I am feeling substantially less whiny today. The drizzly weather always makes me feel better. So does a long chat with Tim. Some apricot ale. A new episode of The Amazing Race. An evening to myself.

I also got a bunch of pictures back from my weekend with Bruce. I didn't get pictures of many of our adventures; he has them on his camera. (Send them to me!) I can't believe the pictures came out so well-- they were taken on a generic $4.99 disposable camera.

I carved this one myself. Isn't it good?

So, the weekend. Bruce didn't make it out here until late on Friday; by the time he got here it was 10:30 or so, and if we wanted to have dinner, we'd have to find an all-night diner. The choices by my house are limited to A) a crappy Denny's or B) a crappy Denny's in the other direction. We drove into the city instead to go to Sparky's. We both had hot open-faced turkey sandwiches and milkshakes. May I say: yum.

I forgot to mention that he brought presents. He always shows up with a bag of presents for me, because he's that kind of guy. I got a caramel scented candle (to die for), another candle, a witch-face candle, a copy of Tuck Everlasting (which I need to read, I take it) and the best thing of all, a pair of freaky maracas:

The so-called "pumpkin" maraca looks like Michael Jackson.

To put this into perspective, we saw The Ring this weekend, and it was the freakiest movie I have ever seen, and it was still less freaky than these maracas. Check out the sinister smile on the cat-clown from hell! Check out Michael Jackson's vacant, glazed smile! And you shake them, and they make noise, because they're maracas. Yeah!

Moving right along. We went home and watched Drop Dead Gorgeous, which was in the stack of DVDs Bruce had brought with him. I'd read tons of bad reviews of the film, but it really made me laugh. It's so dark and satirical, and Allison Janney's hilarious in it. "Is she family?" "No, she's just screaming 'Mom! Mom!' cuz she's got Tourette's."

Watching this movie had the unfortunate side effect of making me speak with a terrible Minnesota accent for the rest of the weekend. Once I start, I can't stop. I was using Fargo lingo all weekend. "Aw, what-the-Christ." It's fun.... for me. Less fun for everyone else, I'd imagine.

I think that's about it for Friday. On Saturday, we woke up and went to the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival. Or, as it would quickly come to be called, the Half Moon Bay Overpriced Hats & Framed Shit Festival. Or more elegantly: the Festiv-hell.

The first thing we saw were a bunch of booths selling overpriced crap. Bruce looked at one booth and said, "Wow, that's ugly art." and I said, "You could walk through this festival just saying that one line over and over." Scary-face dolls, glittery Christmas ornaments, abstract hammered sheet metal. And of course, the hats.

We try on two of the hats in question.

There was some nifty stuff though. A great booth selling framed historical photos-- I wanted one of a suffrage march, or maybe a woman's turn-of-the-century subway car. Too bad they cost $27 each; they were so cool. I also liked this tiny silver pumpkin on a chain, but it cost $32. At a complete anomaly of a booth, they were selling silver claddagh rings for $12. I've always wanted one, so I bought it!

Many people were dressed in pumpkin garb. Scary, no?

Since everything was so overpriced, it was cool to find a guy doing caricatures for free. (Courtesy of Champion mortgage. Hey, if I'm ever looking to refinance my imaginary house, I know who to call.) We waited in line and got ours done. What do you think? Does it look anything like me?

I am shown barbecuing. Yeah, right. Like I barbecue.

Bruce sits, smiling blankly off into space.

We also ran into Michael and his girlfriend Debbi briefly. They had already walked around and seen everything we hadn't gotten to yet, so there you go, we didn't get to hang out. One of Debbi's friends gave us a map, so we knew where to go to see the Giant Pumpkin. (You may remember this as my raison d'être for the whole trip.) Thanks, Friend of Debbi!

We got sidetracked by the caricature guy, however, and didn't get to the Giant Pumpkin in time. Instead, we got to see the Giant Pumpkin parade. Oh, dear god. The parade. It was, like, the Safeway webvan ("Swing by the parade on your way to the Miller house, will ya Bob?") some people sitting on hay in a truckbed ("Hey, Myrtle, round up the kids! Chuck's gonna throw some hay in his truckbed!") and children carrying unidentifiable cardboard things held together (barely) with duct tape.

It's a slug-train-worm-vehicle-monster! Run!

God bless 'em for trying, but it was the most ghetto parade I have ever seen. Like this float:

Okay, so they're all dressed as witches. And they're on a float. I still don't get "Floating Through Our Pasts" as a caption. Who's the "our" in this scenario? Who's doing the floating? What the fizzy is going on? Where am I?

Why does this cotton candy taste like ass?

