Twilightsm's Journal

7:39AM

Keep your fingers crossed for me...
I just had an interview and I think it went very well.
I'll know by friday if I have the job or not!

7:36AM - Writer's Block: RIP Michael Jackson

Smooth Criminal was my #1 favorite followed closely by Thriller.

4:53PM - This is the saddest thing I have ever seen...

4:52PM

Thank you Jessica for my awesome birthday gift!!

And thank you Nancy for Dru's jellyfish and the neato-journal :)

7:31PM - Roadtrip 2009

DISCLAIMER: I know I typed this up fast, so I'm sure spelling mistakes are everywhere... but I really don't feel like spell checking this whole thing. So please overlook any mistakes you might find. Thank you.

Getting There...
After a rather hectic day at work... Danwith and I began our journey southward. It was getting late and the hills made it completely dark, swirling mist began circling the car, semi trucks would shower the car in water... but it wasn't raining. In my head, large Lovecraftian monsters were flying just out of sight... At about 1am, just outside of Bowling Green... Dan's car began to choke and stutter. We began to loose accelleration... but thankfully, we reached the hotel before the car could die on us. Above the doorway to the hotel was a charm (Upside down horseshoe holding an upside down voodoo guy that had a dried orange and peppers hanging from his throat) and the carpeting and ceiling had dizying designs on them and the whole thing gave off a distint Shining feel to it... although it was only a few stories tall.

The Next Day...
We went north to Louieville. Well... we tried to get to Louiville, but the car decided that it wanted to die a few towns before that. We got it towed to Big O' Tire and they made us take it to Expert Exhast because the problem was the Cadilidic Converter and they couldn't do the repair there. We dropped the car off, rented another for the rest of the vacation... and away we went to finish out our trip!

( Pictures of Louiville )

Waverly Hills Sanatarium...
Up a hill and through the woods looms Waverly Hills. It was an old TB hospital that specialized in expermental treatments to help "cure" their patients. Then it was convered into a geriatric hospital that was eventually shut down in the 1980s due to pateint abuse. One of the previous owners had tried to get it condemned by having people vandalize and smash doorways and destroy as much of it as they could... Waverly Hills is a historic landmark, so he couldn't tear it down unless it was deemed unsafe. But the Sanatarium was too strong for him and it still stands today...

( Waverly Hills pictures )

Kentucky Down Under...
The next day Danwith and I went to Kentucky Down Under. This Austrialian zoo is home to numerous Austrialian animals as well as Kentucky Caverns.

( pictures of Kentucky Down Under here )

Diamond Caverns...
After Kentucky Down Under... Danwith and I travelled towards Mammoth Cave National Park to check out Diamond Caverns. Diamond Caverns and Mammoth Cave are connected, but they haven't quiet figured out how yet. So Diamond Caverns are still privately owned. Turns out that while we were inside the cave, a tornado went through the area!!

( Pictures of Diamond Caverns )

Mammoth Cave...
The next day Danwith and I went in for the biggest challenge of my life. The Wild Cave Tour. 6 1/2 hours of crawling and climbing! It was insane! Last time I was on a crawling cave tour, I almost broke my camera. So I didn't not take my camera with me for this tour. However, another person in our group did take pictures and so I'm impatently waiting for those to be posted on Flickr like they said they would. But just to give you an idea of what all I had to go through... here are some pictures that other people have taken while on this tour. Remember... these are not my images.

( Wild Cave Tour through the Eyes of Other People )

The trip ended after we went on the Violet City Tour... which was a no flash photography which means, no good pictures turned out :( We turned in the rental, grabbed Danwith's car and made it about 60mi before the car died again. So we stayed the night somewhere in northern Indiana and after a very long and stressful ordeal, Danwith bought a new used car to get us home.

The End.

8:47PM

I'm back from the road trip... longer update will most likely occur on Monday along with pictures.

9:44AM

You'd think I would have figured this out by now...

but going to the pound to look at cats = instant sadness :(
All the cats in the general public area were all sick with URI and god knows what else...
And the ones in the "adoption" room were housed with kittens that may have distemper?!
There was one there that I wanted to adopt... a little boy Tux kitten with big blue eyes and a thin little mustache... but I'm afraid to adopt from the Pound... what with all the sickness there.

3:25PM

Okay... an actual post.

I'm currently hanging up some more pictures, doing laundry and sterilizing my fish tank because all of my goldfish caught the plague and died.

