The veil is thin, and the dead are near. The harvest is done, and we enter the dark time of the year.
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m actually looking forwrad to it for once. I could use some time to reflect and think about all the changes from this year.
Happy Samhain for those who celebrate!
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This new job is sucking all my time like a big fat…timesuckingthingy. I was able to break the gravitational pull long enough to escape to Vancouver for the weekend though! And it was lovely.
Dude! My new RLBFF (real life best friend forever) Erynn and I went up to Vancouver on Saturday for the Halloween Haunt thing there at Bridge Studios. And while I’ll get to that more in a moment, really, the highlight of the entire trip was getting to hang out with new friends Bruce and Heather at their apartment in Vancouver for about eight hours. Bruce is a fairly recognizable face, and my inner fangirl was all asquee.
But I played it cool. He and his wife are terribly lovely people. I think we all got on like a house on fire. She does lovely handcrafted jewelry with semi-precious stones (if you’re in the Vancouver area and reading this, drop me an email and I’ll try to hook you up with either shop names or will forward your info if you’re interested in meeting her for custom work), and we spent a good 30 min or so going over her work. I was most appreciative – she does a lot of different things than I’ve seen with other people’s work (Cherry Blossom Designs and Stone Lotus Creations are my main points of reference), and they tend toward bold and very colorful. I apparently was super appreciative, because she gave me a cute pair of earrings. YAY!
I’m sure Bruce (I get to call him Bruce…weeeeeeird!) wasn’t quite sure what to expect, though Erynn told me that of course they would hope that anyone she brought with her to meet them would be cool and not freaky. He’s an interesting guy – very mellow, very likeable…just a regular guy who works at a funky job for a living. They have a gingery cat with a half-tail. I can’t remember his name, but he’s a rescue and apparently hides whenever someone new is in the apartment. But he came out to greet me, and both his mom and dad were quite impressed by that. :D
Now, the Halloween Haunt! We said goodbye to B&M and headed to the Accent Inn, which is right across the street from Bridge Studios. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed during the tour, and I didn’t get a pic of the MGM sign outside that has SG1, Atlantis and something else
on the Marquee. But it was a neat experience – we got there about 15 min early after snagging a piece of pie at the diner attached to the Inn (very reasonable, I thought – $100/night for a queen double, and it was neat and clean and tidy and right across the street) we walked
over to get in line.
They had a puddle jumper there in the “lobby” of the building where everyone was lining up. I bought a single raffle ticket ($5 each!), because mama needs a new Crackberry (one of the prizes). Anyway, they were doing pictures in the puddle jumper, also for $5, so I ponied up the fiver so Erynn and I could see the main part of the craft. If you didn’t pay for a picture, you could just look at the cargo area with all the webbing and stuff. BTW, for fic type purposes, you could totally fit like 25 people in there. Standing room only, but you could squish. *G*
The tour itself was kinda lame – our main tour guide was a total dork, though cheerful enough. Our group number was 42 (we are the answer to the universe!), so you know they must just be annoyed at having to do this by now. There was one younger girl there with Downs Syndrome who was really askeered by it all, but she got through it with smiles and by clinging to the hands of her parents all the way through. Her reactions were great! It was neat to watch someone not so jaded go through the whole thing. I was usually the first through the door after the guide (I hate being boxed in like sheeps), and tried to examine all the SGA stuff as closely as possible w/out touching anything.
They wouldn’t let us w/in about 10 feet of the actual Stargate, which was sadmaking. They had put a shit ton of spider-webbing in the middle of it though, which was cute. Part of the reason no pics was that some of the sets are “live”, even though SGA is on a filming hiatus right now. They didn’t want spoiler stuff leaking to the ‘net, or so the guide said. WhatEVAH!
While not scary, the effects, makeup, set dressing and the stunts were fantastic. The whole thing is a volunteer effort, and all the money goes to the BC Childrens’ Hospital. There were about 30-35 people per group, and they still had three days to go. Not a whole shit ton of money generated from the tour itself, considering how long it must have taken to actually do up the whole thing, but still a great thing to do for a charity. And fun!
I was really dragging by the end of the tour though. I feel like I walked over half of Vancouver that weekend! We met with another FOE (Friend of Erynn) who used to be the extras wrangler for SG1, but is now making his own films. He was a great guy, and was enthusiastic about his new project – a film about the last night of Eryol Flynn’s life. He died in Vancouver, and…well, it was interesting. We were supposed to meet with another friend of hers who was also a part of SG1 at one point in time, but he was working on the set of Fantastic Four 2 and was unable to meet us. Something about shooting the helicopter scenes?
We did meet a lovely woman who had nothing to do with the entertainment business that Erynn has known for years. She’s a writer, and a pagan, and we went to a remarkable park in Burnaby:
http://www.city.burnaby.bc.ca/cityhall/departments/departments_parks/prksrc_prksan/prksrc_prksan_brnbym.html
The totems are really awesome, and it was a crystal clear day to be up that high. I have pics and will post them later. It was just super cool. We had breakfast, and a cup of tea and a nibble after the park, and by then both Erynn and I were drooping, so we dropped The Lovely Lady off at her apartment (she had three fuzzies!) and headed home.
It was a great weekend, I would totally go back to the haunted house next year, because it was cool, and hopefully meet up with the lovely lovely peoples again for a bite to eat and a chat.
And now I’m back with my nose to the grindstone, and should be getting offline to head to a meeting. Whee! Pics soon, once I extract them from the camera.
Can you believe I was in a whole ‘nother country for nearly two entire days and didn’t once think about visiting a yarn store? *gapes* I just realized that. I must be ill. Good lord!
