But, anyway, we never played with anyone else. It was always me playing Meghan and that was it. I imagine I played my brother or sister or Dad once or twice, but Uno was really this showdown between us two. We were besties, but we fought all the time, and constantly accused each other of cheating and Uno was a real war. We would relish drawing forty cards and having a huge hand full of non-number cards. It’s a much better game when you play against one person, because every single non-number, non-regular-wild card means you get an automatic second turn. We would pile up all these cards and act all sad like we were losing and then go on this super bitchy rant, slapping down cards. “Reverse you, go back to me; skips you, goes back to me; draw four, goes back to me; draw two, goes back to me.”

She still lives across the street from me, but I haven’t actually conversed with her in probably three or four years. We just never cross paths, which is kind of weird. But, I still remember exactly how her room looked back then and how we couldn’t listen to music while we were playing and how playing Uno was something which was Very Serious for us. I’ve played Uno since, obvs, but it’s never the same. Games don’t last that long and there’s never anything at stake (like the fact that you get bragging rights for a week after the game is over, which was how long it took for the loser to stop sulking and trying to convince everyone that cheating had so obviously occurred).

My dad’s work was having some kind of company picnic sort of thing a couple of weeks ago, and they were playing games. He was even sent home with some, one of which was a card game called Rats. It’s kind of the opposite of Uno (you want to end up with all the cards instead of none), with absolutely no strategy. Like bizarro Uno mixed with war.

It sucks when you lose at a game that takes real strategy. It sucks even more when you lose several times in a row in a game that is completely based on luck. Because, then, well, you’re not a bad card player. You’re just a natural loser. I lost twice in a row at this game tonight with Sal.

But, then we decided to play one more game before going to bed. One more game which lasted over half an hour and literally drew blood at one point (the result of an attempt to snatch up extra cards gone terribly awry). Uno 2.0? Maybe not. But, all I’m saying is, I won that last epic game, and I’m going to be talking about it until Sally finally asks for a rematch.

But, anyway, we had a fun Halloween. We decorated the porch (we also decorated all throughout the house), as usual. This year…

We had lights and a pumpkin around the door.

And a spider. I’m such a good painter … you probably thought a 10-year-old made that, huh? Anyway, it was made out of a garbage bag and sticks from the yard, ’cause we’re crafty.

And Mom made that cat! Isn’t he cute?? Of course, when he was sitting in the living room over the weekend (there were huge rainstorms on Friday night, so we didn’t want him to get soaked or blow away or anything), I kept thinking someone was standing by the door. But, whatever. He’s cute!

And we had two pumpkins. Dad and I made the wolf. It took something like two hours, but I think it looked pretty cool.

And Mom used a white pumpkin to make a mummy.
We had a good dinner, too. And it was all themed (Mom’s so clever). It included spare ribs (get it?), worms in blood (you know, spaghetti)…

…eyeballs…

…and bones.

And, of course, Mom’s (don’t get it twisted, SO MUCH BETTER than Magnolia’s) cupcakes.

I mean, you’d think that we were having kids over or something, but, no. It was all for us. Because we know how to have a good time. Recognize. Happy Late Halloween!

Anyway, Saturday night was supposed to be the big night for going out for Halloween since the 31st was on a Tuesday. And we figured we’d just go to the bars in town, because then no one would have to drive. Anyway, we went to this one bar called Red, which is overpriced and pretentious, but they were supposed to be having a Halloween party. Um, except nobody was in costume. Well, a few people in the back room upstairs were dressed like they were from the 20s (the theme of the night), but for the most part, we were getting insanely odd looks. It was almost Halloween! Lame. Anyway, we stayed for one drink and then moved on.

Not that the Dublin House (our next stop) had too many people in costume, either (well, except for the brokedown Santa across the bar). But, the drinks were cheaper and we had seats. So, good times.

And we had chips. Which Sally discovered, went really well with her margaritas.

And vodka cranberries.

Anyway. We were having fun. See?

Winking means fun.

…I don’t know what Dana was doing.

But, she was clearly having fun doing it.

Yes. The second bar, despite the fact that there was ZERO dancey music playing (it’s not that kind of a bar, but still!), was more fun. I don’t know what that look I’m giving is. But, after some more chips…

…everything was made right again. And check out my wicked black eye.

OH, yeah, and Sally was sitting at the spot at the bar where waiters and barbacks are supposed to go through, so this guy who looked like Clay Aiken (you know, pre-K.D. Lang makeover) kept having to sneak underneath. So, eventually, we offered him some chips. And he was SUPER impressed with Sal’s costume.
But, you know, the Dublin House was getting played out, so we moved onto another bar.

