So after a looooong night of mojo hunting, I got home in the weee hours of the morning. Our housekeepers were set to show up this morning, and I just decided I’d take the dogs and lock ourselves in the guest room and let them clean the rest of the house. This was not only the longest time I’d ever spent in that room, including sleeping in there . . . but apparently the first time the dogs had ever been in the room.

Almost immediately the dogs darted straight under the bed. This was a problem, because the bed is seated high up on coasters, and it’s become a bit unstable as of late. I had also had a dream the night before that Princess refused to ride in the car when travelling, she insisted on running under the car as I drove. I of course was paranoid I’d run her over. I decided because of this dream, they couldn’t stay under the bed. In fact, the bed did get a little tipsy later on!

After a bit of coaxing I got them out from under the bed and up on top with me. There they just stood alert looking around for a good long while. At some point they eventually settled down. I wondered what they were seeing, but as I was so dead tired at that point, I didn’t care too much. I just went to sleep. As far as I know, the ghost didn’t bother me . . . but now I feel like I’ve invaded his territory.

Dum dum dum dum!

Just when I thought I would be taking a break, something worth while happens that fits in with this time of year Last night I woke up, swore I saw a dark shadow creeping up over the bed, kicked at it and started screaming “No!” really loud. Then of course I came to my senses and John woke up wondering WTF was happening.

When I looked around, I saw no dark figure. When I thought about it, it had its arms outstretched and a funny hat on. It reminded me of Freddy, which reminded me earlier that day in Philly I saw a kid walking around with a red-n-green Freddy like sweater on. The influence? I don’t know. I’ve woken up and thought I saw this weird figure in the bedroom before. Aliens? I really hope not on that one!

I am sure it’s not the influence of watching “One Missed Call 3: Final” before bed, cause that movie just sucked hard core.

I’m seriously beginning to think we have a ghost cat problem! Percy has become more and more of a bed hog and cuddler than ever before, and it all seems to have started when Lance died. Before Lance died, Percy would occasionally hop on the couch with me at night, or if I was sick and on the couch during the day come lay with me. That was about it. Lance was always the people cat. He was the one always on the couch. He was the one that would nudge you to pet him. He was the one who broke into the bedroom in the morning to come sleep with me.

Well since he died in April, Percy has seemingly taken over that role. He almost every morning breaks into the room to sleep with me after John gets up and leaves for the day. More recently he’s started coming in at night too! He’s also become more and more of an aggressive “pet me now!” kitty by doing the head bumping and face rubbing thing on your hands. Well last night when I refused to pet him cause it was time to go to bed . . . he began nibbling on my fingers!

Why is that important? Well first of all, he’s never done that before. Second, Lance used to have this toe fetish. If there were bare toes available, he’d nibble on them. He would often do it should he want petting and you weren’t accommodating him. I think I might have to take Percy to a pet psychic and possibly find a pet exorcist!

Post Note: Don’t get me wrong, I love that Percy has become possessed a people cat, as none of the other cats in the house are very people social. Plus Percy has always been “my” cat, he comes to me for food and attention. However, I still think he’s possessed!

A woman at the Monster Mania convention was selling prints of her paintings. She paints these really spooky scenes, and even some that are some what grotesque. I remember her from the last one and wanting to buy one then, but I didn’t. I decided to buy one this time, because it spoke to me.

It’s called “The Whisperers” and I liked it cause of the colors and imagery, and of course cause of the two ghost children. I felt it should be in the house Sorry about the photo, it was hard to get a good picture of it late at night. Had to hold the camera at weird angles so the flash didn’t reflect and wash sections of it out.

Last night I remember waking up, looking at the person in bed with me and thinking “Who are you?” “You aren’t supposed to be here?”

I remember looking and seeing the face of someone who wasn’t my BF. I remember the face clearly actually. Then I remember touching and feeling and thinking “You feel right, you just don’t look right.”

Then I remember struggling to remember who was supposed to be in bed with me and what they were supposed to look like, but I couldn’t! I eventually gave up . . . and went back to sleep with some strange person in the bed.

Odd . . .