Tomorrow I work an eternal shift at work (1:30 - Midnight).

I'm looking forward to ghost hunting and crawling in caves.

9:41AM

In this post, talk with your icons, and only your icons. Post early, post often, and respond to whomever you want. Just leave a dot or a dash in the comment field if eljay tells you can't post a blank comment.

No words, just icons. Come play with me

9:31AM

Okay... I really have to stop finding funny Youtube vidoes.

11:47AM

I am sick again...

3:54PM

1:02PM - I'm feeling all nostalgic for the 80s now....

10:16AM - 10 Small everyday things that make me happy.

Small things that make me happy...
1. Drusilla being spazzy.
2. Receiving snail mail letters from friends.
3. Reading a good book (Currently on Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach)
4. Chocolate
5. Backrubs
6. Hanging out with friends.
7. Good food.
8. Finding awesome stuff at thrift stores, garage sales and estate sales
9. Writing to people in different langauges (German and French)
10. Making mixed cds.

What makes you happy?

11:39AM - Ghost hunters clean up Bachelors Grove!

Article found here: http://www.southtownstar.com/news/1576780,051709bachelorsgrove.article

BY JASON FREEMAN Staff Writer
Paranormal investigator John Stephenson knows you can't catch a ghost with a couple of garbage bags and a yard rake.

So why did the Frankfort resident recently travel to Bachelors Grove Cemetery near Midlothian, which is considered by many to be a prime place to spot a specter, carrying the aforementioned household items instead of his usual assortment of electronic ghost-hunting gadgets?

To grab garbage, not ghosts.

"I grew up out here, and Bachelors Grove has been in bad shape since I was a kid," Stephenson said. "It just bugs me. It always has, so I've always gone out there with garbage bags and picked up stuff just on my own."

During a recent weekend excursion to the famous graveyard, Stephenson and nearly 100 other paranormal investigators went to work picking up beer cans, cigarette butts and other garbage in an effort to clean up the cemetery and restore it to its former glory.

"I just don't like the way Bachelors Grove looks," he said. "It's just terrible. It's a graveyard; it deserves some sort of respect, but no one will take care of it."

Stephenson began organizing the cleanup two months ago by getting the word out via his Web site, www.bachelors-grove.com.

"I have 500-plus members," he said. "I put out a global post, and I got a massive response. I even had people contacting me from Germany wanting to know how they could help."

The cemetery has become something of a Midwest legend over the years. People have claimed to spot everything from phantom farmhouses and two-headed monsters to mysterious blue lights and shadows that sulk between the fallen tombstones and broken trees.

"It's been paranormal since the 70s, but to be honest, I don't know why," Stephenson said. "I think the (disheveled state of the cemetery) might make it worse. Kids go in there and break tombstones and steal them. I know if I was a spirit, I'd be a little [ticked] off."

For ghost hunter Rhonda Schienle, of Northwest Indiana Indiana Ghost Trackers, Inc., cleaning up the graveyard seemed like a natural extension of the group's normal paranormal outings.

"Our mission statement is to be community-involved," she said. "We want to not only educate the community about the paranormal and get the word out, but we want to be involved in the community, as well, so this is one area where we know we can go out and help."

Cook County is responsible for Bachelors Grove. County authorities responsible for its upkeep did not return calls for comment last week.

Schienle said the experience was wrought with mixed emotions.

"There was just something very serene about the area," she said. "At first, it was very breathtaking for me, but then to see what I saw when I got in there, I was heartbroken. I went from reverence to disgust."

"I was so heartbroken to see someone had taken a spray can and wrote on a tombstone," she said. "People want to go to cemeteries and pay their respects and not have the tombstones broken or vandalized."

At the end of the day, Schienle said she was shocked to see how much junk they'd accumulated.

"When we were done, we had a couple dozen trash bags," she said. "There was quite a bit. I was impressed."

But picking up a few bags of trash is just the beginning, said Stephenson.

"I've got power, now," he said. "I've got 500-plus people who'll jump when I say something, which is pretty cool, so I've been utilizing them as my own little army. We might start an entire project. There's abandoned graveyards all over the place."

Jason Freeman can be reached at jfreeman@southtownstar.comor (708) 802-8808.

A haunted history

Bachelors Grove Cemetery, which is located in the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve near Midlothian and Oak Forest, can trace its roots to the European settlers who first tamed the area in the mid-1800s.

