June 25, 2012

Ghost TV

So while we were at the Winchester Mystery House, we heard stories about ghosts and creepy paranormal activity.  One of the tour guides said she had seen such a ghost herself.  I myself have never seen a ghost but I like to believe that the various credible sources from which I have heard ghost stories (which include close friends) are not out of their minds and that ghosts do in fact exist. 

Now while we were there, we heard that the ghost hunting show had been to the house in recent years.  We also heard that they were complete assholes to everyone and didn't even stay the whole night because it was "too scary" (the employees stay until 4am on a regular basis as part of their job).  Now I've seen the show Ghost Hunters before and I thought that was kind of odd because they didn't really seem like the type that would be assholes or even scare easily.  So today I decided to track down the episode after Kris informed me they were available on youtube.  It turns out there was two ghost hunting shows that investigated the Winchester Mystery House (Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures) and it didn't take long to figure out which show the employees were talking about.

Behold the level of douchebaggery...

 

The guy from Ghost Adventures is unbearable.  At one point he actually attempted to open two of the bathrooms in the house because he has to pee and then complains to the tour guide about those bathrooms being a cocktease.  Who the fuck tries to use the bathroom in a historical landmark?  If I was in charge, I would have told him to get the fuck out. 

June 24, 2012

Canadian Elephant

Deep in the wilds of British Columbia, there once was a circus.  This circus had elephants, but the elephants were restless and tired of performing.  One day, the elephants decided they could no longer abide the life of the circus folk and fled into the wilds of Canada.  Of course the Canadians and the circus people didn't agree with the elephants and they made it a mission to track down and bring back every last elephant.  Although they managed to capture the other elephants without problems, one cunning elephant remained elusive.  With his survival prowess, he remained hidden in the wilds of British Columbia.

I have seen this elephant!



Okay...so I saw the statue they errected to commemorate the capture of this elephant.  But the entire premise is rediculous.  They apparently bathed the elephant in champaign and rechristened it upon its return to the circus.  I wonder if they'll have an elephant hunt to commemorate the 100 year anniversary which isn't too far off.  I am in complete support of this!

June 23, 2012

Home Coming

I loved California.

I adored the mountains of Canada.

But there is nothing quite like flying back into Chicago at day break.

June 22, 2012

"Crazy" Mrs. Winchester

The story of my life.  Kris is off on vacation busy doing awesome vacationy things and she STILL manages to post before me.  But its cool because for this particular adventure, we were together!

See? Its us. TOGETHER!















After three LONG years apart, Krangela was finally reunited for 10 whole days!  We spent one of those days at the Winchester Mystery House because neither of us had ever been there and Kris really wanted to go and I really wanted an excuse to drive to San Jose to see it.  Totally worth it.  Fun times were had by all.  Even the tour guide was cracking himself up at practically every stop.  Its nice to know that he was enjoying his job.  It seems like tour guiding could get a bit tedious. 

Also, Kris got to meet my husband.  Not that day, they met earlier when we picked Kris up from the airport.

Evidence that Kris and John met















I think it goes without saying that they hit it off because everyone loves my husband... and everyone loves Kris too so there was really no way for this to go wrong. 

In the gift shop, there was a candy house replica of the mystery house.














It looked exactly like this.  And here's a pic of the actual house for comparison. 

Nailed it















Fun story, apparently the ghost hunters filmed an episode here and they were jerks to everyone and didn't even stay the whole night because it was too scary even though nothing happened.  I wonder if I could track down that episode.  It would be interesting to watch. 

Alas, Kris left us for Canadaland on Monday.  I can only hope it wont be another three years before we see each other again.  We're working on convincing her to move to California which shouldn't be too difficult because we have awesome sushi.  Apparently our mediocre sushi is way better than their "really good" sushi.  Perhaps if we had taken her to the best sushi place, she would never have left. 

June 21, 2012

The House of Winchester

Due to travel and issues with the internet, I have not been able to get around to this week's topic (which was actually meant to be an adventure topic, but Angela decided to turn it into this week's topic :p).


