Fluffy

Halloween festivities took place on Sat, Oct 28, since the regular holiday fell on a Tuesday and Halloween really isn’t celebrated locally.  I went to the base to help out with a very stupid program called “Trunk or Treat” where squadrons decorate the trunk of a car and pass out candy to sugar-crazed brats.  The winner was the hospital squadron, who put together a haunted hospital called “Monsters Who Care”.  It had to be the worst idea ever.  I can’t imagine why it won.  Even soccer moms can do better than that.  I digress.  Turns out they didn’t need us volunteers, so I played with a random beagle puppy wearing a velcro witch hat (uber cute) and walked thru the base’s Haunted House.  They started work on this thing in August and it was really good.  Fortunately, I ran into a coworker right as I was about to walk in.  Good thing too.  I was scared out of my mind and spent most of the walk thru the Haunted House gripping the shirt of a guy I really don’t know that well.

Afterwards, I went to a friend of a friend’s Halloween party.  This fellow and his lovely Italian wife really went all out with decorating.  His wife also has a very hot, albeit teenage, nephew.  Anyway, I still prefer Hercules.  The party was a blast and my friend Randy passed out goody bags…candy and condoms placed inside of Biohazard bags, the kind they put blood samples in.  Good prank on his part.  Even funnier when the older women at the party gave the condoms in their bags to the super hottie nephew.

Last Sunday, Hercules and I went to a dam near a small town called Vajont.  I thought we were just driving thru the mountains, not going to a dam.  But the story behind the dam was that when it was built 40  years ago, engineers were unaware that the mountain was too soft to accomodate the pressure of the dam.  Eventually, the water eroded the base of the dam away and the increasing pressure actually pushed the mountains alongside the dam apart creating a tidal wave that killed 2,000 people in minutes.  Anyway, there’s a nice memorial next to the dam and the drive was beautiful.  Afterwards, we went for pizza and he taught me how to make Italian coffee (what we think of as expresso).

He also came over Thursday night with some gelato.  Major points for bringing ice cream.  It’s getting easier to communicate, or at least I think I am understanding what he says.  My vocabulary is increasing quickly but I have trouble conjugating verbs properly, and using the correct one.  For example, if asked in English “How are you doing?” you would reply “I am well”.  In Italian, you say “I stay well”.  For example, in English you might say “We are happy” but in Italian you say “We have happiness”.  Sono molto confusia.

Egypt trip is a little over 2 weeks away, plus I have a ski trip planned next weekend and a ceramic shopping trip the following week (guess what everyone’s getting for Christmas).  Busy stuff but it’s fun.