4 posts tagged “halloween”

For those familiar with Seattle commutes, you know that stalling your car on either of the floating bridges, particular the 420 Evergreen Point floating bridge, is a very bad thing.

This morning I was blessed with Halloween serendipity the likes of which rival even white chocolate kit-kat's and the timely clearing of facial acne on a Friday.

My car, which had died yesterday morning in the wake of our sudden bone chilling cold snappity snap, roared to life this morningwith a zap from Ellen's car. We didn't carpool because I had to swing by the store to pick up Halloween candy for work (mandatory) and she had an important pre-10am meeting. Important, mind you.

Anyway, my car comes to life, I head off towards the bridge and the Eastside suburban dystopia where I work. My engine is behaving erratically, probably because it's balls cold, my car is from Sweden circa 1980, and that's normal, so I press on through the arboretum on my way to buy a discounted bag of BabyRuth candy bars (unimportant detail).

As I accelerate down the on-ramp, I notice my power beginning to dip, and then the radio shuts off and the lights on the dash went dim -- no es bueno, methinks. Right as I'm about to merge into traffic, my car dies, and I have just enough momentum to glide it mostly onto the shoulder and out of traffic.

"Stalled vehicle at the west high rise of 520" is what the traffic report would be announcing soon to all the other people running late for work because they had to fuss with their kids costumes this morning.

Two seconds after I pulled over, a coworker, also on their way to work, pulled over after seeing me standing on the side of the freeway. Then a second coworker arrived. Now we're all sitting in one of their cars waiting for AAA to arrive and diagnose the situation.

We watch hundreds of cars glide by in the morning rush hour, each one containing an at first curious, then disappointed commuter anxious to see the carnage that had slowed him to 10mph this morning and finding instead only three kids in a car listening to Diana Krall (that's right Kate Perry I'm calling you out on that) and eating Halloween Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

The car made it to a garage, I made it  to work, the bill  is going to sting but I think it should be manageable, and I still got to trick or treat before people hid all their candy stashes.

And the whole time I was looking like this. Maybe that's why traffic got snarled.....

Halloween at work much?

So you're going to dress up as what, a TPS report? A stapler? A "jump to conclusions mat?" A disgruntled, AK-47-toting employee? I'd bring a real AK for best effect...

Here in Bellevue we're going to celebrate Halloween tomorrow to the nines, as we (supposedly) have every year. I only got hired last November so I missed last year's hoopla.

Costumes are highly encouraged, bordering on mandatory. Employees and their kids will be ransacking cubes tomorrow morning, necessitating the purchase of additional candy, or disappointing non-candy item, for the cube. Knowing my tree-blowing colleagues, I should probably just assume I'll need some bag of hippy candy from PCC that costs $15/bag and doesn't include any sugar which was derived from processing anything.

Watching the goofus colleagues try and be clever/funny/scary should be a hoot.

I think that I should be able to bring liquor as an accessory, but conventional wisdom probably isn't on my side with that one. After all, I'm going as an approximation of a posthumous tribute to an Ol Dirty Bastard-like hip hip persona, per the cheaply acquired novelty bling kit I picked up at the drugstore. Now I feel like Jason from Fox Trot, aged 26.

Back hurts too much to really concentrate on impending conference call with 50 Cent's lawyer about why their intellectual property will be safe and sound in our Chinese CD replication house. Ow.