Every picture I've ever seen of the Mystery House has it nicely surrounded by farmland.  This picture clearly demonstrates how this is not the case:  see the movie theater sign on one side, the busy street behind the sign, and the housing on the other side.  The House of Winchester is now in a sea of city, looking oddly out of place, and all the more like a tourist trap rather than a historical site.



We weren't really allowed to take pictures of the inside of the house, but I got some neat shots of the outside.  It's hard to tell how big the house really is from these, though, because it looks much smaller than one might think.  The inside is indeed a labyrinth, but it seemed much more straight forward than they wanted us to believe.  They said if you straggled behind on the tour, you would get very lost and wouldn't be able to find your way out.  Yet, I noticed a lot of doubling back on the tour, which led me to believe it would be very easy to find your way out as long as you knew what you were looking for.  Mrs. Winchester and her guests needed to be able to find thier way around the house after all.

There is in fact a "Door to Nowhere"


Teresa and I couldn't help bending the rules a little...technically this is outside the house

Angela and John being cute in the garden

The statue built to appease the Native American spirits who died from Winchester guns

I would definitely recommend taking both parts of the tour to anyone who wants to go.  You only see parts of the house on either tour, but it's only $5 more to see both and as much of the house as they open to the public.  We didn't see any ghosts, but apparently others have, plus you can spend as much time wandering through what remains of the estate (outside of the house) as you'd like for free.

June 12, 2012

I'm sailing away

I wouldn't say I've done a lot of traveling really, but I have seen a lot of airports.  I had to travel back and forth to college in Illinois and I would often have a connection flight at some random airport in between destinations.  Surprisingly, the only experience I've had thus far with lost luggage was on my very first air travel experience when I was in 9th grade.  Luckily they lost it on the way home so we didn't need the contents of the luggage for clothes and things. 

My favorite city for layovers is Las Vegas.  It is very entertaining to touch down among pyramids and random world land marks in the middle of a desert.  I've never actually left the airport so I have no idea what the rest of Las Vegas is like.  To me it is a sea of fake land marks.  On one flight, the stewardess was so excited to be going to Las Vegas and she just assumed the rest of the passengers were staying there as well so she was trying to get everyone excited about going to her favorite city.  Then on the connection flight out of Vegas, the stewardess commented on how people were 'leaving the party'.  I guess it was a short party for me. 

"Next week" is Winchester mystery house!  Kris and I will be going on an adventure together!  AND BLOGGING ABOUT IT! 

Flight from Insanity

I am getting to be as bad as Angela...although I blame Angela for the lateness of this week's topic posts.  It is entirely her fault for inviting me to come out to her crazy part of the country and then taking up all my time with doing cool fun things.

The trip to California was relatively uneventful.  Apparently we brought the winds from the midwest with us, though, because we hit a ton of turbulance as we flew.  The plane couldn't even land straight because of the winds.  There was also a marked difference from flying out of my neck of the woods and into California.  My airport was dirty, full of irritable people, and absolutely packed.  Angela's airport was clean, empty, and full of people all happy to be in California.

I really don't have anything interesting to discuss about the flight.  It wasn't interesting at all.  In fact, it was so boring that it put me to sleep a few times.

However, upon my arrival, Angela and John took me out for sushi. It was the best sushi I have EVER HAD IN MY LIFE OH MY GOD.  And then they told me later that it wasn't even "the best sushi place" just the "most affordable" and in fact it isn't even all that good in comparison.  Clearly I am missing out on something special here.

Tomorrow we're going on an adventure to the Winchester Mystery House.  I'll probably have an update to my adventure log shortly thereafter...with pictures.

June 6, 2012

Adventure Log: Misadventure

I didn't really forget to update my adventure log, it just slipped my mind...
It also slipped my mind to bring a camera, so once again there are no pictures.

Last week, I had an adventure in misadventure.  Some of my friends invited me to go for a hike in the woods behind another friend's house.  For some reason, it didn't occur to me that walking through her woods meant there is no path to walk on.  We drove out into the woods behind her field in the back of the pick-up truck.  It reminded me a lot of being at my grandparents' farm house.  All the cousins used to pile in the back of the old blue ford pick-up and our grandfather would drive us through the fields and down the grass trail which used to be the rest of the road.  This one was a bit more intensive because there were low hanging trees to duck as well.

