Happy Anniversary Kate & Steve

We headed out to Iowa this weekend to celebrate the 10th wedding anniversary of MizBubs' sister Kate, and her husband Steve. Steve's family owns a farm and we make it out there a couple times a year to camp and visit.

This weekend was wonderful. While there was no Sunday Afternoon Cocktail, there was a keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon, multiple bottles of bourbon and at one point Saturday afternoon a delicious Bloody Mary appeared, made by some guy named Andy we'd just met for the first time, chock full of horseradish and minced garlic. Whew. I'll have to get that recipe.

There was singing, party games, adventures with chainsaws, and fishing, and a ratio of one dog per every 2 people. It rained a little, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. There is no better feeling than being in a warm dry tent at night and listening to the rain falling.

Here are some pics from the weekend. Hope y'all had a good one. Now it's back to work.

KEEP 'EM ROLLING! THANK YOU!

UPDATED AT 6:04 PM CST SUNDAY: As of now, Nora has over 1240 votes and is still in 3rd place!

Thank you all, everyone who has voted, or posted on your blogs, or emailed or Tweeted or Facebooked your friends and associates. The contest ends at midnight tonight, and it looks like our little gorehound will be heading to the finals.

It's not quite over yet, though, so if you feel like throwing another vote her way, she'd surely appreciate it:

VOTE FOR NORA O'SULLIVAN HERE

Thank you again!

_____________________

The Nora O'Sullivan Fangoria Army continues to grow.

I will never, EVER again make a disparaging remark about blogging, Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking media.

Friends, we are seeing a brilliant demonstration of the wonders of social networking here. When I emailed some of you on Wednesday morning our aspiring Fangoria Spooksmodel Nora had fewer than 30 votes and was taking a thumping. No more.

As of right now she's holding fourth place and has over 700 votes! Nora is getting support from all of you, her friends and family of course. That was the first circle. Then came support from folks on email lists, people I've talked politics with over the years and a few Pittsburgh Steeler fans (Pittsburgh is the birthplace, of course, of the modern flesh-eating zombie). Then it was people at work, including dozens of current and former homicide detectives that my boss sent emails out to. Then, thanks to all of you came the Facebook posts, and the Tweets, and lord knows what other kind of technological marvels I can only dimly comprehend.

Right now a vast army has been mobilized to vote for Nora, Horror's Girl Next Door, to propel her to the Fangoria Spooksmodel finals in Los Angeles. Here are the folks I know of that have gone out of their way so far to feature Nora on their blogs:

Amy Guth
Katie Schwartz
Doctor Monkey Von Monkerstein
Becca (No Smoking In the Skull Cave)
Samurai Frog (Electronic Cerebrectomy)
Lisa Golden (That's Why)
Megan (All I Need Is Everything)
Mob (Dear Bastards)
Splotchy
Cormac Brown
Dena (Linkadelica)
Tengrain (Mock Paper Scissors)
DGuzman (...Other Dreams)
Randal Graves
Bubbles (Bubbles' new blog)
Jin (Jintrinsique)
Leah Jones (Leah in Chicago)
SHU-IZMZ
Padraig (Pat's Daily Grind)
Dr. Zaius
**special thanks to Dr. Zaius for the awesome blood red background on Nora's photo!
Cap'n Ergo Jinglebollocks (With a Twist of Lemon)
Jesus' General
Blue Gal
Alicia Morgan (Last Left Turn Before Hooterville)
Coaster Punchman
Lulu
GETkristiLOVE (Two Minutes in the Box)
Utah Savage
SkylersDad (Some days it's not worth chewing off the leather straps)
WaltoWorld
Doc (Social Zymurgy)

I don't even know who some of these people are...but it looks like I'm going to be buying a lot of drinks in the near future. I'm pretty sure there are more folks than this promoting our girl right now--I just haven't found out about them yet. I can't thank you all enough. If you've done something for Nora and I haven't mentioned it, please email me so I can link with you here.

_____________________

But we can't stop and celebrate yet. It's only Friday afternoon, and this contest doesn't end for another 48 hours. We have to keep going, but what can we do? It's important not to lose momentum as the work week ends and we all stop screwing around and wasting our employer's time surfing the internet in the office.

First of all, VOTE. VOTE HERE. Just scroll down the page after you click that link and look for Nora O'Sullivan, and vote. You see that dissheveled guy sitting in the coffee house next to you, pretending to write on his laptop? Get him to vote. He'll welcome the human interaction. Get your friends and your family to vote. Know any geeks, gamers, nerds, fanboys or fangirls? Bug them and get them to vote. Don't forget your cousins, and your play cousins.

**NOTE: THE PRECEDING STATEMENT IS IN NO WAY MEANT TO BE TAKEN AS AN ACTUAL ENTICEMENT TO CAST MULTIPLE VOTES IN AN EFFORT TO SWAY THE OUTCOME OF THIS COMPETITION. SPRAWLING RAMSHACKLE COMPOUND BELIEVES STRONGLY IN THE SANCTITY OF THE AMERICAN PRINCIPLE OF ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE. THANK YOU.

