In the Interest of Time, this is Missing a Clever Title

I know it's been awhile
by Mil'vardea

Greetings! Sorry about the delay in new posts; we've been busy! Super busy!

Let me tell you about game night: We played Quelf, and we have some hilarious stories to tell. A good friend of ours, we'll call him "Christian" from here on out, had some awesome cards, all at the same time. One was that he had to keep his hands on top of his head for a whole round, then a rules card saying he could only pick things up with his pinky and thumb. Then the person to his left got a card that included him, and he had to write something, while keeping his hands above his head, and holding the pencil with just his pinky and thumb. L.O.L.

We also played epic Settlers of Catan, and I think you deserve some pictures of its epic-ness. We combined two Catan sets and played to 20 points; the game went on for two hours, and Canada won (she always wins). The game becomes very cutthroat when we play. It's freakin crazy, but awesome. We're going to have to connect some more sets and play even more epic Catan.

A few days ago, we actually went stargazing, laying down in the back of Smoo's truck with a star map and trying to figure out where everything was. We found some of the more "popular" ones easily, like Orion, and the big W, Cassiopeia. We managed to find some of the Zodiac symbols too, which was cool. Unfortunately, light pollution kept us from finding some of the constellations to the North of us, thick enough even to cover the North Star. But we still managed to have a great time.

On Wednesday, we had a Thanksgiving party together, playing Cranium, pool, and watching Mythbusters (I love that show). They were blowing up non-dairy creamer. LOL.

Hopefully, now that we're between holidays, we'll be able to all stay in town long enough to get some more stuff on the list. We'll see.

..::heartsinfall::..

EDF!!!

God, We're Nerdy Sometimes...
by Mil'vardea

What do you get when you combine a bunch of nerds, an XBox360, EDF, Magic, and pizza?

We like to call it EDF night.

Lately, we've been having tons of fun game nights, ranging in games from Quelf, to Tanks for Wii, Settlers of Catan... All great fun, but no great things to write about. Unfortunately.

..::heartsinfall::..

NaNoWriMo Update

It's November Again!
by Mil'vardea

We gathered yesterday for the beginning of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). We discussed ideas over cheap diner food, wrote to Canada's folk music, and pondered over the secrets of the universe.

Each of our plots are kind of complex, but I will attempt to describe mine a little:

What if the Roman Empire had never fallen? How would it have kept it's power, and how could it have survived? It's a bit like a Big Brother sort of thing, where people are being controlled by this kind of government entity. I'm trying to track down a good English-to-Latin translator online, but I haven't found one quite yet.

Canada's plot is extremely complicated, but boils down to a soul has been reincarnated into two separate bodies, and there's a very powerful group of people who are looking to reclaim said soul and put it back together again.

Smoo decided to take a very old idea he had for a story, and is writing about a cute that someone invents for Alzheimer's. It helps to bring back memories lost. But the cure mutates peoples' minds, and they end up spreading their memories to others like a disease. It's almost like you could cough on someone or kiss someone and they would know your whole childhood.

I love their concepts; we're going to have some much fun with this this year! Good luck to everyone else who is Nano-ing!

..::heartsinfall::..

Carve the Pumpkins and Shoot!

Big Sharp Knife Things and Guns
By Smoo and Mil'vardea

Today we are carving the wondrous pumpkins we procured last week at the pumpkin patch. BlackBeard, IrishCream, Mil'vardea, and myself got our pumpkins, some spoons, and our carving knives and sat down in Mil'vardea's driveway to begin out butchery. BlackBeard went with a traditional triangle eyed toothy mawed thing while the rest of us got more creative.

Mil'vardea set out to carve the Flyers logo onto hers by chipping away the top layer of rind from the pumpkin face, so that light will shine through from the inside (Mil'v also carved a Spongebob pumpkin, of him naked, covering himself. Lol.). My own looks like a normal pumpkin from the outside, but I carved an awesome arcane rune on the inside by scraping away the inner wall. When you stick some light inside it, the rune glows! IrishCream had a very cute kitty pumpkin! Well, it was a kitty-faced pumpkin. Black Beard carved a generic pumpkin face, and was going to go home later a carve a "secret" pumpkin (we all knew he was going to do a Gunther face though).

After a long day of pumpkin carving, we all disbanded for dinner (and class, for IrishCream) then gathered once again for an epic Nerf battle! It was Sister, Smoo, and Mil'vardea against IrishCream, Canada, and Black Beard. We set up huge "forts" made of blankets, furniture, pillows, and whatever else we could find. The battle raged around us, and we made mad rushes into No Man's Land for ammo, crawling around like idiots as our team provided cover fire. After an hour long battle, Black Beard was out for the count with a massive allergy attack, and we signed a peace treaty, celebrating our victory with an episode of South Park, a few pizzas and a round or Quelf, the best board game ever.

Tomorrow we're having a party at BlackBeard's house with a few out of town friends we haven't seen in a while, and its going to be freakin awesome with pumpkins like these.

..::heartsinfall::..

