Novembeard - Day 6

Its day 6 of Novembeard and Dave definitely looks like he hasn’t shaved in 6 days.

He’s looking pretty scruffy! At this point, kissing him is difficult because his growing facial hair is really poky. I hope this phase passes soon!

Novembeard - Day 4

Its day 4 of Novembeard and Dave hasn’t shaved since Wednesday morning.

You can see there is a little stubble growing and it is pretty dark and full. Since Dave grows facial hair pretty quickly it will be interesting to see how fast a beard will appear. Stay tuned!

Novembeard - Day 1

Yesterday was Dave’s first day of participation in Novembeard, a silly, crazy thing people do for amusement where a man shaves his face at the beginning of November and just lets his facial hair grow until he can’t stand it anymore. I know, I know, its kind of stupid, but we hope it amuses you just a bit during November.

Dave had to start a few days late because he gave a presentation at a conference on Tuesday and needed to look his best. Yesterday we took pictures of Dave with his usual facial hair before the shave (on the left) and after the full shave (on the right). He looks so young without the goatee!

We’ll be updating this blog with a new picture every few days to track Dave’s progress and see how much facial hair grows in before he can’t stand it anymore and decides to shave. Here we go!

TGIN (Thank goodness its November!)

First, let me just say how thankful I am that the election is over and all of the political TV ads, mailings, phone calls and e-mails are done. Whew! Now, back to our regularly scheduled post...

October was an incredibly long month for me and I am so thankful it is finally over. In my job at a nonprofit we are involved in Breast Cancer Awareness Month activities and fundraisers and, having planned and executed most of these activities, I am exhausted.

This past month I have delivered flocks of 20 pink flamingos every night all over the region as people made donations for us to “flock” their friends. It was my crazy idea for a fundraiser, and darn it, it worked. But not without a lot of hard work, crazy people and long hours. But it was so much fun! All of the feedback we received was so positive. Who knew that people would be so excited to wake up to flamingos in their front yards! And now that we have done it once we have a whole bunch of ideas on how to make it even better for next year. It feels so go to have your boss find value in a new idea you have and to give you the support you need to execute it. It also feels good to really analyze the event and determine the strengths and weaknesses of it so you can improve it for the future. I love this about my job!

 
I’ve also been involved in planning smaller awareness events this month which were also successful - but the biggest event I was involved with this month was a huge Halloween gala to benefit my organization complete with silent auction, fundraising games, a wine wall, live band, costume contests and a lot of fun. Actually I’ve been working on this event with a committee since I started this job back in May. It has taken months of organization, planning, procurement and execution to pull it off and these last few weeks of 45+ hour work weeks getting everything finalized and put into place has worn me out. As soon as the event was over late Saturday night, I crashed. All of the emotions of stress, excitement, long hours, etc. were finally past and I could relax. I slept until 10:00 on Sunday and I haven’t done that in years! It felt so good.

I spent the day Sunday getting ready for Halloween and I decorated our door for trick-or-treaters and put out two of the pumpkins that were painted for the Halloween event the night before. I can’t take credit for the cool painted witch in moon - that takes much more talent than I have - the best I could do was that owl on the left.

 

To my dismay we didn’t even have one trick-or-treater and that puts my total at 0 trick-or-treaters in the five Halloweens I have had my own place. Its almost like validation that you’re a real adult when you have trick-or-treaters.

Anyway, as much as I LOVE my job and the organization I work for I am looking forward to the next couple of months with no work events on the weekends and no really big events to stress out over. I am looking forward to the coming holidays and starting some new family traditions with Dave. I’m looking forward to the birth of friends’ and family members’ babies in the coming months. I’m looking forward to watching Dave get closer to graduating. And I’m looking forward to relaxing evenings and weekends with fires in the fireplace, hot chocolate and good company. And when I’m finally rested up I’ll be ready to gear up for next October which will undoubtedly be just as crazy and busy as this one. Bring it on!

The Haunted Cemetery

Last night I was invited to visit a local “haunted” cemetery with a co-worker, her daughter and her daughter’s friends. Since Dave has been busy finishing up an application for a post-doctoral position (no, he’s not done with his degree yet, but this is just a proactive approach to having something lined up whenever he does finish) so I figured it would be something fun to do while Dave was still working.

I was picked up by my co-worker and a car full of giggling 14-year-olds and we were off. The kids were setting the scene with all of the stories they had heard about people seeing ghosts there. I hadn’t even heard of this place before this weekend so I wasn’t thinking anything would happen to us. We arrived, parked, grabbed our flashlights and headed to the cemetery entrance.

There was a path which was not very wide leading to the actual cemetery entrance gate. The kids led the group and I was last in the bunch. We traveled down the path, crossed a wooden bridge and finally came to the entrance gate. The cemetery was very old with many graves dating back to the 1800s. The place is very disorganized and gravestones were just sort of randomly placed around us, some right next to the narrow path. Some graves had tiny headstones, others had larger headstones, some which had fallen over and were cracked, and other graves were surrounded by either a white or iron fence. Although I wasn’t scared, it was still a little creepy to be in a cemetery so late at night on Halloween.

We followed the path for a while longer and came to a stop near the end of the trail. The kids were a little freaked out because they thought they had heard rustling in some bushes up ahead and were deciding whether or not to continue and try to find some sort of marker which supposedly listed the names of all of the people buried there. I was looking past our group and thought I saw the figure of a person in the distance. I turned to my co-worker to ask if she saw what I was seeing and then we heard a woman’s blood curdling scream maybe 20 feet in front of us. Everyone jumped, turned around and began to run at full speed out of the cemetery. Fight or Flight mode kicked in and the only thing I was concerned about was getting the heck out of there, and fast. One of the girls in the group had tripped and fallen on the ground and quickly jumped back up to get moving again. I had such a strong instinct to get out of there that I passed a couple of the kids and was jumping over headstones in my attempt to get out of there. We got to the entrance gate and heard the scream again, but in the distance. Since we figured nothing was actually chasing us we slowed our sprint down to a fast jog down the path, over the wooden bridge and out the first gate we had gone through and jumped in the car at lightning speed. The car engine started and we drove away from that place as fast as we could.

I don’t know if that scream came from a real person stationed there with some friends waiting to scare people or if it was a paranormal thing, but either way it sure scared the crap out of all of us and we all had the same instinct to run as fast as we could out of there. The cemetery trip was definitely a fun break from the normal Halloween routine, even if the whole adventure lasted only 10 minutes from when we got out of the car to when we ran back in it. I’ll never forget this night! Happy Halloween!