The old Midlothian Turnpike, the only road leading to the graveyard, was closed in the 1960s, making the secluded cemetery the perfect place for teens to hang out after dark without being spotted. Vandalism was common, and today, only 20 tombstones remain of the roughly 200 that once rose from the graveyard's grounds. The others have either been stolen or knocked over.

Some graves were dug up, and others lost to time as the grass grew over any indication that a marker was once there. Trees fell and crushed the surrounding gates. The cemetery entrance sign was stolen. Beer cans, cigarette butts and other assorted garbage became typical sights. The vandalism, say may paranormal investigators, stirred up the vengeance of angry spirits.

Some of the supernatural claims at Bachelors Grove Cemetery:

• A mysterious blue or red light seen in the darkness

• A ghost house and a phantom car that appear and disappear

• Ghostly apparitions and other unexplained sounds

• A three-headed monster that stalks the surrounding woods

• Reports of Satanic rituals and demonic, clandestine meetings

Are these claims true? That's exactly the question hundreds of paranormal research teams have been trying to answer since the 1970s.

7:49AM - Writer's Block: Close Call

I have long hair... really long hair. And I love rollercoasters. So one day I went to a Carnival and they had this ride called WipeOut. It had cars that would spin around and go up and down and would turn upside down! It looked intense! So I paid to ride WipeOut and I tuck my hair down my shirt and into my pants and hopped on the ride. But... I felt jipt because my car didn't go upside down like everyone else's... Mine was broken! And I was all ready to storm over to the ticket guy and demand my tickets because my seat was broken. But when I went to get up... I couldn't! My hair had untucked itself and wrapped around the arm that held the chair to the main spindle! Had my chair turned upside down like it was supposed to... it would have snapped my neck! Heck, my head could have been ripped off! (What a way to go though!) So the Carnie helped me untangle myself and away I went... unharmed.

One time I was in a laundry mat with my Mom when a giant washing machine EXPLODED sending shards of metal and plastic and flying clothes everywhere! Ma grabbed me and threw me to safetly (all 90-some pounds of her) and she went into first aid mode when a young mother just out of the hospital had her belly sliced open by the rubber seal flying off of the machine and snapping her like a large rubber band. Both Mom and I were unharmed, but the bookmark I was holding got shredded somehow.

I went through a windsheild once... not completely though. It was more like I filleted my head on it. But I actually got injured in that accident, so I don't think it counts even though it could have been a lot worse. Sidenote: Make sure your seatbelts lock.

1:03PM - Comic Con 2009

Over the weekend, Danwith and I went to the Novi City Comic Convention! Lots of people dressed up, we were able to talk to reletivly famous people... like Erik Avari, C.J. Graham, Julie Newmar, Kristy Swanson, Larry Thomas and Garrett Wang. Fun times and tons of photos were had!

( Comic Convention Shinanigans under here... )

10:29AM

Book #20 of 2009
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin

Synopsis: The Blind Assassin is the combination of three stories interwoven together. The first tells the story of Iris, an elderly woman going about her day-to-day life and reflecting on her past. The second story was written by Iris's sister and is entitled The Blind Assassin. It follows the lives of two unidentified lovers, meeting in secret and weaving together a sceince fiction story. Throughout the pages of history, present time, and the story of people from another world... Atwood throws in newspaper clippings, letters, and pieces of the public life of Iris and her family.

My thoughts: The Blind Assassin isn't your typical novel. It is not liner, nor does it have any real sense of plot. The Blind Assassin is more like looking at pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. Piece by piece falls in, filling in the blanks and giving you a glimpse of the secrets buried within Iris's family. I immensely enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone... although I think due to the characters and writing style, that woman would enjoy this book more so than men would.

Have any of you read it? What did you think?

9:54AM - About an Author....

I find that I really dig Margaret Atwood as an author.

I've so far read three of her books: Cat's Eye, The Edible Woman and the Blind Assassin, and I'm just beginning The Handmaid's Tale.

From what I can tell... none of her books really have a plot... except Edible Woman which I didn't particularly enjoy. But she has a way of drawing you into her characters and really allowing the reader to empathize with them. And I love her writing style... it's as if the character is sitting with you telling you their stories.

4:36PM - Dru has been Macro'd!

And a funny one I found... not my cat or Macro.