Well, what a long, strange trip it’s been…

The Christmas animation is finally done. Finally uploaded. I feel like it has consumed every minute of every day of my life for the past 5 months. I also feel like I’ve let this journal go in favor of the animation, and I really had some entries and pictures that I wanted to post but just couldn’t because of time constraints. So… I’m going to compress every significant entry that I had this fall into one, neat… and probably extremely graphically intense entry. …

Even though I had been extremely busy, I was able to travel a lot of places and take plenty of pictures. One of those places was Claws and Paws wild animal park, which is in the middle of nowhere in pennsylvania. It’s not horribly far, and my parents traveled a LOT… but I have to say that before September, I’d never been there. I LOVE animals, as many of you know, and they just let you come right up to you. I got a lot of pictures, except for the tiger, because he peed on me, and … well, we’re currently not speaking. And don’t feel sorry for the tiger, I told him going into this “if you pee on me, we’re through!” … and well… here we are.

One of the attractions was smoking turtles, which i really didn’t approve of… sure, most of the onlookers were yelling out things like “awww, he thinks he’s people!” but they don’t know the Truth… so I’m here to tell you…Turtles or Tortoises or whatever should not smoke. Everyone knows that it causes shell cancer, and that is the worst kind of cancer. Take it from someone who knows.

I knew from the get go that this bird was thinking one thought, and one thought alone. “I’m going to bite that girl with the camera.” And then he looked at his friends and was like “Hey Perry! Hey! Hey Perry!” and Perry’s like “You gonna get that girl with the camera.” and he was like “Yeah. Watch.” … so I got out of there…. really fast.

I found it funny that they had all these exotic animals like white tigers, kangaroos, and lions …. and then all of a sudden you’d see like “the crow” or like “a raccoon”. I felt bad for these animals because they are so commonplace that no one was looking at them. This deer was really cute, and although I could see a deer by just looking out my window at work, I took a picture of him. He’s a nice deer. Say Hi to him. His name is Jake.

I know what you’re thinking. Someone forgot to color in that Alligator. That was when I regretted leaving my colored pencils in the car.

‘

By far, the reason for coming to this wild animal park can clearly be seen in the picture above.

Okay… so that was my adventure with wild animals and tigers that like to fire pee at me like a cannon. Me being a germ freak, of course that was not a very good time at all. And that’s, as i said earlier, why me and Senior Tigerpants are not on speaking terms.

The entry that I probably was the saddest about not being able to write was the one about the Bloomsburg Fair. As many of you know… it’s probably my favorite thing to do all year. If I could get married at the fair, get engaged at the fair, have all of my babies at the fair, i probably would. Maybe not the babies thing. … it’s kinda filthy… and I don’t think you can raise babies on cheese on a stick and milkshakes. This year, the fair took place in the last week of September. I went 5 days this year, which beats my record. I also think that I might have developed a bit of a gambling problem this year, considering I spent almost two entire paychecks trying to win a giant stuffed Wembley Fraggle. (Which I never DID win. We got Red, but not Wembley)

Cheese on a stick. There is nothing like it. I talk about it for months in advance. I run to the Cheese on a stick stand when we get into the fair and everyone has to run after me to catch up. I got stung by a bee one year and waited to get medical attention until I was done with my cheese on a stick. Yes. It is that good.

I challenge you to name another place where you can win a dog with Bling while throwing balls at stop signs that have stewie, spongebob and patrick on them.

It rained the one day and we went anyway. It was the only day Matt could go, and … well, the cheese on a stick stand…. it was closed! This is us expressing our displeasure.

Is it me, or does that onion look oddly similar to janis (was that her name?) from the muppet show. Man,… I love the fair!

^_^ did I mention I love the fair?

Patrick went on the day that we got rained out. So, he couldn’t have cheese on a stick. That’s against the law in the state of pennsylvania, so on the last day of the fair, I brought him some. He looks really evil and ominous as he holds up the leftover cheese on a stick.

After this, I went home and got some MUCH needed sleep. I think that’s me. I’m not really sure, cause you know, you can’t see what you look like when you sleep. Those ARE my sheets though, so I can only assume.

The Bloomsburg Fair is pretty much the official start of the Fall, which is why I love it so much. I LOVE the fall. Last year the leaves changed color for probably one day and then they just fell off the trees, much like how the womping willow tree in harry potter sheds it’s leaves. It just sorta shakes itself and they fall off. This fall was a different story

I work in Mountaintop, PA, and the leaves change earlier there than they do in the city. This is what I was greeted with one day when I was walking around the parking lot at lunch.

After this, larry and I ventured into the woods to solve the case of the missing lawn gnomes. We came upon this bridge and knew that the wicked witch’s house couldn’t be much further.

This is a grasshopper. Why is there a picture of a grasshopper? I don’t have a good reason for you, but I do know that I took this picture immediately after I went to the Osteopath and she fixed my 7 month long rib problem that I was having. So I guess this grasshopper will always remind me of the day that I got better from what doctors were saying was “All in my head” The grasshoppers name is Raul Fizzlebeef.

After I got better, I finally was strong enough to beat the crap out of Frylock for that crack he made about my weight back in February.

And with that… Halloween was here.

The picture above is from a house of a guy who used to do special effects in movies. Every other year he does this really theatrical display, but unfortunately, he only does it in the odd numbered years, i.e. 2005, 2007 etc, etc. In the even years, he carves a kabillion really awesome pumpkins.

I went as a kappa this year. The best part about it is that I didn’t make that costume. Some guy was selling it on ebay. So, a month before halloween I purchased a kappa costume and for the first time in about 4 years didn’t have to make a costume! Larry is the pirate next to me, and no one even recognized him! I think the kid in the king costume is supposed to be “super king” from that one episode of futurama. Gongo, the guy in white, is someone from an anime that i can’t remember what it is… Jerry is from the Matrix, and Dan was supposed to be a school girl but his sexy dress got cut off.

