Spooktacular!

[beboots]

Myself as Fujiwara no Sai from Hikaru no Go at Bellerose Con. (Taken by Chris, the boyfriend of my best friend)


So let me tell you what I've been up to lately... and it isn't all homework!


Well, some (a lot) of it has been homework. I've gotten over my week from hell, which essentially ammounted to having to hand in two paper proposals (Monday and Tuesday), having to finish preparing for a 20 minute presentation for Thursday (my notes totalled 3,000 words), and two midterms on Friday... and that was after a week of another proposal and midterm as well as all of the usual readings (I did all of my readings for this past week the week before, doubling that workload, but otherwise I wouldn't have finished). You have no idea how happy I am to have finished it.


But although I finished all of my homework/midterms/paper proposals/ readings/assignments/ presentations on Friday, that didn't mean that I could sit down and rest. I volunteered for two nights at Spooktacular, which is a Hallowe'en bonanza that happens all throughout Fort Edmonton Park over the course of two evenings (Friday and Saturday, although I had to attend a four hour preparation meeting on Wednesday, which further cut into my study time for the week). I was in logistics, which meant that I was one of those people wearing shiny reflective vests, wandering around the park with a radio, shining my flashlight in people's faces if they were out of bounds/ trying to sneak in without paying/ break into buildings/ smoke pot/ touch young children, etc. I'm not all that intimidating by myself, but I had a group of other people with me. There were two out of six or seven logistics teams that were made up of only former Midway people. :3 It was a nice reunion. It was even better when we kept running into each other on our rounds of the park... I swear I went up and down that place like 15 times with my group over the two evenings. Before you go saying "fifteen doesn't sound like a lot" - if you're walking quickly, it takes nearly half an hour to walk from one end of the park to the other. Just sayin'.

Anyway, at one point, we were checking out the Midway (where nothing was happening, but people could accidentally wander over) and my group ran across the other Midway group, and we sat and stargazed for ten minutes. (Shut up, we weren't getting paid!) Then, after they left, we quickly checked the carousel building... to find one of the doors unlocked. They should have all been locked, so we radioed for someone with a key... but not before taking pictures of ourselves on the carousel. XD

 Thriller dancers being coached.
Anyway...People were well-behaved this year. We got some people heckling the Thriller dancers (yes, we had a Thriller dance, zombie Michael Jackson and all), lots of people trying to bring their young children onto the 13-and-over scary 1885 street, and one guy in a leprechaun mask grabbing people and scaring them (our volunteers were all dressed up as vampires or werewolves, and are most definitely NOT allowed to touch people... so a couple of the more intimidating of us went and monitored the situation. Apparently last year, someone broke their ankle trying to sneak in over the fence... which is lovely irony, but nothing like that happened this year. I believe that the worst first aid "emergency" we had was a splinter... and the victim was a member of one of the other logistics teams. I kid you not.


I think that the funniest thing that happened to me happened right before closing on Saturday.  I was on wagon duty for the last hour - essentially, I was the one on the wagon that was shuttling people to the front end, making sure people didn't stand up or people didn't try to run and jump onto the wagon... because it's pulled by a lady in a tractor, who has no control over the wagon, you see. 
 
Anyway I was on the second last ride, and Kevin Spaans (who is my boss's boss in the summertime, but head of logistics at Spooktacular) got on as well - standing with me. When he got to the front of the park, he gave a radio call that essentially said "There is a pair of parents here to pick up their kid - he's eleven years old, has a pirate costume..." and essentially said we were to start sweeping the area for him... and then I had to radio him back, saying "Kevin, this is Lauren... and wasn't there a kid of that description sitting right next to me on the wagon? Shouldn't he be at the front, too?" And there was radio silence for like fifteen seconds, then someone was like "So... we don't have to sweep?" Kevin was like "I'm looking"... and then after another thirty seconds, he was like "Ten-four, we've found him. No need to sweep." XD I giggled for like two minutes on the way back. But seriously - when I saw Kevin when I was signing out, he said he felt like an idiot because he'd looked right at the kid during the ride over. XD But I mean, I'd seen this kid three or four times throughout the evening (I remembered, because he kept asking annoying questions), and he was always alone... I think that his parents just dropped him off for the night, all alone. D: Wonderful parenting.

Oh, and I should mention that I went to a miniature, 1-day anime festival at Bellerose Composite Highschool on Saturday, so after working until nearly midnight at Spooktacular the night before, I didn't even get to sleep in, because I had to straighten my hair, change into my costume, run to Bellerose, then go straight to Fort Edmonton for other 7 hour long volunteer shift on no supper... So I didn't really get to rest until Saturday night... and I didn't get a full night's sleep until Sunday night, and it was very wonderful and refreshing... mostly because I forgot to set my alarm clock and woke up fifteen minutes before I normally catch the bus. But I managed to throw on my clothes, scarf down breakfast, run a brush through my hair and be out the door in time to catch it, so, uh, go me? 

Anyway... I need to work on my Domesday Book project. I'll update you guys on that some other time! Have a happy Hallowe'en!
 


Thriller zombies feel dead, and so do I...

Comments

[anyjen.livejournal.com]

Boy, that sounds like a lot of fun! I've had to do similar work over a four-day long crongress during Easter for the past six years, and I know all about the euphoria of running around doing crowd control, answering stupid questions and being pleasant and firm despite being sleep-deprived and exhausted. The average amount of hours I got to sleep per night during those congresses is three and a half, so I totally understand how you would have overslept on Monday. I generally spend most of Sunday in a mild coma, after the closing. ^^U

[xlirealx.livejournal.com]

Woooooooow 0_0 you're amazing, being able to do all that. Man, and I thought MY week was stressful ^^'

You rock, Lauren! :D