They’re here! I finally got them all done. It’s broken up into three parts, which I’ve placed in descending order. They are a little lengthy, sorry, I ramble. Also if you are going to watch these at work, watch the volume. I drop the F-bomb once or twice. I also say the S-word I’m just a potty mouth when I talk!

There are a few little blips here and there in the videos, nothing terrible. I think I was doing too much multi-tasking while uploading these to YouTube and it caused those blips. That or the server’s processing of the video added them in. This isn’t ghostly phenomenon, they aren’t in the originals

So our heat wave is continuing, and yes now they are officially saying it’s a heatwave because it has now been three consecutive days over the 90 degree mark, which is apparently the official requirements for a heatwave. Tomorrow we are supposed to get some rain, so hopefully it will break.

On Saturday I ended up watching the “Army Wives” marathon on TV while dissertating all day. The following image pretty much sums up what I spent at least half of the day doing, the first half was spent writing up this data into an appendix.

This was actually one of the smaller stat sets believe it or not. I have graphs like this with between 60 and 100 plot points. Eeegads! I hate the idea of putting this stuff out there before I’ve finished and defended the dissertation, but I don’t think anyone will figure out what this is or what it means. Simply put, it’s like the old “Sesame Street” skit “One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other,” though in this case it’s some of these things are not like the others, and that’s what is important for my work

Sunday I ended up taking it easy because I had a headache, and therefore I didn’t get much done I’m afraid. The ghost blog was on the list for that day and I did get the videos recorded, now they just need to be edited together. I recorded the first part Sunday night, and as usual rambled on longer than YouTube’s time limit allows. However because something funny happens in the video, I’m editing it into two parts. After I finished that, well then some stuff happened I wasn’t too thrilled about. So I made a third video explaining what went on and some changes to any upcoming ghost videoblog projects. I’ll get these edited as soon as I can and up. Thanks for your patience, I know people want to see them.

Today the dogs were going nuts at the backdoor and I finally looked outback, noticing some people were walking around in the fields I didn’t recognize, so that meant they shouldn’t really be there. It turned out they were from “EyeWitness News” and were here to do a story on the tomato recall. They interviewed my BF for the six’o'clock news. As it turns out, NBC came too, but he’s not going to be on until their 11′o’clock news. I teased him because he didn’t even put on nice clothes or fix his hair or anything.

I figured you’ve already seen me in motion, it’s only fair you see him! Here is the clip from our local news with him. You get to see the farm too, kinda. Where they are walking and talking to him is right behind our house.

This weekend in the Philly area we are breaking into the 90s in a big way. So far we’ve gotten into the 80s, but it’s been followed by cold spells usually. This is our first official code red weekend with alerts for possible heat related deaths. Always fun! Walking outside is like walking into a sauna.

I’m going to try and record the first part of the ghost videoblog tonight. I’ve actually tried twice in recent days to do it, but had various issues. First I rambled too much and futzed around on camera and didn’t feel like trying to edit that stuff out, I would rather it be a seamless video. So I’ve made up a script to follow, well bullet points, to keep me on track.

The second problem I’ve had is that the ghosts seem to be camera shy! I was trying to see if I could get them to come around, but they don’t seem to like the camera at all. I then got to feeling I was pestering them, so I decided not to do anything last night and leave them alone. Of course then they were active. Figures! I’ve also decided to do the ghost blog in two parts, one just me talking about them and the history of the house, the second the more fun part

So I finally found some inspiration for my first video blogs! I’ve actually recorded several videos for one on the two videogames I’m currently obsessed with, the Wii Fit and Singstar. I just need to now sit down and learn the editing software. Actually all I need to do is learn how to mark, clip and merge clips. Gosh it sounds so simple!

The other video I decided to do was a video about the house and in particular the ghosts. I thought it would be fun to talk about them as well as possibly call them. One has a knack for showing up if you call his name. Too bad my Ouija board is in Virginia! My original plan was to do this at night for the atmosphere, but I’m starting to chicken out with the night thing honestly. I have enough trouble being downstairs alone late at night as is because they’ve been coming around a lot lately.

Okay so since I’ve got a lot of incoming links to the blog because of the soap site stuff, I figured I’d use this post to talk about myself. It will let people who might be new to the blog get to know a little about the guy who ran that page, but they may not have really known aside from his name and that he watched soaps.