When we finally arrived at our destination, it occurred to me that there was no trail.  I had been foolish enough to wear shorts and there was a ton of tall grass.  Finally, one of our friends pointed out multiple places full of poison ivy and I decided this was not for me.  I don't just get itchy from poison ivy, I get it for months and with my trip to California and Canada around the corner, I did not want to be suffering from poison ivy on my skin while I vacation.  Rather than leaving me to my own devices, we decided to explore her field instead.  The field was full of corn.  (Angela, I told you we walk through cornfields for entertainment where I come from.)

Once the cornfield had ceased to be entertaining, we went back to the house for jubilee beneath the willow trees.  We made crowns from the willow branches and some of us had tournaments with rapiers (yes, real rapiers), sticks, and willow wips.  There was no clear victor from the fight, but no one got stabbed without the protective gear so everyone was a winner.  Let me tell you something, if you've never seen a rapier before, it is easy to see how these things can kill people.

After our jubilee, we supped then went to see Snow White and the Huntsman.  This movie wasn't just bad.  It was terrible.  Game of Thrones meets Princess Bride meets Snow White if Snow White loved the Huntsman instead of the prince.  Also it was kind of disturbing how easily some of the dialogue fit better into an adult film.  If you happen to see this movie, I suggest going in with that mind-set.  It makes things much more entertaining.

So that was my weekly adventure in misadventure.  Next week's adventure log will totally feature more Angela :D  Oh, and there WILL be pictures.

June 4, 2012

Celebrities

So this weeks topic (and by this week I mean last week) is celebrities.  I wanted to get into the full experience of a celebrity by writing my weekly topic late.  Whenever celebrities go places, they're always the last to arrive because it gives people a chance to gather and get super excited about their appearance.  Except in this case I'm pretty sure the only person anxiously awaiting my post is my co-blogger, Kris, and she's probably more annoyed than excited about my tardiness.  But that's okay because that's the other thing celebrities do best: annoy people! 

What really interests me about celebrities is the pedestal society puts them on.  Take for example fan-girls.  I think I can speak fairly on their behalf because I used to be one.  Don't ask which ones, I will never tell.  The only one I'm not really embarrassed about is Chris Pine because I think he has actual talent and also his voice is super sexy. 

Whats interesting is when girls think these celebrities are super marriage material.  We think just because they're hot, they would make perfect husbands... or wives.  Any idiot who has even accidentally overheard any kind of celebrity gossip can tell you that this is not the case.  Celebrities have the worst track record when it comes to relationships.  I'm guessing its because they spend most of their time pretending to be someone else so its hard to figure out who they actually married. 

Whats really annoying is this idea that a person would drop whoever they were with if they even had a chance at dating a celebrity.  Like that episode of Seinfeld where George tries to date Marisa Tomei at the expense of his fiance.  It's like people think celebrities are made out of different material than regular people.  I mean maybe there's some regular person whose soul mate is super famous but I think people who fantasize about marrying celebrities are just gold diggers. 

My name is a celebrity!

June 2, 2012

David Selby

When my mom was younger, she was interested in this television soap opera called Dark Shadows.  It's been getting a lot of attention lately because of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.  My mom always liked Barnabas Collins as her favorite character and later on, when it returned to television on reruns in the early 90's, my sisters and I used to watch it with her.  Even though I always told her Barnabas was my favorite, I secretly always liked Quentin more.  This flies in the face of my general interests.  In the debate of vampire vs werewolf, I'm totally a vampire person.  And yet, Quentin (the werewolf character) was somehow superior to Barnabas in my opinion.  Go figure.

Years later, after seeing the movie, I suddenly decided to find out what happened to "Quentin Collins".  It turns out the actor, David Selby, has done quite well for himself.  Apparently he's in the Batman animation "The Dark Knight Returns" part one and two as James Gordon.  This may be something I will have to look into tracking down, if only because I'm apparently something of a fan girl...and unobservant.

So even though David Selby is likely to never read this blog...here's to you David Selby!  You're totally awesome!  The best werewolf ever!