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::..