Chair Jousting

Have at thee!
by Smoo

Have a jousting tournament!

Last night around 10 pm, we decided to finally try out luck at jousting. We've been floating different ideas on how to do it, from using cars with 10 foot iron rods to wheelchairs and crutches, but we settled on using two rolling office chairs from my house and a pair of boffers left over from goofing off at college. There can be only one champion!


Mil'vardea and I called one of our friends (lets call him 'Fro-mage' until we think up a good pseudonym) and asked him to join us and rope a fourth person into our antics. He agreed and we set out to the Local Preppy College to do battle in one of their parking lots. The night was freezing cold (literally) and a fell wind carried the stench of . . . frat boys, I think. Fro-mage arrived fashionably late with a strange girl he found on the internet and we started the joust.

Each team had two people. One person would sit on a backwards chair, so they had some protection offered by the back rest, while their partner pushed them forward. We got off to a rocky start with Fro-mage knocking his new friend over by pushing too hard, but we got the hang of going forward quickly. Steering was another issue however, as the first jousts ended with frantic near misses and collisions.

Eventually we mastered charging toward each other with our lances and spearing the opponent in the chest (or neck, or elbow, or groin, whatever happened to be in the way). It was awesome fun, though we forgot to keep score since its hard to judge who would have won each pass and it was nigh impossible to break a lance or unhorse each other. We plan to do this again with more people, more equal rolling chairs, and maybe rules as well.

..::heartsinfall::..

Pumpkin Patch

Huge Gummy Snake!
by Smoo

Go to the Pumpkin patch and get pumpkins like we used to when we were kids!

So today we decided to go to the pumpkin patch and get some fall time decorations for our front yards. We drove for 45 minutes north of the city to a berry farm that offers a deal, all the pumpkins you can carry for $20.

After we arrived we explored a store set up in an old barn to see what they had laying around. Mostly it was filled with Christmas decorations and some Halloween things, but there was a putting green and a couple of cute little pigs (with a sign that said DO NOT PET : ( why have them in a small pen with a low fence if they aren't for petting!) off to one side. Then we found the glorious candy and a 4 foot gummy snake, which Mil'vardea and I got. The sugar from it is still making me all jittery.

We quested forth to find the hay ride over to the pumpkins, along with a few families with small children, who were all squealing with glee for some reason (the only folks at the pumpkin patch were us, an old lady, and the few families). We snapped a few pictures on our ride of the beautiful area around the farm and then got off the wagon to find our pumpkins. Almost immediately we heard one kid yelling "Oh my goodness!!" and falling down to hug one of them, which made us laugh. BlackBeard and IrishCream set off to the far end of the field while I meandered around looking near the front and Mil'vardea hunted for 'tiny cute ones'. Between the three of us we had a good haul, and chose the best of the crop for our nefarious purposes.



Then we loaded as many as possible onto BlackBeard, almost snapping his spine before he said that he couldn't hold anymore. We took our 7 large pumpkins and headed back, chatting with some of the other people on the hay ride about how buff BlackBeard is and what his rates should be for pumpkin lifting. BlackBeard held them all again, turning red and grunting like a stuck pig, took the required 3 steps, and we merrily loaded up his car with the loot and headed home. $20 is a bargain for these!

..::heartsinfall::..

Shouting at Strangers is Dangerous

But None of Us Really Cared
by Mil'vardea

Take some hot chocolate in a thermos and sit around in a high traffic area and offer hot beverages to complete strangers.

We are very lucky that our local preppy college does seem to care who you are, where you're from, or whether or not you even attend the school. We have had great amounts of fun over the past few years on that campus.

Anyway, in a fit of bored genius, Black Beard, Smoo and I piled into Beard's car and tooled down to the campus, settling in a small corner around the lake called "The Island." It's a small landmass in the middle of the lake, connected to the mainland by two arching bridges and expanded by a giant gazebo almost the same size as the island itself. We sat around one of the little bench things they have there, with a thermos full of hot chocolate and chatted, waving at strangers and inviting them to join us.

We actually managed to succeed this time in getting strangers to reply to our antics.

We had one kid, about 19 years old, come over to join us. He seemed nice enough, so we waved him down and handed him some cocoa, and chatted him up. His name was "Hayes" and he was actually a friend of a friend of ours, and had attended the same high school as our very own Smoo.

IrishCream joined us right from work, driving over and filching of our very delicious hot chocolate, joining into our discussion over the flagrant inconsistencies in movie series, such as James Bond and Star Wars.

The night was beautiful, the stars were out, and we curled up together on the island's bank, huddled in Black Beard's sleeping bag, watching to world go by.

..::heartsinfall::..

Bow Chicka Wow Wow

Camping in the Park Made For Some Silly Jokes
by Mil'vardea

Find a local park, and go camping for the night, sitting around the fire and eating a lot.

We got rained out Friday night, which is when we planned on going camping. So we planned to pick up where we left off on Saturday night, since none of us had to work. Everything was going as planned, the rain cleared up, we all had cleared our schedules, and even the clouds were dispersing. Everything was just a little too perfect, however.

