Spooksday, Slightly Early · 7:54pm Oct 26th, 2023
So last weekend I got to spend a few days at my cousin’s place for our annual Halloween thing. Yeah, it’s a little early, but that’s necessary if she wants to spend the actual day with her kids, or if we want to enjoy the spooky season without said kids. Usually her two children (daughter, 10, and son, 6) are there for my visit, but this year she and her husband wanted to make it just us, and I saw no reason to object.
The first day was devoted to watching my collection of spooky-themed YouTube videos and, later in the evening, Beetlejuice. My cousin had never seen it and her husband only knew of it through the old 90’s cartoon. That movie is still a ton of fun. We’re considering going together to see the musical next year.
I wanted to also show them Repo! The Genetic Opera, but alas, there wasn’t time. My cousin is determined to see it eventually though. Last year her husband and I outvoted her to watch The Conjuring, and that kind of stuff creeps my cousin out like nothing can. Since her husband has a “thing” about bloody violence, she wants to watch Repo! as a bit of revenge. Honestly, I’m not sure if Repo! is going to be like she imagines, but it’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t seen it yet.
I keep joking that someday I’ll make them watch Hereditary. But yeah, that’s never going to happen. Sometimes you gotta know your audience’s limits, and I don’t think my cousin would ever forgive me if I showed her that movie.
We spent all of Saturday playing Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, the XBOX version. I say “we”, but I’m the one who did all the playing. I had played through the game twice in the previous three months just to ensure I could get us through it quickly. I offered to let them play a bit, but it was generally agreed that for the sake of saving time they would just watch and enjoy the story. For some reason that playthrough was rough; I was killed by things that hadn’t so much as slowed me down in my previous two playthroughs. With breaks and other distractions it took us about 12 hours, although actual gameplay time was recorded as only ~6 hours (I guess it doesn’t record time lost from dying, but geez, I didn’t die that often!).
I’m already pondering what to do with them next year. I’m considering Bendy and the Ink Machine (which my cousin and her husband had never even heard of), but I dunno, I feel like we could play something creepier. We might not get to play a game next year anyway, as I’m not sure we’ll get two in a row without the kids and they tend to make playing these sorts of games real tricky. I suppose we could do something short like Mad Father...
A few other things of interest happened. My cousin is an English teacher, and she had to grade some papers between watching videos and playing games. The papers were essays, essentially requiring the students to analyze propaganda posters and identify the techniques being used to convince them of whatever was being sold. It was kind of fun listening to my cousin, who has a reputation as a sweet and kind individual, dropping F-bombs at the inability of some of her students to grasp the concepts she’d been trying to instill in them.
But the most interesting was the limitations put on her by the school’s administrators. Apparently, she’s not permitted to assign a grade lower than 50. This was just one example she pointed out. The reason was that the school gets paid government funds based on the average grade of the students, so the administration set rules in place to artificially inflate that average. The class is a college prep/credit course and according to my cousin half the students aren’t qualified for it but get in anyway because the school’s grading system makes them appear qualified on paper. To hear her say it, it sounds like the system is setting up those lower-tier students for failure when it comes to college.
I was also reminded of/learned some things about my cousin’s husband. He’s a very… anxious person. I’ve always been somewhat aware of that, but this weekend I saw how it affects his daily life. For example, we went to the store together – just me and him – to get some ingredients for a dish I was preparing (it is now a tradition for me to cook at least one meal during these annual visits). I got my things quick, but he needed to get eggs. The man spent ten minutes opening cartons and carefully checking the eggs. If he saw so much as a hairline fracture, the container was no good and he put it back. I didn’t say anything, but I’m thinking, “My dude, the eggs are fine. Those hairline fractures don’t mean the egg is bad. Cook those first if you’re concerned about aging.” If that’s the level of caution he has for buying eggs, how far does he go buying anything else?
That night he cooked chicken on the grill. When it came time to eat he constantly fretted over whether it was cooked enough. At one point he had a small strip of meat – literally just a bite – that he threw in the microwave before eating because it made him nervous. I get that this is part of his upbringing (his mother is reportedly the same way), but I have to wonder what it must be like to live with constant anxiety like that.
