10.31.98

    My last chance to get a featured link in for the month of October. Go check it out.

    I'm still sick as a dog. It's no fun. It's not fair. I wanted to do some fun holiday stuff. I wanted to go to a haunted house and have pumpkins on the front steps and... just have a good time.

    I felt too sick to go to a haunted house and T. didn't want to go anyway. I probably won't hand candy out at the door because I don't want to make any of those darling little rugrats sick. I think I'll just wrap myself in a blanket and watch scary movies with T. on AMC.

    And the pumpkins... they have passed on. The day I took those pictures I opened the top on mine to let in more light and to my horror the inside was growing hair! It looked like white flowing hair was trying to grow out the top. I showed T. that night. In two days the pumpkins were turning to mush. So, we tossed them out on Wednesday. We are pumpkin failures. We'll never make good parents. The moral of the story is that you shouldn't wait eight years between carving pumpkins. We didn't even get to display them.

    I walked the dogs on Friday. I tried to beg off on Thursday night but my boss, the guy who runs the dog walking service, gave me a total guilt trip. So, I went out and walked four dogs. I was miserable and I think the dogs could sense that I wasn't going to put up a fight and they totally took advantage of me. This one spoiled, stubborn labrador refused to follow any commands. She would lag behind me and would only heel when I walked so slow that any slower and we would have been stopped. She was being a total brat. The dog after that would have only been happy if I had let him drag me on my face for the entire walk. I pulled a muscle in my back trying to control him.

    I hope this gets easier. It's not difficult but trying to walk a dog the way the owner and the company wants you to walk them and having to constantly correct the dog is no fun at all.

    Last night, T. took me out to dinner. He told me to get out the Zagat's and pick out a place to go. Yeah, I felt awful but I wanted to get out of the apartment. I chose The Gumbo Pot which is in the Farmer's Market on Fairfax and Third near the Sunset strip. By the time we got there it was closed. I guess everything in the market closes early. However, also in the market was Du Par's.

    If you ever read Diane's journal, nobody knows anything, you'll know that she seems to love Du Par's. It's sort of a landmark in that it has been there forever. Actually, there are three Du Par's in L.A. so I don't know which one she goes to. The one we went to looked like it had been there since L.A. was paved and with the same waitresses, too.

    I think their breakfast's are their specialty because we weren't blown away by our dinners. The pie was pretty tasty, though.

    Afterwards, T. humored me and we drove down Sunset to look at this house on Mountain Drive. It's a giant mansion that looks pretty creepy all on its own. In the yard are at least fifteen scarecrows and around five or six "ghosts" hanging from the trees. There are two skeletons enjoying a meal at a table set up with wine glasses and a pie. There's also lots of fake tombstones.

    I walk a dog near that house and all week people have been coming by and taking photographs. The tour vans have been stopping. I bet the richy-rich neighbors really hate that guy for decorating like that. It's so amusing.

    Today is Halloween and I have a ghost story.

    When I was a kid, around first and second grade, we lived in Zweibrücken, Germany. My father worked in the clinic on base which was a very old building. It was built, possibly, at the turn of the century. Or maybe right before WWI. I'm not sure.

    There were rumors that the place was haunted. I remember a nurse telling a story about working late and hearing footsteps in the hall. When she called out nobody answered and when she went to look no one was there.

    The haunting was centered around a particular hallway and a particular room. One time, my mom and I had gone to the clinic to visit my dad and we decided to go and check out this haunted place. As I recall it was the middle of the day. We went down the hallway and stopped in front of the door of the haunted room and it got incredibly cold.

    The room was a records room where they kept files and medical histories. As I recall it had at one time been an operating room. However, where I got that knowledge I have no idea.

    I recently asked my parents about that because I couldn't remember all the details. I mentioned that I thought it had been an O.R. but my dad didn't think so. He said the story was that in the corner of the room there was a door in the floor and that beneath the door was a bunker. At one time the building had belonged to the Germans. There were bunkers all over the base but he thought it was strange for a bunker to be in the clinic.

    At one time some young G.I.'s were sent down there to see if there was anything down there, relics or whatever. They got so very scared and would not ever return to that hallway. At night people claimed to hear sounds and voices coming from the room. The military police would walk everywhere but down that hallway. It was just too scary.

    The weird thing is that my mom is convinced that something horrible must have happened down in that bunker. She was pregnant with my little brother at the time and she vowed never to go back there. She felt it would be dangerous to do so.

    Years later, my little brother was describing the hallway and the look of everything perfectly. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, so he never saw that with his own eyes.

    Bwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa! True story. Every bit of it.

    Got any good ones?