Black Beard had asked for the whole weekend off, just in case it actually did rain (good think he did) but his manager scheduled him to work anyway, so he had to find a sub. Work now out of the way, we were just about ready to leave when Black Beard's sub called, saying he was now subbing for someone else, and good luck finding someone else.

God, what a loser.

Anyway, he was now getting off of work at nine o'clock. IrishCream, Smoo and I left without him, getting to the campsite around four to set up. We started a fire and got things going, and sat around lamenting our empty stomachs as the sun set. To amuse ourselves, we began star gazing (the clouds hadn't completely cleared up at this point, but you could see about half of the sky). We found shapes in the clouds, and watched the world go by.

The volume on this video is kind of low. Sorry.

For dinner, we recreated our fantastic beef and veggie kabobs (click here for the recipe). Black Beard finally showed up around 9:45 ish, and we got the party started, telling silly jokes, stupid stories and ending almost every sentence in the now-ubiquitous phrase "bow chicka wow wow." We've been watching WAY too much Red Vs. Blue. Yay Tucker!

After a long night and well into the morning, we retired to our tents. The weather was in the 40s, which wasn't toooooo bad, but I was still cold. Maybe I'm a wuss. Oh well.

In the morning, we cooked bacon and eggs, and had a gl orious sun-filled breakfast around the open flame. Exhausted but ecstatic, we retired to our individual houses and crashed, a pleasant and delicious weekend dancing like sugarplums around in our heads.

..::heartsinfall::..

Epic Scavanger Hunt!

Really Epic!
by IrishCream

Have a giant, cell phone photo scavenger hunt around town.

Another one of our epic adventures happened yesterday. We all went on a photo scavenger hunt using our cell phones. Smoo and Black Beard were one team, and Mil'vardea and IrishCream(me) were on a team. Boys vs Girls. Granted we didn't find all of them, there was a hour and a half time limit.

Here's the list of the things we had to find:

A horse, A Giant Q, Buddah, Something Purple, Non-US Flag, Someone else's mom, 5ft Circle, Something on fire, A pattern up close, A Box 6" or less, Something sparkly, A hat with a college logo, Facial Piercing, Tattoo, A Kiss, A plant with no green, Someone with fake colored Hair, A motorcycle, A bug up close, A kid laughing, Running water, Weeping willow, Yellow Car, Uniform, Graffiti, Fire Hydrant, Sports logo on a car, A hott person, Fry on McDonalds floor, A mohawk, green lights, Roadkill, Reading the back of a cereal box, Fire Truck, Old Lady with a hat, Blue license plate, A guy on a lawnmower, Coke add, a girl applying make-up, someone walking 3 or more dogs, A Texas license plate, Crossing sign with a hula hoop, a pyramid with you and a random stranger, a license plate ending in 000, someone in a police car, someone serving food in a drive thru

The boys won by 13 totaling in 34 found, while the girls got 21 total.

Mil'vardea and IrishCream flirted with a UPS man to get his picture for the uniform one. He pulled up next to us and waved. We probably made his day!

We have yet to get the pictures uploaded to the computer. Pictures to come soon!

..::heartsinfall::..

NaNoWriMo

We're Getting Really Good at Finding Things to Amuse Ourselves
by Mil'vardea

Compete in NaNoWriMo!


Since 2005, I have been participating in a yearly marathon of words, called NaNoWriMo (NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, thus NaNoWriMo, pronounced "Nano Rai-Moe"). The idea is to write a novel, or some of a novel, over the course of the month of November. To win, you must write 50,000 words between November 1st at midnight and midnight December 1st. I must be some kind of masochist to subject myself to this every year. However, this year, I shall have two devoted sidekicks in my quest to 50,000; Canada and Smoo have decided to join my struggle. The three of us actually participated in NaNoWriMo last year, but some stuff came up and we all kind of fell off the wagon before the deed was done. However, with our devotion to writing recently restored by the swift descent of autumn, we shall again attempt to rise to the challenge. If you want to join our quest, visit nanowrimo.org and sign up. You can friend me! My screen name is MinaInBlue and my user number is 95603. Good luck to all of you writing this year! I'm so excited. I'm going to try and post an excerpt sometime next week of what I will be writing. Glorious!

..::heartsinfall::..

Another Dinner Over the Fire

And We Didn't Set Anyone on Fire Either
by Mil'vardea

We decided to grill ourselves up some dinner, once again. After a laboriously long discussion of what we should do, and what we should have, we piled into IrishCream's car and tore off to Food Lion. We purchased some yummies to fill our bellies, and drove back in high spirits. We gathered at Smoo's house, raiding the front and back yards (and the neighbor's yard, surreptitiously) for branches and twigs. The fire was hot and blazing in just a few minutes, and was ready to cook on in less then a half hour (we're getting really good at lighting things on fire, now).

On the menu was: teriyaki beef kabobs and grilled corn-on-the-cob. Delicious.