Still, it was a fun (and interesting) weekend, as it is every year. I can now look forward to the next one! To end this blog I shall provide a video I only just discovered a couple days ago but which is so fun I just have to share it. Stay tuned next week for Rainbow Dash going on a griffon hunt, Monochromatic trying out other ships (how bold!), and Applejack getting all the mares.
Now I really want to play this game. This kind of thing is my jam and I can’t stop grinning. BTW, the music is from Daniel Ingram!
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As someone who lives with a severe anxiety disorder? It's fucking *exhausting*.
Glad you guys had fun and sorry to hear teachers are still being jerked around by the administration.
Alan Wake? It's episodic, so you might be able to stretch it out over a few days.
At which point the college has made money off of them, so "the system works" I guess? I agree, this is frustrating, but I can't help but think that the end-goal is just milking money off these kids.
Well, Happy (early) Halloween, and I look forward to next Thursday with antici-
-pation.
Eggs with small cracks are fine. Cook them into hard-boiled eggs in the pressure cooker if you're worried. Heats them up *above* the boiling point of water. Same thing for raw chicken. I've used our pressure cooker to cook chicken breasts, then coated and fried them afterward. Tender as can be and juicy, with no risk of salmonella. (even if it offends the Chicken Purists)
5752328
She and my other cousin are both teachers at the same school, but I don't visit my other (older) cousin as often so I never got her side of the story. My sister is also a teacher, but she teaches much younger students (think 3-6 year-olds) in Japan so she faces an entirely different set of challenges.
5752330
That sounds like the opposite of what we need. We've only got 1-and-a-half days to do anything, less if the kids are around, so whatever we do needs to be short and sweet. I thought we'd get more time this year because my cousins said they'd take off for the event, but they ended up spending that off-time delivering their kids to the grandparents so we didn't actually get any extra time at all. I do want to play Alan Wake someday, though.
I think that became apparent a decade or two ago, depending on who you talk to. I know if I ever have kids I would recommend they not go unless they were absolutely dead-set on doing something that requires higher education, like maybe engineering. Hell, my little brother never went to college and he makes more money than both me and our big sister (he'd be rolling in dough if he wasn't raising seven kids in the meantime).
5752355
Well, how 'bout that?
...
I'm not sure why (
), but I feel like mentioning satanic mechanics right about now.
5752498
Ooooh, a pressure cooker! I knew there was something I was missing amongst my kitchen accoutrements (that and an air fryer). I think I'll be adding that to the Christmas list my mother insists I provide her every year.
...
I swear, half the things I want nowadays have something to do with the kitchen.
5752504
Teachers struggling to teach and help kids despite challenges is somewhat universal I think n_n
5752510 There are generally two sizes of Instant Pot. Get the SMALL one. (checks the internet) Oops, there are 4 sizes. Get the small one anyway. 3 quart. I believe we have the 8 quart, and it is way too big for two or three people. 6 quart is I believe the 'normal' size, which is fine and what we should have gotten (and by 'we' I mean 'the wife' who bought it when I wasn't looking, along with about $100 dollars worth of special tools and widgets for it that we don't ever use) There's a basket for holding small things, and a 'bottom' rack for cooking large things like potatoes and chicken breasts. Stop at that, play with it a while, and if you need anything after that, I'm sure your mother will be tickled pink to hit Target for one of the bazillion things they sell for it. Oh, and a wooden spoon for tapping the 'vent' switch because otherwise it will take all the skin off whatever you flip it with. More than 100C steam is dangerous. I've never been able to get soup to stew correctly in ours or any of the other 'with the lid open and using it like a normal pot' recipes. Just add appropriate amount of water, the things you want cooked, close it up, set the timer, and wander off. It does hard boiled eggs WONDERFULLY. Hot steam under the shell makes them practically pop off. And when I make potato soup, I drop the spuds in and pressure cook them first before skinning them (peels come right off) and slicing them (careful, hot) into the soup pot.
5752519
What about one person who wants a meal to last him a week or two? My slow cooker is 5 quarts and it is barely big enough for the things I use it for.