I was constantly weighing the options my family, well my sisters and I, would have against each possible outcome and none of them looked good.

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I finally got off my ass and posted the photos from the Living Dead Doll Art Show. Sure, some of them are a bit blurry and I didn’t take pictures of all of the dolls, because honestly, there were a lot of them and I wanted to have a beer. I have to have my priorities in place you know.

If your interested in buying any of the dolls, or for pictures of the ones I didn’t shoot you can check out Toy Tokyo’s website.

Last night, I went along with the Rue Crew for the opening night of Canada’s Wonderland Fearfest. This was the second year of the park holding a Halloween themed event and Gary and I were quite pissed off that we didn’t get to go last year. What can I say other then it was really cool and I actually took some ok pictures considering my novice photographer status. (more…)

Here are some of my favourite pictures from the Festival of Fear’s Friday night industry party. (more…)

Of course life has become insanely busy for me. We have the Festival of Fear this weekend and with that comes house guests and cleaning the apartment, getting food and booze, also figuring when we are working the booth and what parties we are attending. It’s madness I tell you! So not only did we clean like mad last weekend, we went to a fantastic birthday party on Saturday night that kept us out until 4:00 in the morning for our friend Tom (aka Tomb Dragomir from Rue Morgue Radio). His lovely girlfriend Emma put on the shindig for him and I think she did a fabulous job hooking him up right for his 30th. I would post some pictures but (more…)