After all of this, Zorak played me to my desk.

I wore the costume to work and worked like that the whole day. I felt like an idiot and it was probably 70 degrees outside, but I did it anyway.

The sun set on Halloween, and it was time for CHRISTMAS … and the animation.

For some reason, we went into Adventure Games’ console theatre and recorded a bunch of the lines. That’s dan’s computer monitor projected on the wall… and that is dan’s silhouette, just to show how ridiculous it is that we’re using a high definition projector just to record lines for the animation. ^_^

Larry listened to the lines over and over again to make sure that the horrible echo that was present in that room didn’t come through on any of the lines. He’s also wearing an orange shirt that says “sandcastles and smiles” which is when they convinced the city to dump sand on public square and have a sandcastle building contest in march.

This is my mom’s tree. It used to be covered in just apples. As many of you know, my mom got sick years ago and passed away last October. I made a pact that I would honor her wishes and not change the tree, because she really loved those apples. This year, I found that many of the apples were broken and not fit to hang on the tree. I decided that my mom wouldn’t like it to look ratty and so I kept the apples that weren’t falling apart and added some new red ornaments to the tree. I’d like to think that she would not be mad at me for this, because I tried to make it as beautiful as I could.

There is a town tucked away in Pennsylvania that is known as Christmas Village. For two months out of the year it is the brightest and most beautiful town in the united states. I went there this year and it is surreal. It looks like what you would picture the north pole to look like. Lights everywhere. Little shops to buy Hot Chocolate in. This is a picture of one of the streets in Christmas Village. It was really something you have to see for yourself.

Here’s a building right when you walk in. The lights are awfully loud and i’m not one for different colored lights, I like the white ones, but … it works.

I like this little bulb. I’m going to name him Blinky.

This is the kissing bridge. A good friend of mine actually got engaged on this bridge last year. It says over it that you have to pay a toll to get across. Guess what the toll is?

There are little spinning things all over the place. I thought this gondola was particularly pretty.

As if this place wasn’t awesome enough, they had this crazy frozen lake that reflected the lights. Since this winter was so warm, it really wasn’t 100 percent frozen, but still amazing.

This one is mostly for Matt Vanston, but I thought a lot of you guys would also appreciate it. ^_^

The best part about Christmas Village is that it really is in the middle of nowhere. You drive in darkness for several minutes before you happen upon it, and it’s just amazing. I really regret not taking a video while I was entering the village, but I got one going out that illustrates my point almost as well. Here it is, if you guys want to see it:

http://www.kappacino.com/xmasvillage/

Well, that’s about it, really. I hope you guys enjoyed this entry. It took me several hours to put this together. ^_^ Anyway, everyone have a really great holiday, and a very happy new year, and I’ll try to post more stuff in this blog now that my monster project is done.

Happy or Merry whatever you celebrate!

Love,

Sara

Well, I went to the steamtown mall today in scranton to try to meet raine wilson from the office. The line was seriously ridiculous … there were people waiting there since like 7 in the morning, so there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that we were going to meet him. I really only wanted to get a picture of him and see him up close and stuff, just for the coolness factor of it all, and I got to do that, so rock on. I also took a video of it, but it’s really big, so i’m not going to upload it just yet, but he answered some questions that people asked and was pretty funny.

Anyway, i feel sorry for the people who are waiting in that line. it was seriously ridiculously long and it wound pretty much all around the steamtown mall. He was only there for two hours, so i can’t see any way that all of those people got to meet him. Still, although I’m not the star-struck sort of person, it was kinda neat. I was like, hey, there’s Dwight! …

Honestly, I can’t imagine what it could possibly be like for someone like Raine Wilson, who is from seattle, to play a character on a show that takes place in a town he’s never been to… and then all of a sudden he’s whisked away to that town to see what it’s really like. If I were him, i’d be really excited, because it’s … well, it’s Scranton. I don’t know, I’d be really excited if i were doing an animation about a town somewhere in wisconsin and then all of a sudden just got to go there and see all the places that i talked about in the animatoin…. but that’s just me…

I’ll stop rambling now. Here’s a picture I took. I want to get the jacket that he’s wearing because I think it’s really awesome.

Wow, it’s been a while since i’ve been here, but the animation is almost done, so i figured, what the hell.

I don’t know how many of you know this or not, but I, when I was a kid, wanted to BE Cyndi Lauper. I’m not entirely sure why, cause she’s kinda scary looking, now that I look back at it… but… I wanted to be her. I would dress up in all of my dad’s clothes and I would say “look at me, i’m cyndi lauper!”…

Recently I discovered that you can download her videos on itunes. I bought Time After Time and I can’t stop watching it. As a kid I never really followed the story of the video or listened to the lyrics that I was singing, but … the video is the saddest thing ever.

Basically it’s about a girl who falls in love with this really great guy, and they’re totally in love, but she wants more. She wants to run away and become some sort of great singer or something. The video opens with her lying next to the boy she loves, and he’s fast asleep, and she just thinks about whether she should leave and try to make something more out of her life. … Oh, man, it’s just so sad though. She leaves while he’s still sleeping and he runs after her and says that he’ll go with her. They get to the train station and he says “I can’t go” while shaking his head. She turns and gets on the train and a tear falls down her cheek. I just never realized how powerful a video can be.

Maybe I’m just weird, who knows. Anywho, here’s a screen cap from the video. It’s kinda a weird one, but I thought it was sorta funny and set it as my wallpaper. I want to know where she got that giant glass dog.

Oh, and also, Cyndi Lauper has the same birthday as me! June 22nd! That is oddly enough also super present day! Rock on!