at the moment, i'm sitting on annalise's futon in brooklyn (sigh. brooklyn. i wub you.). she got her bachelor's in the designing of fashions this morning in one fantastic clusterf*#@ of a graduation. annie liebowitz was the guest speaker, so that was something, except that she was almost as bad at speakering as she is good at photographering. it was in radio city music hall, which was neat inside, but we didn't need to sit there for nearly 3 hours to take it all in. however, annalise graduated and will presumably get a diploma in the mail soon, so yay! and we celebrated at this fantastic spanish place in chelsea and have a ton of leftover paella in the fridge. at any rate, yes, blog, i have a master's degree. and yes, blog, that means i will continue to babysit two days a week and soulpancake my lil' heart out for some more days and probably never actually find a job to make this degree qualify as useful. so if you haven't heard already, i am to be addressed henceforth as 'master' because i'm determined to get something out of it. and now, for your viewing pleasure, hayley as master's graduate:

master's in english? she can't even speak english!

graduatin' is tiring.

oh, and also, my first feature piece went up on soulpancake today. yay.

*halloween blog, as dictacted to megan by ben.

and now, for a wee bit more detail perhaps. we did in fact get dressed up, ben before he went to work even. he was a psycho lumberjack. i didn't have to work, other than at home all day stressing me lil brain to produce an essay. i stopped that around 5 to begin making myself into what the general consensus seemed to call the angel of death. something tells me the angel of death doesn't have as much trouble as i did getting ready to go out. first the hairspray bottle said no you cannot have hairspray, i shall not squirt it on you. so i had to pour it into an empty spray bottle we had hanging around for cleaning products. that is NOT the way you want to use hairspray, lemme tell you. so after i got my hair issues resolved and moved onto my face, i learned my rad awesome eyelashes were in cahoots with the hairspray. no sticking. none at all. since they were my basic plan for my face looking cool, i had to just wing it. these things made us later getting to carey's for the pre-zombie hunt gathering than ben would have liked. oh well. we still made it for one halloween car bomb, which is an irish car bomb in halloween glasses and shot glasses. then we went downtown and met the rest of our peoples for the scavenger hunt. we apparently finished fourth out of 6, so we did not win any lame prizes. but we did run around downtown for three hours, which allowed for some interesting people watching (especially since nine inch nails was playing). oh and dan, dearest dan, whom we love to make fun of for being single with four cats, actually bought the "crazy cat lady" costume and wore it around, bringing much joy to myself and pretty much anyone else who saw him. ben and i saw it whilst halloween shopping and of course sent him a picture of it because we're evil. it's a pink bathrobe with cat heads and tails all over it, and a cat headband, which had a head in the front, four legs and a tail. and apparently it's a great outfit for picking up middle aged women. anyway, we hung out at the bar where the zombie hunt ended for a bit, then went to keith and laurie's for a fire, which was created from a pallet that may or may not have been stolen from kroger. then we came home and took these silly pictures and then i took a shower and we went to bed. and yes, i did have amazing bed head the next day.

we had some tasty tasty shrimp boil that chuck and keith produced. although there was sausage and chicken in there too, so can it really be a 'shrimp' boil? i dont care, it was yummy in my mouth. we all carved punkins and they all turned out pretty badass, i must say. (you can see for yourself once ben uploads the pictures). i used a stencil from one of the books, it was a pirate skull and crossbones, which laurie did a loverly job with. so i used that, but i didn't do the eye patch and i gave it fangs, which are hard to see from far away. sigh. anyway, it was almost a very sad tragedy and i almost got the 'nip/tuck' o'lantern award for the year. i was all done and had scraped the stringiness that you could see through the holes and i just turned the whole thing upside down over the trash can and shook it out. when i returned to my chair and looked down at the punkin in my lap, he had but one eye. the piece that was his other eye and nose apparently went trash can diving. but i was able to stick it back on with toothpicks, so all is well. though i guess i do still get the nip/tuck award technically. anyway, we sat around the fire, beering and toasting, roasting and burning marshmallows. and laurie made this amazing-looking chocolate cake that i never had room to try. rumor has it i should've just eaten some anyway. oh well.

pic stolen from laurie's blog - thanks larry!

yesterday was more reading for me, and my delightful husband made some tastyyummy pumpkin scones with cranberries and dark chocolate. i have one with me for the breakfasting.

then we went to carey's for the rest of the steelers game and to begin the "Week of Horror! (Horror, horror, horror)." every night this week we're going to a different person's house for to watch a horror movie of the host's choosing. so we started last night with jared's selection of hellraiser: bloodline, which he remembered to be awesome. turns out, vodka doesn't make for an accurate memory. though i had seen it at some point, all i really remembered was pinhead and spaceship. and it wasn't bad really, it was just 80s horror bad - even though it was made in the 90s. but still, the creatures in those movies always look awesome, and not too many 'big bads' look cooler than pinhead. tonight we're on hiatus because the titans have the monday night football game, but tomorrow it's off to dan's for.... he hasn't decided yet. but a horror movie. definitely a horror movie.

ok. i may have to go poke the baby here in a minute. the teething and probably growing are making her quite the late sleeper lately, which apparently makes her the late-stay upper or the not-sleep-through-the nighter. daddy's not such a fan of that. i'll give her a little bit though i suppose. maybe start to find out if all of Rousseau's walks in Reveries of the Solitary Walker are going to be as 'everybody hates me but i don't care, but i must care, because i'm writing this down, but no, no, i don't care, they're imbeciles. definitely don't care. nope. why don't they like meeeee?" as his introductory one. granted, i like what i've read of him in the past and i fully understand why everyone hated him and why to some degree they shouldn't have, but yeesh, man. anyhoo, i have tom waits and coffee, two things that make a frigid, tired, stupid-traffic filled monday morning not so terrible. peace. oh, and don't forget to harrass ben in the comments if he doesn't post pictures in a timely manner.

"You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination
But all the while you hear the creature creepin up behind"

so of course this happened:

"cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no ones gonna save you from the beast about strike
You know its thriller, thriller night
You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight"

"And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller"

and, whilst searching for the lyrics to thriller just now i found one genius site that had "thriller, diller" every time it repeats thriller in the chorus. yes, this is thriller, diller night. makes perfect sense. rocket surgeons.