First off, let’s just talk about the elephant in the room shall we? I am a 32 year old man who for 14-some years ran a website dedicated to soap operas. In case you never figured it out, yes I’m gay. It wasn’t something never outright addressed by me on the soap page, but if someone really wanted to know the answer they could have easily found out with some exploring. I tried to, but a few times failed, to keep anything political in nature off the page and keep it a neutral place, with only soaps being the issue.

So yes, I’m gay. Now contrary to what some might believe, I’m not here to molest your kids, statistically your straight relatives are more likely to do that. I’m not here to ruin your holy sanctity of marriage, statistically you along with Britney Spears are doing a damn good job of that on your own. I was not molested, I was not abused, I did not chose to be this way anymore than you chose to be straight. If you want to argue whether or not it’s a choice, please go down to your local zoo and argue with the animals there, as some of them seem to make the choices too.

If your still with me, I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with my boyfriend for over 6 years now. We live in New Jersey and in our very own haunted house! Yup, I’ve made several postings about it, you can read about it on the blog in the paranormal section. I’ve seen, heard, felt and yes been touched by the ghosts. I’ve always loved ghosts and the learning about views of and beliefs in the afterlife. I never expected to actually end up living in my very own haunted house. Growing up I always wanted to be either a parapsychologist or an archaeologist, because I also enjoyed learning about how different people buried their dead, which by the way IS what I’m studying now. Seeing a theme here?

We share our house with two dogs and five, yes five cats. I know, it’s a virtual zoo here. The dogs are my terriers Princess Bumbles and Nikko. Princess is a westie and I got the Bumbles part from “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” Nikko is a cairn and is named after the captain of the flying monkeys from “The Wizard of Oz.” The cats are Lance(alot), Galahad, Moo Kitty (real name Gawain), Percy (Percival, also called Orange Kitty) and Grim (short for Pilgrim, finally breaking away from frickin Arthurian names!).

Many people might who might have read my pages always noticed I went on my vacations in January. Yes an odd month to go. That is because it’s when my boyfriend was off work. He works on a farm, yes a farm. It’s a family business, so they are closed in the winter months and it’s his only chance to get away. So for the past six years we had our vacations then, which were always cruises. Oh and yes, I kept running the page as much as I could while I was on a cruise ship. Talk about obsession!

Seriously though, I made some amazing friends through the page, people I know I’ll be friends for with life. One of my oldest internet friends Ive probably known for ten plus years and we till try to see each other at least once a year when her job brings her anywhere nearby. Other friends are a few years old, but they are whom I would take weekends to see in New Orleans or what not the past few years. Two also just came to stay with me, they are who I went to New York back in February with. We all talk almost every night online.

A little other fun facts about me. I love horror films, I have since I was a kid and rented out the local video store’s selection the summer between 4th and 5th grade. I’m more into the old school slashers and anything supernatural. The new horror flicks I find to either be really bad remakes of 80s stuff, Japanese movies or basically just a guts and gore fest that is too much for me to take. Growing old, and advances in film make-up, has made me a bit squeamish.

I also love videogames and have since a little kid. The first videogame system I ever had was the Intellivsion, followed by various Sega systems. Once upon a time I used to run a fairly popular Sega fan page, but gave it up a long time ago. I still love videogames and have pretty much every system out there. I’m just now finding the extra time to start playing games again regularly. I have been trying to stay away from on-line gaming until school is done, that’s just another distraction for me!

I also love Broadway shows, something I really didn’t get into until more recently and thanks to various friends. The odd thing is, growing up I was in the band and orchestra and we always, I mean always, did an Andrew Lloyd Weber show at least once a year. Well we played a medley of the music from one show. So I don’t know why I didn’t get into them earlier. I’ve seen Mamma Mia, Phantom, Hairspray, Xanadu, Wicked, Evita, Scrooge, La Cage, Aida and . . . umm . . . I think that may be it? I am sure I’m missing some.

I guess that is enough for now. I was going to try and link to various posts in the blog that I’ve done over the years, but I never got around to searching and choosing the ones I liked. I guess if any fun fact here sparked your interest you can peruse the various categories on the side bar or the linked ones in this post for more info.

-Dustin