A week or so back, my very own Wump decided she wanted to host a Halloween party in Bar Äijä’s. Actually she decided this back in August sometime and that was when she started planning it.
There was, last I checked, some 13 pages of notes she had taken, mostly article headlines from the Internet about cheap and effective Halloween decorations, games and food that we could make on a shoestring (or in at least one case, toilet roll tube). We gradually weeded these down based on what was affordable and possible (most of the ideas were simply not possible if you didn’t have access to USian candy and basic household products, which EU regulations on health and safety prevent us from buying here in Finland) and ended up with something doable – but still quite a production!
This sign is actually a modern art piece I call Monument to Kid With Probable ADHD (Diagnosis Pending).
ooooOOOOOoooooOOOOOOOooooooooh…
Boo!
Wump put a lot of thought into it all. Like, where do all the little spiders come from?
I don’t really have much to add to the report. It was a fun night, we had a great time preparing all the various decorations and snacks, and all in all it was a most excellent party after so damn long without any sort of social events on the Bar Äijä’s calendar.
Even my nephew Viggo, who was very distracted by the fake cobwebs all over everything, had fun.
Like I say, they were all over everything. In retrospect one packet of fake cobwebs would probably have been fine.
The costumes were fun; everyone put in a lot of work and I’m just sorry I failed to get a picture of Mrs. Hatboy’s classical cyborg outfit (she was once again making excellent use of her ring-pull skirt and top). Wump did my face paint and the result was something a bit too cubist-dynamic to be a zombie but you have to start somewhere. And we made it work.
Hawaiian shirt goes with everything.
Wump herself went as Eleven from Stranger Things.
We also planned, as Wump is a crazy fan of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a Halloween Heist. If you don’t know what that is, basically it means the party-goers are shown an object (in this case Wump’s shiny quiz trophy) and whoever manages to steal it and hang onto it until 21:00 (there were kids at the party who had to go home to bed … not our kids, but you know, kids) is the winner and gets a box of candy.
The trophy.
I had my doubts that it would work the way she was planning, since – well, since Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a scripted TV show with a props, stunts and special effects budget and the heists are performed by ostensible police detectives. But it actually turned out amusingly well. The trick, for me as instigator of the heist, was to hide the trophy and then get drunk enough to lose track of its whereabouts.
There were some stumbling blocks along the way and we’ll need to sort out the rules of engagement a little better next year to avoid accusations of cheating (and I have to say, some actual cheating I would have been on top of if not for that whole ‘drunk’ thing), but the same thing happened in the TV show and I think we couldn’t have expected this to go better first time around. Halloween Heist #2 in 2022!
And the snacks, although arguably also a testament to severe inability to focus on any one thing for more than seventeen seconds, were really great. Here we have sushi spiders. Kind of. Many of them ended up being eyeballs.
We also had cake pop brains with marshmallow spinal cords.
And cake pop eyeballs.
And a horrible three-eyed blood-drooling cake pop whateverthefuck.
Also slimy entrail-ey brownies, and an army of gingerbread mutants, and a mocha cake graveyard.
Truly excellent.
A good time was had by all.
Pictured: all.
That’s about it. We wound up sitting and talking until about two in the morning, but I don’t remember precisely when the last folks left. Wump did take a break from about 22:30 to 00:00 to go inside and watch some Brooklyn Nine-Nine (I told you she was a fan), but she was basically the last person standing aside from your trusty baarimikko who had some tidying up to do. Apparently organising the party and cleaning up after the party are two different things. Who knew?
Bring on Halloween Fest 2022!
Hatboy's Hatstand 
‘ken awesome, Hatboy!
I’m just going to throw this post out as a general catch-up place too. Feel free to comment about whatever, as always.
The main reason being, there will not be any more posts at least for a little while. This was the 2499th post on the Hatstand, and I have come up with a fun 2500th post idea but it is also a sort of a Christmas Special idea, so it has to wait another month and a half before the pay-off. If anything super important happens in the meantime I’ll just have to decide whether it’s important enough to spoil my really, really stupid 2500th blog post idea or if it can be folded in elsewhere and then made into a post later. But whatever.