As Smoo and IrishCream gathered twigs in the backyard, I'd put together the kabobs, first cutting the steak into bite sized pieces, and soaking them in a teriyaki bath made of that teriyaki sauce that comes in those little glass bottles, lemon juice, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a lot of squishing the pieces into the bowl and dunking them under.

I then chopped up yellow squash, zucchini, and onions. Also to add to the kabob were little mushrooms, which I de-stemmed, cherry tomatoes, and the beef cubes (of course). I slid them onto the kabobs, then threw them onto the grill. When I pulled mine off and started gnawing on it, it was far from cooked completely, but it smelled so good, I couldn't wait to bite into it.

After dinner, we unsuccessfully tried to pop some popcorn (we got a dud container, I think), so instead, we hobo-packed an apple, some Hershey's chocolate pieces, and some caramel ice cream toppings up in some aluminum foil, and stuck a fire sick through the foil into the apple and roasted them. They were so good (and so messy)!

We then told stories past sun set, everyone with full bellies and trying not to fall asleep.

Lovely evening, don't you think?

..::heartsinfall::..

Still a Little Disappointed

All that work, and really for nothing.
by Mil'vardea

Well, never base your fun in hopes that complete strangers will react to whatever you are doing in a fun way. They always disappoint.

We received an e-mail from Becca, one of the cars we recently Valentine'd. She asked, politely, "who is this?" and that was all. I guess I was hoping for more of a response; I wonder if she was hoping it was from someone specific, and is now mad at us for not being who she was hoping.

We've gotten a grand total of three replies from all of our work. I think we put out about ten of them, which is a fair amount of response, 30%. However, no one e-mailed us a second time (which, I think, deep in my heart, was what I was really hoping for, like a demented kind of penpal, chosen by chance).

All of the cards are out, and no one is interested in talking to us.

It's sad, I think. I guess I was being overly optimistic with this whole thing. However, I will not give up. I plan to buy Valentines in bulk next year, so as to be able to hand them out all year long. This roadblock will not keep me down for long, haha!

..::heartsinfall::..

Getting to Know heartsinfall

An Interview with Smoo

by Mil'vardea

Mil'vardea: Okay, I'm going to ask you the questions on AIM, so I can just copy your answers.
Mil'vardea: So it's like in your own words
Smoo: yarr
Mil'vardea: Okies, first, some generic stuff:
Mil'vardea: Your age?
Smoo: Im about 23.92
Mil'vardea: Lol
Mil'vardea: Birthday?
Smoo: October the 20th, 1984.
Mil'vardea: What is your current occupation?
Smoo: I have a hella awesome job doing customer service for the xkcd store!
Mil'vardea: Sweetest job ever.
Smoo: I agree, aside from game tester or professional fire starter.
Mil'vardea: Okies. Where do you see yourself in five years?
Smoo: If I get better, either working full time at whatever job I can find or taking classes full time to get my degree. If I'm working I plan to take a few classes on the side too, just to stay sharp. Should I not be better by then I really have no idea because I might be insane.
Mil'vardea: You might want to explain "better" for our viewers.
Smoo: People can see me?! Holy shit, wheres my helmet!
Mil'vardea: Lol
Smoo: I have a strange physical condition. It's some form of dysautonomia, which basically means my body doesn't regulate my pulse and blood pressure properly on its own. So I get all dizzy and woozy from being upright, especially standing, for any length of time.
Mil'vardea: It sucks.
Mil'vardea: Really badly.
Mil'vardea: Moving on. Give us one of your most vivid memories from when you were a child.
Mil'vardea: By child, I mean less then 12 years old.

Smoo: When I was 4 my backyard froze in a massive ice storm and we went "skating" on it in our boots. It was awesome fun, and I remember finding a spider frozen in the ice, and then slamming into our fence at high speed and snapping my glasses in half. The pain kinda cemented it in my memory, but I only remember how awesome everything looked when covered in ice now.
Mil'vardea: I kind of thought your memory would have something to do with fire, you freakin' pyro.

Mil'vardea: Lol.

Mil'vardea: Anyway, moving onto some of your favorite things:

Mil'vardea: What is your favorite past time?

Smoo: Just one?

Mil'vardea: Or a couple, whatever.

Mil'vardea: Or a few, I don't care.

Smoo: Hehe, ok. Well, fire was always near and dear to my heart, but its not really a past time, more of a fling that I have once in a while. I really enjoying computer games and reading, I think I spend more time with those than I do asleep.

Mil'vardea: What's your favorite movie?

Smoo: The Empire Strikes Back

Mil'vardea: TV show?

Smoo: Thats hard, I loved Battlestar Galactica when it came out but I watch more CSI and NCIS now than anything else.

Mil'vardea: Game?

Smoo: Knights of the Old Republic, because its the ultimate Jedi experience : P

Mil'vardea: Singer or band? Smoo: I listen to a lot of strange music, a few of my favorite bands are MSI, Led Zeppelin, Blind Guardian, and I really love listening to Bjork, Tarja, Hansi Kursch, and maybe Frank Sinatras voices.

Mil'vardea: What song that you like do you have stuck in your head right now?