Going by any coffee houses, comic book shops, video shops, or bookstores in your travels this weekend? Well, then, why not print up a couple of these flyers and leave them around where internet voting fans might find them:

I'm signing off now. Remember: "Perky nurse is way more evil than bloody vampiress".

VOTE FOR NORA O'SULLIVAN

Thank you all!

Horror's Girl Next Door

Listen up, dear readers--our eldest Nora is a semifinalist in the Fangoria Spooksmodel contest and she needs your help!

Nora is competing against quite a few professional models with some pretty slick photo spreads. A few of the girls (and I mean this with no disrespect whatsoever) look like budding alt-porn starlets, and they show a bit of skin. Nora, on the other hand, is the wholesome girl-next-door of horror. Proof that gore-soaked splatter movies are really good old-fashioned family fun. That's our girl. The top 13 contestants get to go to the finals in Los Angeles. And, as a maniacal stage father, I'm dying to take a trip to L.A.



So start voting. Click on this link here, and scroll down until you see Nora in her evil nurse costume. This is a Chicago based blog, so I'd be disappointed in you all if you did anything other than try and vote as many times as possible, in any way possible. The contest ends on Sunday, March 29th, so you'll have plenty of opportunities to vote.

**NOTE: THE PRECEDING STATEMENT IS A JOKE AND IS IN NO WAY MEANT TO BE TAKEN AS AN ACTUAL ENTICEMENT TO CAST MULTIPLE VOTES IN AN EFFORT TO SWAY THE OUTCOME OF THIS COMPETITION. SPRAWLING RAMSHACKLE COMPOUND BELIEVES STRONGLY IN THE SANCTITY OF THE AMERICAN PRINCIPLE OF ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE. THANK YOU.

Here's a special offer--anyone who features Nora on their blog will be the happy recipient of free alcoholic drinks the next time I see you in person. Did you hear that? Promote Nora on your blog, and let Bubs help you get your drink on for free next time you see him.

Come on. I implore you. Join the Nora O'Sullivan Fangoria army. Put her on your blog. Facebook her. MySpace her. Tweet the bejeebus out of her. Join these proud bloggers who've gotten in on the ground floor of this once-in-a-lifetime pop culture moment:

Amy Guth
Katie Schwartz
Doctor Monkey Von Monkerstein
Becca (No Smoking In the Skull Cave)
Samurai Frog (Electronic Cerebrectomy)
Lisa Golden (That's Why)
Megan (All I Need Is Everything)
Mob (Dear Bastards)
Splotchy
Cormac Brown
Dena (Linkadelica)
Tengrain (Mock Paper Scissors)
DGuzman (...Other Dreams)
Randal Graves
Bubbles (Bubbles' new blog)
Jin (Jintrinsique)
Leah Jones (Leah in Chicago)
SHU-IZMZ
Padraig (Pat's Daily Grind)
Dr. Zaius
**special thanks to Dr. Zaius for the awesome blood red background on Nora's photo!
Cap'n Ergo Jinglebollocks (With a Twist of Lemon)
Jesus' General
Blue Gal
Alicia Morgan (Last Left Turn Before Hooterville)
Coaster Punchman
Lulu
GETkristiLOVE (Two Minutes in the Box)
Utah Savage
SkylersDad (Some days it's not worth chewing off the leather straps)
WaltoWorld
Doc (Social Zymurgy)

I'll leave you with my new favorite quote from Blue Gal: "Perky nurse is way more evil than bloody vampiress".

Vote you crazy bastards, vote.

_____________________

If you'd like to see some more of this budding horror spooksmodel, check this out. Nora is featured tonight as the Horror Freak of the Week at the Chicago Horror Society.

Proud

Thirsty

Monday night at the compound

Sunday night at the compound

More reasons I love my family

When they're not leaving random images on the computer desktop, they're buying WW2-era magazines and leaving them for me to find on the dining room table when I wake up in the morning.

And those magazines are full of wonderful advertising like this.

I think that guy in the upper left corner is Crispin Glover's grandfather.

Reasons I love my family

There are a lot of reasons, really, but the one I've mentioned before has to do with coming home and finding random images on the computer desktop.

Like this one. I am not a "cat person" but who can resist a cat wearing a fez? Or any of God's creatures wearing a fez?

I know I can't.

Reasons I love my family

Check out this picture:

I get home from work at eleven o'clock, after driving through what's turning into a pretty intense ice storm out here in the northwest suburbs. I get done salting the front and back porches, hoping it will make the morning shovel easier, I come back inside, pour my bourbon...and find this, saved as the new desktop on our computer.

And I have no idea who did this. It wasn't MizBubs, I know that--I asked her when I kissed her goodnight. So it's one of the daughters. The last desktop image we had was of the ruin of Tyrone House in County Galway, Ireland. Before that I'd put up a random image of a drunk woman dancing with a penguin. We like to mix it up. I get home late, find something that amuses me, and it becomes the desktop image for a few days. My youngest gets home from school, finds something that amuses her, and it becomes the desktop. Around it goes.

I find this very comforting.

All that's left now is to fall asleep and hope that, when I awake, Harper College and Prospect High School have both cancelled classes for the day. That's what this family needs--a rockin good snow day.