The Think Tank

Came across this today while listening to the Best of the Left podcast.  This is exactly the sort of national debate I think we should be having!

In The Know: Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don’t Give A Shit?

I have been very negligent this year in producing regular updates here on thinktankblog, and for that I apologize.  I promise to do better next year!

Halloween night was a grand success.  Aside from one of the fog machines dying five minutes in, all of our props, lights, foggers, air valves and sensors performed perfectly all night long – a far better track record than last year when I spent at least an hour fixing and repairing things that broke.

All of the new talking and moving props not only performed well in their intended fashion but they also performed a wonderful and unexpected service: they distracted people, which allowed me and Mike to sneak up on them and scare them even better.

The prediction was for rain Halloween day,  hopefully tapering off by evening.  In the event, we had sun and blue sky all day until about 3pm, followed up by increasing and menacing clouds as the afternoon wore on.  Due to the fact it was a Sunday, meaning that people had work and school the next day, coupled with the weather forecast I figured we probably needed to be ready to roll around 5pm.  We actually managed to be ready about 5:30, which was about 30 minutes after the first trick or treaters started showing up, meaning that my prediction was spot on even if my preparations were not.

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Our Halloween Dry Run party was last night and I have to say that it was definitely a success.  However, because I was too busy taking part I did not get any pictures of the event at all.  I am hopeless in this regard.

Anyway, our Halloween preparations are almost complete now.  I had intended to do regular updates on here with pictures and videos showing our progress and highlighting our new projects for this year, but due to a number of issues I did not wind up with enough time to actually make any posts.  As such, I am going to detail everything in one single post.  Read through the bump for all the gory details and some videos of the  new elements.

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Halloween preparations are well underway here at Crestfallen Manor.  We got quite a bit of work done over the weekend, but unfortunately I’ve come down with a cold and haven’t gotten much done since then.  There will undoubtedly be more updates later, but here are a few photos from the setup this weekend.  As always you can see the photos by clicking on the image in this post, or by going to the Gallery page.

Teri and Keith got married this weekend down in Sunriver, Oregon. It was a beautiful place, a beautiful event, and an all around great weekend. I can’t hardly think of a better way to for them to kick off the next chapter of their lives together.

You can see all the photos by clicking on the photo above or by clicking on the Gallery link.