On Friday night Jason and Jen invited Emily and I over for pumpkin carving, cookie decorating and hot spiked mulled cider! Emily and I had virtually no free time after work during the week so we didn't bring a pumpkin over but we did bring some beer and at a few holiday cookies with tons of frosting on them. When we got there McKenzie was on a time-out in the Jason's bedroom for eating 
cat poop but I went in to say hi to 
him anyway and get him all riled up. I miss the furball! It was a nice party with Jason's friends from the lab and Jen's friends from her department. Unfortunately, Emily had a soccer game at 9:30 so we had to take off around 9. She went off to soccer and I met up with Tim and Kevin to watch BBC Life on Blu-ray on our side for the rest of the night.
On Friday Emily's regional HR Manager had hooked us up with 50 yard line tickets for the Beaver game. Being home in the Northeast we weren't around to try to score tickets from friends so we were just planning on going to Doug's tailgate so it was super exciting to have tickets, and really good ones as well! I was slow to get up on 
Saturday morning and we made it to the tailgate with a case of PBR's about an hour before the game. The usual crew was there and playing washers when we arrived. To my surprise Ben Sigler 
wandered over to say hi which was great because I was anxious to hear about their newborn! Before long it was time to shotgun some beers before heading to the game and as we were all getting ready a group of 4-5 undergrad girls walked by yelling that their brunette friend could kick all our asses as shotgunning... umm, yeah.. So, we let the girls get in on it and suffice it to say we kicked their undergrad cute asses as expected! The "fast" girl even left half of her beer still in the can which slowly poured out onto the pavement like a wounded soldier... I got a great photo of Ben laughing at one of 
the girls before they wandered off. I had been getting sick since I returned to find everyone in the office sick earlier in the week so I was trying to get a nice buzz, but not go overboard.
The game 
was the homecoming game against California and by half time it was apparent that we were going to kick their asses even without James Rogers on field. Emily and I at first went to our ticket seats but soon found ourselves sitting amongst a large group of older people so we left to go to the student section with our friends to stand and cheer. They were great seats and I got some really cool HDR shots of the stadium and the crowd but we kept feeling bad standing up in front of others behind us to see and cheer. At half time time we returned to drink a few beers and hang out and Emily stayed back as Isaac, Kevin and I returned to the game. By the end of the 3rd quarter it was apparent we were going to crush them and possibly even shut them out so we left but in the last few minutes CAL pulled off a touchdown to prevent the shutout. When I went to grab my bike to ride home I found my tire to be flat. 
I had a slow week for a long time but kept forgetting to change the tube... it sucked to walk all the way home with my bike 
at my side...
For the rest of the afternoon Emily worked on her Quail-Man Halloween costume. I was getting sicker by the minute so stuck with my traditional 1980's retro skier with funny furry hat outfit that I'd pulled out in previous years on short notice. If you don't remember who "Quail Man" is think back to the old Nickelodean cartoon called "Doug" with his cute little white dog named "Porkchop" that we all grew up to. Remember his superhero alter ego?? What a great idea Emily. This involved making a red paper "Q" on top of a green shirt and using one of my belts as the quail crown.
We all headed over to meet up at Mischa's around 8pm because the party we were all going to was at Kevin's friend Lumis' house in south town just a couple blocks from Mischa's. By this time I was really feeling 
exhausted and the cold I got from work was hitting me full blown. I had a couple drinks at Mischa's but decided to just take it easy all night. Scott and Danielle were there when we arrived and looked hilarious in their dual pink flamingo outfits! Colin was a mess of an outfit and Carrie showed up as an 80's soccer mom but looked most like Blanche from the Golden Girls which we decided to call her for the rest of the night. Fausti and Pete showed up to hang out with Mischa so he didn't follow us to the party. Kevin and Alexa were dressed up as Peanut Butter Jelly and a baseball bat from that viral internet banana song from about 8 years ago. Kevin was the peanut butter and Alexa went as grape jelly. I felt a little bad I didn't have a matching couples outfit with Emily but I was seriously not feeling good and just wanted to make it through the night and have a good time. Before we left someone had the great idea of a flamingo photo shoot in Mischa's kitchen with a pink blanket underneath. What
proceeded was one of the funniest things I've ever captured on film. If you are Facebook friend of mine you need to look up the video on 
my profile... you'll laugh your ass off. This still photos of them in the shoot in this post don't do justice to how funny it was!
When we got to Lumis' house there was a ton of people there already and he had made a bunch of great food including some amazing chili. I didn't even have one beer the whole time I was there, instead choosing to just hang out and chat with a bunch of people I don't get to see often like Mark, Shiloh, Kelly, Dennis Feeney, Matt (who went as an amazing "one night stand", Lindsay, Thiel, Hartz, Tim, Trisha, etc. Aaron had called me earlier in the night and said he was going to a South Town party to which I simply replied "see you there" because we always seem to end up at the same parties anyway. They had a beer pong table set up in the garage that Colin and Scott really got into (they both tied for the drunk card as well). There was a dance party in the living room and everyone seemed to be having a great time. I would randomly catch up with Emily throughout the night, once catching her in the kitchen taking multiple shots with Kevin and Alexa! Everyone had amazing costumes on with Thiel as a Mexican wrestler, Mark as a BP oiled up pelican, Lindsay as some sort of super hero, Shiloh as himself (scary enough), 
Kelly as a 
"Cereal Killer" with an ice axe through a box of cereal, Feeney as a "white board" which I wrote all over, Matt as mentioned above, Hartz as a 70's rockr (like he always seems to look anyway), Tim as some sort of masked menace and many more. As the night wore on and people started to leave around 1:30am I offered to drive Kevin & Alexa home because I was 100% sober by that point for sure and anxiously wanted to crawl into bed anyway. I had planned on skiing at Timberline on Sunday but with nobody going with me (no way Emily was getting up early the way she looked) and me being sick I called it off and basically spent Sunday trying to feel better for work on Monday. As usual in Corvallis Halloween weekend turned out to be a blast even though I was sick throughout the whole weekend....
