Suddenly, there was a miniscule noise coming from the soap.

Hello all! I blog today for three reasons and three reasons alone. Okay, actually four, because one of them is to post this totally unrelated but very endearing picture of my friend Ryan, who in this picture is "Grandpa." The other reasons are as follows...

Reason number one: To wish you all a very happy halloween!

Reason number two: To announce that JD and Melissa are officially ENGAGED!!!!!!!!! GAAAAHHHHHH!!! So exciting! He asked permission of her parents when they were here a few weeks ago, and this weekend when they were down in San Fransisco he officially proposed. They're getting married on Dec. 17th. It is so bizarre to have two good friends get engaged. Weird. I feel old. But CONGRADUMALATIONS JD AND MELISSA!

Reason number three: This last weekend, I played a couple fabulous games of MAD LIBS with my fabulous Mom and stepdad, and here are a few of the gems. The first few are just some fun sentences that we liked, and the last 2 paragraphs are whole...paragraphs. The last one I actually didn't help to create; it was created a while ago, but it was too great to not post.

"I heard clanking bonnets, as if a salesman were being dragged across the floor of the steeple."

"Then I remembered that this horse was supposed to be haunted." (Ba-dum-chssshh! Thanks I'll be here all week!)

"Superstition has it that people can protect themselves from a vampire by holding up a lima bean or wearing a clove of hammer around their neck. It is also believed that the only way to kill a vampire is to drive a wooden paleontologist through his lipstick." (For some reason, I think it was because she was ridiculously tired, my mom could not stop laughing about the idea of holding up a lima bean to protect yourself from a vampire. She could hardly read it out loud, she was laughing so hard. What a weird person.)

"He misunderstands during the day in a coffin." (Why am I in this coffin? What's going on? Did they mix me up with someone else?)

"Lke all wicked bassoons, they delight in scaring the ship out of you." (Hardy har har.)

"The count can only remain immortal by sucking the salad dressing out of human vases." (I vant to suck ze blood out of your vase--ah ah ah!)

"The sign read "Madam Harriet Myers, Have Your Salad-Shooter Told Today." Taking a deep weather balloon, I opened the handcuffs and went inside. In the center of the room, seated behind a large complaint, was the Madam. She was a medicated woman with dark smelly eyes and a violent smile on her bauble. She was dressed in a large cartilage and wore a kangaroo wrapped around her head. She motioned me to squeeze down as she stared sulkily into her crystal plaything. A precarious look came over her squishy face. She told me something I didn't want to hear. "If you want your fortume told, it's 1 dollars." I leapt out of my pharmacist and fumigated out the door." (What a terrifying woman!)

"American children are fascinated by buff stuff. Stories that scare the juice boxes off them or make their ladles stand on end. Scientists say that this is because being frightened causes the pumpernickle gland to function and put yuhu into their blood. And everyone knows this makes a kid feel nauseous. When they are scared by a movie or an antenna, boys laugh and holler and embalm. But girls cover their eyes with their amputations and keep screaming and reconsidering. Most kids get over this by the time they are 4 million and 2 years old. Then they like movies about cars spackling or cops shooting sausages or, if they are girls, they like movies about a boy meeting an exhaust pipe and falling in love. Of course, that can be scary too."

Genius. Who was the man who invented MAD LIBS? I'd like to shake his hand. (He made my baby fall in love with me! No he didn't but it is the lyrics of a popular song.) Next blog, the adventures had in California this last weekend!