This parade wouldn't have been so bad-- I kid because I love, after all-- except that it was as slow as death. The marching band stopped marching to play their songs, the karate class had to stop and do a karate routine every five feet. We stared at each cardboard concoction for at least five minutes before the next one rolled by.

It's a guy in a pumpkin suit!

Halfway through this travesty, we discovered that the Giant Pumpkin had been the first thing in the parade. We had been subjecting ourselves to parade torture for nothing! So we did what any sane people would do: we went straight over to the beer booth and got ourselves some liquor.

Balloons make me giddy with joy. So does Mike's Hard Lemonade, apparently.

We had a fabulous time. Once the parade had finally cleared out, we were able to make our way over and see the Giant Pumpkin. It cost $6 to take a picture with it, so we did it the cheap way: waited for all the kids to get out of the way and took our picture from the sidelines.

Looky! A punkin!

It looks not-that-big, but I was standing many feet away from it. It was a 1,173 pound pumpkin, as you can see on the weight thingie behind my head. It was a big pumpkin!

Once we had seen the Giant Pumpkin, everything else was anticlimax, so we left. We decided to drive down the coast a little ways and head for the Santa Cruz boardwalk an hour or so away. What the heck!

On the way, we stopped at this little winery, the only winery along that stretch of Highway 1, Bonny Doone. And oh my god, it was fabulous. Every single wine we tasted was phenomenal-- we spent over $100 on wine between us. I got this amazing girly wine that doesn't even taste like wine, it tastes like the best strawberry wine cooler you'll ever have. I also bought a bottle of Pinot Grigio, which I was told has a hazelnut finish. I didn't even get to try it, I just trusted their wine. Their Syrah, their Zinfandel, their Barbera-- I'm telling you, everything we tried was fabulous. Run, don't walk.

We also noticed that the tide was going out, so we stopped and played in the tidepools. This was probably my favorite thing, letting the hermit crabs walk on my hand, poking the sea anemones, getting splashed by waves, breathing the ocean air, reminding myself how much I love the beach. We used to spend summers on the beach when I was a kid, in a rented beach house. It only just now occurs to me how lucky I was-- it seemed normal at the time.

I love the beach! Squeee!

We went to the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. The Mystery Spot is a place where balls roll uphill and stuff. It would have been a lot more interesting if our tour guide hadn't smoked a bushel of pot before we took our tour. He just could not tell a story to save his life. "I would never tell you that you weren't seeing a sensory illusion, it's a scientific mystery, one of five scientific mysteries, but don't say it's an optical illusion, because it's a question of perception!"

The real Mystery: what the hell that guy was talking about.

We then had a truly fabulous dinner (I had the seared mahi-mahi, he had the braised ahi) at a restaurant on the wharf, and when we went back to the boardwalk (at 7:30) it was shut down. On a Saturday! We were disappointed not to go on any rides, but they had a cool arcade (Classic Frogger and skee ball, what more do you need?) and we played around for awhile and then headed back.

Then we saw The Ring. I did not want to see this movie; I don't like scary movies. I wanted to see White Oleander in which my sister plays a waitress and my cousin plays a prison guard. But Bruce really wanted to see The Ring, and who could refuse that face? Plus, he had the money. So I demanded soda, and popcorn, and candy-- I'm no fool.

Jesus, that movie scared me half to death. It was seriously the scariest movie I have ever seen. I spent the climax of the film hiding under my sweater, imagining what was happening, screaming and screaming. It's the closet-face that really haunts me. I spent the rest of the movie hiding my eyes, afraid that closet-face would be shown again.

The only saving grace was the big black lady we had sitting behind us, who kept yelling things at the screen. "Girl, you dead! She need her victim, okay? It's day seven, girl, you dead." She provided much needed comic relief, since there wasn't any in the movie. Nothing but creepy creepiness. Great movie, though.

That was Saturday. On Sunday, I had to work, originally all night, but Bruce bribed one of my co-workers with a present if she would cover the second half of my shift. That's friendship, right there. Willing to bribe strangers in order to spend time with me. So we went pancaking and then I went to work for a while. After work, Bruce came by with his bribe and picked me up, and then we drove into the city.

We went over to Jenfu's place and acquired her, then made a pilgrimage to my favorite Chinatown restaurant for some delicious lemon chicken. We shopped for obscure candy. We went back to Jen's house and played Oh, Hell and the Game of Mo. At one point, Jen was supposed to give me a high five, and whacked me on the head instead. Good times!

That was basically the weekend. I always have such a great time with Bruce-- we like to do the exact same things, and we always have fun doing them. No wonder we wanted to get married when we were in high school, eh?

Love you, pumpkin.