Smoo: Runs in the Family

Mil'vardea: Okay, now I'm going to ask you some questions about heartsinfall.

Smoo: Shoot

Mil'vardea: What made you think that heartsinfall was a good idea?

Smoo: Mostly because it sounded like a lot of fun

Mil'vardea: What is your favorite thing we've done on "The List" so far?

Smoo: Oh, thats easy, we made s'mores and played with fire! Also, the poetry in the valentines was a lot of fun to come up with, horrid as it was.

Mil'vardea: What are you looking forward to doing next on "The List?"

Smoo: Finally doing the freaking scavenger hunt! We've been waiting to do that for weeks and I want to do it so bad.

Mil'vardea: Me too.

Mil'vardea: It's going to be hella fun.

Mil'vardea: Last Question. How do you foresee heartsinfall's future?

Smoo: As long as we continue to do awesome things I think it will eventually draw some attention from random places. I think we'll have something like regular readers! At least, I hope we will because then we'd get to talk to new, strange people.

Mil'vardea: Sweet, thank you for your time, kind sir.

Smoo: Anytime my friend

Hot 3 Way

Bom Chicka Wow Wow
by Smoo

So tonight we were sitting around trying to think of something to do. There were three of us, Mil'vardea, Irish Cream, and myself, and most of our favorite games are out since they require more people to actually be fun. We've been having campfires in my backyard lately so we decided to start up a fire and see what we could think of.

Before we headed out, we were struck with a brilliant idea; a three way! But not the traditional kind with awkward questions and guilt the next morning, this was going to be a three way Battleship game. Played on graph paper (in true nerd fashion since we didn't have enough battleship game boards) by the fire. That means we had a hot three way! It was my first time : P

We drew out game boards on the graph paper; A through J on the side, and 1 through 10 on the top, penciled in our armadas and proceeded to fling hot, hot simulated lead at each other. The way it works is, when its your turn, you pick an opponent and guess a square with the letter and number combination. My favorites are C-4 (its explosive!), A-1 (everyone said something about sauce for that), and D-7 (because I'm a huge nerd. Klingons are fun).


Just for fun we decided that each 'hit' you got on an enemy was one point, so there would be the true victor who outlasted everyone, and the most deadly accurate one who scored the most hits. It started off well, with the big ships going down on everyones board pretty fast. I took an early lead with fewer of my ships being sunk until it came down to the last few turns. Irish Cream succumbed to the briny depths first with a lucky hit on her last ship, the 2 hit patrol boat. Then it was a fierce guessing game between Mil'vardea and myself, both reduced to our own patrol boats. I hit hers first, which lead her to a desperate guess . . . and a miss! I could taste victory and guessed, but didn't hit the right square! Mil'vardea, cognitive powers boosted by her desperate need to win and hand my ass to me on a silver platter, correctly guessed where my boat was and hit it 0_o. However her fate was sealed, unavoidable as the tide, and I sunk her for the win.

After the smoke settled (literally, we burned the sheets after the game) Mil'vardea won the points match and Irish Cream and I tied. To celebrate we made a s'more and popcorn over the fire and sat around in companionable quiet for a while. All in all a fun time for everyone.

While typing this up I had an internet interview with Mil'vardea, stay tuned for more!

..::heartsinfall::..

::Insert Epic Music::

That's the Way We Like It
by Mil'vardea

Create some really silly stop-motion video using metal miniatures for characters. Or at least attempt to.

We really are nerds. Oh goodness.

After a long afternoon of cooking experiments, Red Alert 2 marathons, and a poorly preformed hockey game by the Flyers (still preseason though; it doesn't count!), we took some of Smoo's hand-painted metal miniatures to create some really strange stop-motion videos. It took us more then two hours to make two, less-then-ten-second videos, and they're hilarious to us. Enjoy.

Our first attempt.



Our second, even weirder attempt.

Umm, yeah we know. More on this later, I'm sure. We'll probably come up with some insane, ten minute fumbling towards our future in stop-motion, Wallace-and-Gromit type claymation. Wish us luck. Or better still, don't. We don't need this kind of headache for a career.

..::heartsinfall::..

Rain is pretty.

Though it did kill our fire.
by Mil'vardea

Have an epic race between several, quickly built Lego cars down the middle of the street. Hehe.

God, we're nerds, and it's awesome.

In an epic moment of genius, Smoo decided we should have a Lego car race down the street. IrishCream's car won first, because her car was terrain-ready. Smoo and my cars were a little worse for wear, until we had the brilliant idea of laying cardboard on the road. It was sweet.

My car won the rest of the races, and IrishCream's came in second. Smoo's car was retarded.

After the race, Black Beard finally joined us, and we lit a fire in the back yard for s'mores. We made some silly videos with our phones, and took some hilarious pictures. We were having a grand old time, until the driving rain drove us indoors.

The storm came quickly, a drenching storm of epic proportions. Not really, but it kind of seemed that way for a time. We ran inside, towel-dried off, and then, as quickly as possible, made a pot of coffee (decaf, for Smoo) and ran out onto the porch to watch the storm come in. It was beautiful and pouring, and we sat on the porch, watching it come down with a retrospective kind of non-silence.