Which played TWO Sean Paul songs in the short amount of time we were there. (Guess who was happy!)

AND gave us free stuff for being in costume. Yay for costumes!

And the evening ended with me walking into a glass door. If I didn’t look beat up before…

I’m on the left, Sal’s on the right. And the worst part is, it’s really hard to breathe in these things, and when you do, it clouds up the plastic, making it even harder to breathe because it gets really hot inside them.
And even weirder is the fact that the same exact mask made three people look totally different. Here’s Sally with the mask:

She looks like Geraldo Rivera. And then, our dad in the mask:

For some reason, on him it looks real dusky. And he looks like our neighbor from across the street.

After we were done torturing ourselves with those masks, we were still playing with the wigs, and we said that the black mullet wig kind of looked like Steve Perry’s hair (you know, the guy from Journey). So, I put the wig on and kept singing “Oh Sherry”, but Jeff (our brother) pointed out that I still looked too much like a girl.
So, I remedied that.

With a 5-o’clock shadow and some cheap sunglasses I got at the dining hall in college once (it was movie star night). Plus, I put on black jeans and pinned them at the ankles so they looked tapered. And put on my super old school white Reeboks from high school. And a black t-shirt (with a sports bra … I did what I could). P.S. Doesn’t Sally look like a total floozy with that blonde wig on?

In the end, I ended up looking like our long-lost brother. Like, Jeff ended up in South Jersey and somehow stumbled upon me sitting in the back of a pick-up truck. I look like a MAN! (I guess that was the point.)
We had no Pabst. So, we used cans of seltzer for the picture.

See? That’s us on our way. I’m shocked because I actually agreed to drive real far away (like, an hour!) even though I get car sick. But, I was pretty good this time. No feeling sick until about three minutes away from our first stop at the restaurant.

I put my collar up and Sally and I were gonna be “toughs” but then it ended up looking like Sally was ill and I was coming to cheer her up at the home. Which is pretty sad.

And I have to admit, I only included this one because Sally looked fine in the last picture and I looked terrible. But now the roles are reversed! Haha.
Of course, there were a couple of other pictures, but we had major fhat going on, so I couldn’t include them. (By the way, fhat is that fat that’s right under your chin – it’s close to your hat, get it? my brother Matt and I came up with that one when I was about five – and it usually peeks out when you’re laughing or kind of tucking your chin in while smiling or when you’re opening your mouth really wide… Or if you’re Constantine Maroulis.)

But anyway, so we got to Long Beach Island, and we stopped at this cafe for something to eat. They had really good baked potato soup. And they arranged the pickels and orange on Sally’s plate like a face (she added the nose, but the rest of it looked like that before we touched it, honest), which was pretty strange. And, as Dad pointed out, pretty strange that they put the pickels and orange together, because the pickels pretty much ruined the orange.

And in this cafe they had lots of snowmen stuff, and one of them was this wooden snowman statue, but it has this creepy flesh colored lower eyelids. I mean, it’s a snowman. It shouldn’t have flesh colored anything.

And they had gross looking cacti on the windowsill.

That’s the Barnegat lighthouse, which is what we were actually going to see (our parents love lighthouses). But, the gates to the parking lot closed at 4:00 and it was around 3:30. We didn’t get to stay too long.

And there’s the guy that designed the lighthouse and our dad. Try to guess which one is which.

Then we went home. The bridge kind of reminded me of the escalator to nowhere.

Meanwhile, I had a dream that I had to go sub for my old cooperating teacher in New York tomorrow, so I would have to get a train that left my house at 4:30 in the morning. When I woke up and realized I had been dreaming, I said, “Oh, please.”

Oh, yeah, and I knew all about the fact that Jason Priestly almost died, but Mary over at Sparkle and Shine Designs informed me that his face was, like, torn off and he had to get facial reconstructive surgery. And that, kids, is why he looks so totally bizarre. It’s just like when that guy that was in Creed got in an accident and his face blew up to 150X its normal size. Well, it’s not really like that at all, now that I think of it, because that guy was just on some kind of face-fattening medicine or something. Jason Priestly has, like, a whole new face.

Woah, are we behind on picking that prize, or what? I PROMISE, tomorrow we’re digging into our bag of names, err, e-mails. Oh, my God, you’re so excited!

Hey, who’s watching that show where those d-list celebrities dance the cha-cha tonight? It’s awesome.

love.