I’m also still dealing with a truly historical drought in my writing. I know, I’ve done a ton of reviews (and was recently applauded for it by our Team Space Lasagna Captain the Big Bearded Nerd as the #SPSFC judging entered quarter-finals phase and a bunch of traffic came to the blog as a result) and various little bits and pieces like this blog post, and a ton of e-mail correspondence, but I have not gotten time off to write. I’ve gotten one (1) writing session in the past four weeks. And I got that one because I broke down and ceased to function.
It’s not anyone’s fault. I prioritise my family and that is absolutely non-negotiable to me. This last weekend, we hit the hotel / spa in Turku and it was great. I had an amazing time. I will never resent my girls for being the most important thing in my life. But aren’t I allowed to resent the universe, a little bit, for not giving me a second run-through each day so I can do all the stuff I need to do?
I have been unable to progress with seeking out professional help for my “depression” (undiagnosed at this point) but I’m currently 75% convinced that I don’t have any kind of clinical depression anyway. I’m not sad. I’m fucking angry that I don’t get time to write. The past year and a half has robbed me of my writing time and that’s when things got bad for me. So until I test that theory, I honestly don’t know if there’s any benefit wasting my time, let alone the time of a professional therapist. My triangle of needs is not a complicated one and I have never had a problem as long as it’s being met.
And oh yeah, Twitter makes it worse. That’s a fact. With Facebook gone from my marketing stream and the blog not pulling in much (although you are the best and most discerning of my readers, of course), Twitter is my only social media and I depend on it for book visibility of any kind. I’ve muted as many key terms as I can to avoid seeing all the shitty humble brags about #SPFBO and #NaNoWriMo (if you know, you know), but I still can’t avoid seeing all the writers on Author Twitter happily prattling away about how much they’re writing every day and how their need for free time and writing sessions are being met. It puts me in a foul fucking mood every time. I’m still very, very happy I get to help them, and I appreciate what love and support I get from all sides … but it makes me bitter as fuck even so.
To that end: midday walk.
It is 2°C and definitely hoodie weather. Sunny though, while the weekend was solid drizzle from Friday to Sunday. A real Snoop Dogg of a weekend, you might say.
Holy fuck do I look miserable in this picture. Well, might as well leave it out there, that’s my face right now.
Ach you just look Middle Earthish. Stop being so hard on yourself. You Hindle boys, man. Nobody’s tougher on your good selves than your good selves. And you are very fucking good selves. You just need to listen up and believe Toonster wisdom a whole lot more on this topic.
Yes’m.
That was the entirely correct response. 😂. Big hugs Hatboy.
Thanks for satisfying my weird Sandgroper obsession with the weather without me even having to ask!
Here in Perth the weather was delightful, after the shittiest wettest winter I can ever remember. And as you know, some poor bloke in his 50s was out enjoying finally getting some decent weather on Saturday morning with a swim at Port beach, when he gets taken by a shark. Or sharks. So the weekend weather in our fair city was sunny, but the mood very gloomy.
Glad you’ve got out for a walk though, my friend. First line of the triangle drawn. Now a pivot and draw the second line….
Aye, I asked my folks about the poor bloke who got taken and as of Sunday all they had heard was that search parties had located the man’s goggles. That was just about perfectly, bleakly hilarious to me. Poor guy. And at Port beach of all places! Bloody Hell.
I also just realised that the Wheel of Time TV series airs in about a week and a half, so leaving the 2500th post until Christmas absolutely isn’t going to fly because I will be posting about that. May just have to bite the bullet and separate them out. Most of the groundwork is done for the 2500th post anyway.
In other news, this is what the Hatstand’s stats look like when the Captain of team Space Lasagna makes a post about my dumb reviews and a bunch of people come and look at my dumb reviews.
I mean it’s great, just funny to see is all. Now if each of those visitors could just file across nicely to Amazon and buy my entire book catalogue … damn it, the Hatstand should have a little shop. I love a little shop.