IrishCream's Car

Mil'vardea's Car

Smoo's Car




..::heartsinfall::..

The Department of Redundancy Department

This coming Thursday, we'll have been at this for two weeks.
by Mil'vardea

So what's it like? The ideas have yet to become stale; rather, two things have been keeping us from doing wild things then posting about them. One is the insistent and ever-present rain. It's been like the outermost band of a hurricane for the past five days or so, raining constantly for two of them. We wanted to finish our Valentine's Cards (we still have a couple more to do), but it's been raining like it's going out of style. We wouldn't want to get those pretty little cards wet.

Secondly is Black Beard. He's finally on the heal, and was able to come out for a bit last night. He couldn't talk much without coughing, but he was finally out and about, making jokes in a phelm-deepened voice. He sounded like he's been smoking for a few decades; it's hilarious.

So, hopefully soon we'll have some crazy things to write about. Until then, farewell, and God speed. Or however you say that.

..::heartsinfall::..

A Spoonful of Sugar...

What Everyone Needs to Feel a Little Better
by Mil'vardea and Smoo

They had a "get well soon" card at Walmart that sings the song "Spoonful of Sugar" every time you open it. It was so annoying, we decided to buy it for Black Beard.

He's been sick for the past few days or so, so Smoo decided we should make him a "get well" pack, consisting of a singing card and a 2-liter of cough syrup (more commonly known as Mountain Dew Code Red) all tucked into a nice plastic case with a pretty bow on it. It had to be waterproof, since it's been pouring down rain for hours, and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon.

We picked up the card first, after playing with all the singing cards (including an especially annoying card of Spongebob singing, or attempting to sing). As we walked through the store, I attempted to make the techno remix of "Spoonful of Sugar" by opening and closing the card over and over. We gathered all of the ingredients for our "get better" pack. I kept the car running and the lights off like we were on a beer run and Smoo surreptitiously slunk through the rain so well he didn't get wet and deposited the stash on the porch of Beard's heavily guarded estate (by three vicious kittens).

Then we giggled.

Feel better Black Beard, before we figure out a way to sneak into your bedroom.

..::heartsinfall::..

Success! Sort of! Not really.

After a grueling process of coming up with bad poems and writing them on pretty cards, and posting them all over Preppy Campus and the Mall parking lot, we finally have a couple of responses from someones.
by Mil'vardea

I kind of thought we'd get all sorts of responses; I guess when we were doing this, we kind of expected people to respond like we would, going "Oh my God, this is hilarious! Let's write them back! Like right now! Holy crap this is hilarious!"

So far we've gotten two very polite responses, asking if we "got the wrong car" but the cards were "cute." The first e-mail, we received on September 19th, was from a joe named Herbert.

"I want to thank you for the little card that you happen to put on my vehicle while I was out at the ***** Center. Perhaps you thought that my vehicle was someone elses.

"Again thank you, that was nice.

"Me"

When I responded, I got no re-reply from him, and that made me kind of sad. I decided to wait, post about it when we got some more e-mails. I didn't realize that it was a little less "when" and a little more "if."

A little heart broken that I'd wasted all of my pretty little cards on people who didn't really want to talk to me, I waited. And waited, and waited.

I was so excited last night that we had finally gotten another response! And a girl this time; maybe she would have more to say; Danielle wrote:

"I'm not sure who this is, but there was a note attached to my car that I found today, which had this e-mail address on it....

"It may have gotten attached to the wrong car, I don't know, but it was a cute note so I just wanted to make sure it got to whoever it was suppose to get to!"

It made me feel a little better. What a sweet lady. I hope our bad poetry made her smile. I e-mailed her. Maybe someday, she'll e-mail me back. Maybe? Please?

Doesn't anyone out there appreciate a little effort to make someone else happy? Even if no one replies, I hope they at least giggled, or showed it to their friends. I know we laughed the whole time! Sneaking around parking lots like we were stealing something. We wanted to make sure there were no witnesses, no way someone would see us and ruin the surprise. Surprise!

..::heartsinfall::..

Board Game Night!

With Ghosts and Vampires and Battleships, oh my!
by Mil'vardea

Have a board game night, including some of the stupid/awesome games we played as kids.

Board game night went as well as can be expected. I supplied Electronic Talking Battleship ("Enter. Letter. Number. Fire.") and Nightmare, which is an OLD board game from 1991 where you play the game and this creepy Gatekeeper guy watches over it from a VHS induced, hour-long decent into "nightmare-ish" and rather hilariously ridiculous "scary" moments. When he's not yelling "STOP!" at the top of his lungs at you, he's giggling like a school girl or trying to creep you out with his patented glowing-eyes-and-snorting-like-a-pig trick. While it was scary when I was seven or so when the game first came out, it made most of us laugh our asses off (although I think everyone else jumped out of their skins the first time he yelled at us, although no one would admit it). IrishCream, Smoo, Sister, and I played, with the lights off and the volume up, just like the instructions tell you to.

