July Sweeps - Day 173

So, you won't get much of a blog post from me today.  I woke up all sweaty, hearing the others in my aunt's house awake and loudly talking, so got myself up and showered around the time my mom was texting me to see if I wanted anything from McDonalds for breakfast.  When I didn't answer, she got me a Egg and Sausage McMuffin (at least that's what I think it was), which was nice.  Then we spent the next several hours disassembling dressers and beds and electronics, and carrying it all outside to load into a U-haul truck.  I feel like I helped as much as I was physically able, doing as much heavy-lifting as I could, and pretty much all of us ended up sweaty and/or dirty by mid-day.

This is my Uncle Len, who helped load the U-haul:

This is my Uncle John, on Len's motorcycle (with the Keiser's motorcycle, apparently):

It got up to 108 degrees today (though my Uncle John insisted it never got past 104), and I mostly hung out with my Uncle Len, who was super excited about a store that just opened here called Nightmare Toys--which is essentially a collectibles shop for Horror fans.  He took his sons when it first opened (and took a ton of pictures to send me), and once we got the U-haul filled to the absolute brim with about 90 percent of the contents of this house, we drove to downtown Vegas and checked out the store.

It had a sign out front that said "Due To Governor's Orders, You Must Wear A Mask To Enter This Store."  But that's fine--we should wear masks all the time, and should've been doing so for months now.  When we went in the store, I wondered if I should've been wearing a Michael Myers mask.  It reminded me of when my buddy Jeff and I went to our first horror convention in Pasadena, California.  We were both big fans of Horror . . . but we discovered there that we were NOT big fans of Horror.  Not compared to some.

I've been to a couple of collectibles stores, and a score of comic book stores, and this was just like that, a small place dedicated to my favorite genre.  But I knew almost immediately that there was nothing there I would want to buy, from insanely overpriced action figures to an astounding collection of masks (of everybody from Gizmo the Mogwai to Captain Spaulding, from characters as common as Jason Voorhees to those as obscure as Leslie Vernon and the maggoty zombie from the poster for ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS.

The only thing there I was tempted to buy was an action figure of Sam from TRICK R TREAT, but I remember Toys R Us having one of him years ago, and seeing them fairly cheap, and never getting one because as much as I like that movie, I just have no need of a toy of him.  My uncle really wanted to buy me a t-shirt, but there were none that I was tempted by.  It's weird--I thought I was a pretty big horror fan.  Guess not.

They do have an event in a week where Kane Hodder and Danielle Harris are coming to town to sign autographs, and while I'm a bit tempted by that (I quite like Danielle Harris, and my buddy Jeff absolutely loved her), a) it's just too far to drive, and 2) we're in a pandemic, and it's just not a good idea.

But after that, we went over to where Len's son and ex-wife live.  He was on a Horror bent and really wanted to watch a scary movie with me.  I mentioned a couple I had never seen, including HEREDITARY.  We'd had this conversation before, but Len said, "You've never seen Hereditary?"  So, that's what he put on for us to watch (or as my aunt called it, Hereditario).

It was an immensely disturbing film, by the same writer/director as MIDSOMMAR (the last movie I watched with my buddy Jeff), and while I felt like it was about twenty minutes too long (maybe more) and I didn't understand the ending,* it struck me as super scary and very well made.

Unfortunately, Len's ex-wife did not appreciate the movie on any level, and I felt bad because she would have to sleep alone after watching that, and while that's to be expected for one Rish Outfield, I don't know that I would have inflicted that on her had I to do it over again.

BUT . . . it did make me think of another idea for (another) Lara and the Witch story.  I thought about Lara trying to help somebody at her school (or maybe during summer vacation) get over a family tragedy, and the results--of course--are not at all what she intended.  I like that she is learning magic, and trying to do good with it, but since her teacher is inherently evil, the spells Lara casts end up going in a very dark direction.  This one, unlike the one the other day, doesn't exactly write itself, but it is an interesting idea.

Today I got some good news for a change: Audible actually accepted my audio for "The Calling: Reunion."  I submitted it in January, and did battle with them even through July (or was it June?).  So now I can post the Outcast episode I did for it, but having missed two (or was it three?) weeks without episodes, putting the still-untitled "Calling 2" episode out next week (maybe I could call it "Answer the Calling?), would delay the turtle episode till August, then "Now Do It A Million Times" to the second week, then my "Journey Into" episodes into August and September.

Well, I might as well mention that it might have come out weeks ago had I asked for volunteers to listen to the audio and make sure there were no errors or bad files or outtakes left in there.  Ah well, live and learn--anyone volunteer to listen to the next one BEFORE I submit it to Audible?

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In July: 3684

So, now I'm at my aunt's house again--all but empty, except for cleaning supplies and the stuff they're going to donate or take to the dump.  I got here around eleven-thirty, and told my mom I still needed to do sit-ups and write, and she did all she could to dissuade me.  I told her that I had been doing it a hundred and seventy-nine days in a row (which was off by a few, I now realize), and if I miss a day I start over at zero, and she was not swayed by that.  I considered telling her, well, you've gone seventy-three years without running over a child playing in the street with your car, it's fine to break that record today, don't you think?  But she would not have responded well to that.

Now I'm lying here on the floor of the guest room (they did inflate a mattress for me, so it's not as uncomfortable as all that), only having done 66 sit-ups (the floor is hard, my friend), and only having written about one hundred words.  But I'll do one more session of both, then I think I'll allow myself to pass out.  We're leaving awfully early in the morning tomorrow to miss the heat of the Vegas day, so you understand.

Words Today: 804
Words In July: 22,236

*Of course, you may lie and say you understood it fine . . . we both know you're lying.  The same as the idiots who claim to understand what the last shot in INCEPTION means--nope, you don't understand it any more than I do.  Lie if you want, but the damned thing is spinning, and then the credits roll.  That's it.  There's nothing more to get than that.