A side note: we missed you Black Beard! I wish you could have joined us, but with a 100 degree fever, I'm not getting anywhere near you. I love you though, I promise!

I think everyone had a great time, even if we lost to the Gatekeeper. Smoo and I are looking for one of the other games to play; hopefully ebay will supply.

..::heartsinfall::..

Trolling for LUV

The valentines must be finished!
by Smoo

As you should already know we have been putting valentines cards on random cars at the Preppy College. We've been doing this a little bit at a time to avoid drawing attention to ourselves and minimize the chances of someone noticing cards placed on more than one automobile. Last night we set out once again to bring love and amusement to those who might think getting plastered on a Tuesday is the best time ever. We brazenly drove through parking lots near some on campus housing before finding a dark corner and a nice looking Mustang to drop a card on, then drove to the opposite side of the college and found a car all alone in one of the commuter lots to receive another.

The response has been lacking, only one person out of the 8 or so we've shared our horrid poetry with has e-mailed us. I'm really hoping for something better today or tomorrow when we finally finish with this. Let me share one of our recent poems that was composed in a fit of laughter on my couch, where we had an awesome night coming up with more just as bad. Some were so disgusting they've been balled up and set fire to.

Roses are red
they burn like fire

you are my hearts
one and only desire

If you found this on your car, I have no idea who you are, but we wanted to make you laugh or at least be amused for a few minutes at the randomness of it all. Only two valentines remain, we'll probably be placing them soon, wish us luck!

..::heartsinfall::..

Gone Out for Dinner

We decided we really liked cooking on the grill.
by Mil'vardea

Have a campsite-like dinner in our own backyards. Then spend half the night huddling around it, feeding it fodder and telling silly stories until almost one in the morning.

We have a tendency to repeat ourselves if the idea works well the first time, by expanding the old idea to continue it almost as a tradition. Last night was another beautiful night, so we decided to light some citronella candles and brave the mosquitoes to have another cook out last night, this time with dinner and dessert.

We made Rosemary Chicken over the grill, with lovely skewers full of veggies, then s'mores (again) and attempted (unsuccessfully) to pop popcorn over the grill. It's a lot harder then it sounds, for some reason. Anyway, the chicken turned out really good, so I figured I'd share the recipe.

You need:
*One or two good chunks of boneless chicken breast, depending on how many people you're feeding. * Garlic powder * Rosemary * Salt * Pepper * Olive Oil * Lemon Juice * Aluminum foil * Cherry Tomatoes * Zucchini * Onions * Green Peppers

First, start the grill going. Make sure any newspaper, lighter fluid, or whatever you use to get it started burns off before cooking. You want ONLY wood burning under you food, trust me. Second, thaw the chicken out for a couple of hours. This is not necessary, as you can grill it frozen, but it cooks much faster if thawed first. Take the hunks of chicken, and sprinkle just a touch of garlic powder. This is mostly to taste; I use very little, just to punch the chicken up a bit, without it swimming in garlic flavor. Then sprinkle the rosemary over the chicken. You don't want to cover all of it, just about 1/4 of the piece of chicken. Pour a glob of olive oil on the chicken, and rub all those yummy bits into the chicken with your fingers, like your giving it a massage, but just for a few seconds each. Then drizzle lemon juice on it. You want to use about 1 part of lemon juice to four parts of olive oil. If the fire isn't quiet done yet, it's alright, just leave the chicken in the fridge while everything heats up. Next, you want to start on the skewers. Alternate between the tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and green peppers in large chunks on the skewers. We didn't use peppers on ours, because I'm allergic, but I'm sure a lot of other people would love it.

Take a sheet of aluminum foil, and fold up the edges, to make a little fortress to keep the chicken grease from running into the fire. It will dry out your chicken and make it suck. Dump your chicken on the tin foil, making sure to keep some of the olive oil/rosemary mixture around to drizzle on the chicken a few times.

When the chicken is about halfway cooked, take your skewers, and sprinkle them with salt and pepper, then drizzle them with a bit of olive oil. You want to heat them up in aluminum foil first also, before placing them directly on the grill. This will keep them from burning, but heats them up really nice.

As soon as the chicken is cooked all the way through, take the pieces out of the foil, and lay them directly on the grill. It keeps the insides nice and moist, while still giving you those great, crunchy grill marks on the outside. Then take the skewers a few minutes later, and move them out of their foil as well. Grill until the grill marks are prominent on the chicken, then serve it up. Tastes good with rice, warm bread, mashed potatoes, or even cream corn, yummy.

Tada! Then you can grill marshmallows and play truth or dare into the morning, like we did. Enjoy your yummy chicken!

..::heartsinfall::..

Scrambled Up Scrabble

A traditional game with a twist (almost) only we could give it.
by Mil'vardea

Ghetto Scrabble began several years ago, even before Roosterteeth decided to copy us and post their own version of GS rules on their own site. These rules were created by a close friend of ours, probably during a night of drunken revelry; the rules are simple: if you can pronounce it and use it in a sentence, it works. Some classic answers were things like: JBOATFONE, pronounced "Jay Boat Phone," as in a telephone on a J Boat. In our most brilliant moments, a word (and yes, even entire phrases), can span the entire length of the board, added onto turn by turn.

This particular board, pictured here was the concotion of IrishCream, Smoo, Black Beard, Jan-zou (two close friends that are so inseperable that we combine their names together), and I was proudly created on January 14th of 2005.

We decided to recreate the old classics, resurrecting the game in a hillarious game night consisting of Magic the Gathering and Ghetto Scrabble. I don't have a picture of the newest board to share with you, unfortunatley. I think IrishCream has a picture of it on her phone; I'll see if I can track it down and upload it later.

..::heartsinfall::..

Campfire Songs

My favorite is "On Top of Spaghetti."
by Mil'vardea

A campfire complete with songs, s'mores, and stupid stories about lighting other people and things on fire.

The four of us are not exciting people; we merely use what we have available to make up excitement in our own lives. We aren't wealthy, only middle class students and young adults with incredible imaginations.

So in a stroke of genius, we gathered up wood from Black Beard's house, a s'mores kit from IrishCream's home, and gathered around some lighter-fluid-induced grill filled with a campfire, singing songs and roasting marshmallows. The kit (luckily for us) came with a History of S-mores page, complete with campfire songs to sing while making them. Most of us, in Girl, Venture, or Boy Scouts, respectively, learned some songs, but few of them in common (Smoo insists that his troupe's fire songs were all written by Metalica).

So we sat outside, on the first, pleasant autumn evening, and sang, laughed, and made s'mores. It was a fantastic end to a long day.

(I had the idea that had we a long metal tube on which to roast the marshmallow, we could have blown it up like someone blowing glass. I wonder if anyone has ever tried this before. I was intrigued, but no one had a thin, but long tube of any kind. Damn.)

On top of spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball,
When somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table,
And on to the floor,
And then my poor meatball,
Rolled out of the door.

It rolled in the garden,
And under a bush,
And then my poor meatball,
Was nothing but mush.

The mush was as tasty
As tasty could be,
And then the next summer,
It grew into a tree.

The tree was all covered,
All covered with moss,
And on it grew meatballs,
And tomato sauce.

So if you eat spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
Hold on to your meatball,
Whenever you sneeze.

..::heartsinfall::..

First Day of Semi-Remorse

And it's only our first day in the field. I figure, it can only get better from here.
by Mil'vardea

Put love notes on pretty Valentine's Day cards on random people's cars.

Well, at least we checked something off of the list.

The plan went as well as it could have. Smoo, IrishCream, and I (Mil'vardea), went down to a local, expensive, preppy college (a college I personally have avoided since our last D&D run down there), and carefully chose three random cars on which to tape our Valentine's in Fall cards. They are pretty, handmade little things I got on uber-sale last year, and never had a chance to use them. I'm glad they went to a good cause. They are about an inch and a half by two inches, and covered in sparkles, gold ink, and are extremely pretty.

We chose cars by their positions; out of any direct parking-lot-lighting, older models (therefore presumably without alarms) and took little pieces of tape, taping our tiny, shiny little Valentines to the very center of the driver's side of the front windshield.

All went well for the first two cars, and we giggled, deciding last minute to add one more car to this particular round. I wrote out a deliciously corny poem (written by IrishCream and her lovely self) on one of the cards, which read "Firetrucks are red / the sky is blue / I think my heart / has fallen for you." I scrolled our e-mail address for this little escapade (wondering who might respond and how), and taped it to a little, off to the side car in one of the parking lots. As Smoo and I pulled out of our parking spot, we noticed an older, very happy looking couple walking up to the car.

I guess we never really think out the repercussions of our little jokes; I only hope we didn't break up a happy marriage because one just happens to be exceedingly jealous or something.

Please take this in stride, with a bit of humor. We're only trying to have fun. And also make someone's day. Perhaps those little cards will make someone smile.

..::heartsinfall::..

Our Jumping off Point:

Lots of Sand and Rocks, but they make you feel good about the universe.
by Mil'vardea

Build a zen garden in a sandbox.

This particular bit of genius came to us one night. We were out walking in the park, and we saw the toy rake, and the rocks in the river nearby. It was almost like fate.

This is our jumping off point, our muse, our need to continue this tradition of fun, non-vandalism. We salute you, zen garden, for you are the inspiration which we take into adulthood, promising to never act much like adults at all.

..::heartsinfall::..

Filling Our Apartment with Rubber Duckies

As long as they are the flashy ones, with LED lights or sequins.
by Mil'vardea

This fall, we've made a list. On this list are several things that need to be done before we die; this list includes all manner of random, How I Paid for College type creative vandalism, where we mess with people and people's things without breaking any laws. This is our idea to liven up our lives, and some strangers' lives too, while we're at it.

Wish us luck. Maybe someday, we'll finish our list, and be forced to start a new one.

The world is our playground.

..::heartsinfall::..