The Pumpkin From Hell

Hi. I'm posting a story I wrote 15 years ago as a senior in high school for my Composition class. So I'm not exactly Stephen King, but we already knew that. Hopefully this makes someone's Halloween a little spookier.

Thrusting the shovel down towards the earth, Dave finally severed the pumpkin vine. His friend Pete cheered and clapped loudly as a big grin spread slowly across Dave’s face. They had finally loosed a giant pumpkin.

The two boys gathered around the pumpkin, placing their hands on the underside of it. Using all their strength, they lifted the giant pumpkin into a wheelbarrow. Dave knew the pumpkin had to weigh at least one hundred pounds. Pushing the wheelbarrow across the pumpkin patch, they discussed how they planned to carve a champion jack o’lantern.

Once they arrived at their pickup, they again lifted the pumpkin up and set it in the back. They hopped in the cab and sped towards Dave’s house, anxious to see what they could do to the massive orange fruit. They definitely had material for a masterpiece.

Soon they arrived at Dave’s house. Unloading the pumpkin once more, they began the journey to the porch. They had to stop and rest several times before they finally had the pumpkin at the front door. Nevertheless, they eventually had it sitting on the kitchen table.

They then proceeded to turn it into a jack o’lantern. As Dave removed the seeds from inside, Pete traced the outline of the eyes and mouth on the side of the pumpkin.

“Do you suppose those tales about the pumpkin patch are true?” Dave asked Pete.

“Well, that’s what I heard,” Pete replied, “But I doubt it. I don’t really put too much faith in this Halloween crap.”

“Yeah, besides,” Dave said, “what could be enchanted about a pumpkin patch?”

The boys shrugged and continued their project. As they began to carve, they noticed that the pumpkin would jump slightly or move from side to side when an incision was made. It struck them as something weird, but they were too involved in what they were doing to worry about it.

Soon they were finished with it and stepped back to admire their work. They took pictures of it and were beginning to think of a place to put it when they noticed unusual changes taking place.

The hard orange pumpkin suddenly became soft. The boys poked at it, and their fingers sunk in slightly when they touched it. Then it began throbbing and pulsating like a heart. With each beat it inflated slightly, becoming larger by the second.

The two boys watched in amazement as the jack o’ lantern grew and grew some more. Soon it became such a burden for the table that the legs collapsed and the jack o’lantern hit the floor with a loud thud. Dave and Pete jumped back, startled at what had happened. Both were beginning to become frightened.

Now a soft wind began to whistle in the room as the pumpkin continued to increase its size. The wind blew inside the hollow pumpkin. The wind was icy cold, and made the boys shiver. Pete was about ready to run for the hills at this point, but Dave held him back.

Just then a blinding flash of lightning ignited the room with flames. They were now surrounded by flames which encompassed the entire kitchen with a circle of fire. The temperature increased by about two hundred degrees in an instant.

There was no way for the boys to leave now, and they watched more changes take place in the jack o’lantern. The eyes shone with a bright white glow and flashed between brilliant and dim.

The boys noticed huge pools of blood gushing back and forth against the interior walls of the pumpkin. Blood began to spew forth from the mouth and spotted the clothing of the boys.

The jack o’lantern then began to jump around the room, creating giant cracks in the walls when it crashed against the boundaries. The electricity went out, and the pumpkin continued to bound around the room. It hit Pete and knocked him down. Dave shook him, but Pete was unconscious.

The jack o’lantern totally had a mind of its own. It had pulsated and grown so much by now it nearly filled the room. Dave knew he had to act fast. He lunged against the pumpkin, beating it with his fists. His adrenaline was really flowing, and he put all his strength into defeating the pumpkin and its evil ways.

Dave began throwing objects at it, and the pumpkin seemed to weaken somewhat when a microwave hit it. But the pumpkin bounced back fiercer than ever, sucking Dave internally, and he splashed in the pools of blood. Dave seemed to have lost all hope, and screamed out it fear.

Suddenly he heard the voice of his old neighbor Gus outside the pumpkin. The pools of blood began to go dry, and Dave laid inside the pumpkin. Gus cut the pumpkin open and Dave climbed out and stood next to Gus, and they both stared down at the pumpkin, which laid bloody and slaughtered before them.

“Thanks, Gus,” Dave said, “how did you do that?”

“Well, it’s along story, but I learned years ago that I can communicate with jack o’lanterns on Halloween if I put on my bib overalls and stick a toothpick in my mouth. It seems to be some sort of magical power I have. When Is aw you boys were in trouble, I put on the overalls and rushed over.”

“Thanks, Gus, “ Dave said. “I thought I was gone.”

“Well, Dave, I’m glad I could help. Stay away from those pumpkins. They’re far too evil.”

With that Gus exited and left Pete and Dave to catch they breath after their horrifying experience with the pumpkin from hell.

Brand Loyalty

What brands are you loyal to?

I admit, most of the time it doesn't really matter. The $1 bag of cotton swabs from the Dollar Tree works about as well as the $4 box of Q-Tips from Wal-Mart. And you get twice as many. But there are a few things where the store brand or any other brand just won't do. Here are a few of mine:

Right Guard deodorant. I figured this one out early on. Nothing else works as well. Speed Stick sucks. Old Spice - nope.

Campbell's Soup. Store brands are pretty yucky. They are cheaper, but to me it's not worth the price difference. I've tried Progresso Soups - it is a bigger can, and I think they're trying to make good soups, but it's just not working out for them.

Hush Puppies. The shoes, not the deep-fried balls of dough. I just got some for my birthday, and man are they great. I'm probably never buying a different brand for the rest of my life, even if I have to make an occassional trip to the outlet store in Las Vegas solely for the purpose of buying them. It's like wearing slippers to work - but they look way nicer! The first pair I owned was when I left on my mission. They also were the first pair I wore out on my mission. But I never forgot them. I bought another pair a few years back and they're still going strong but starting to show some age. It's as if all other makers of men's dress shoes do product testing to make sure the shoes are as unforgiving as possible. I know, because pretty much every other pair I've ever owned, I've also hated.

Broncos Rant

So maybe everyone was a bit optimistic about the 2008 edition of the Broncos. After starting 3-0, they are 1-3 in their last four games, including losses to one of the worst teams in the NFL and their recent Monday Night spanking. The local sports yakkers have turned negative again after they also got a bit carried away with the Broncos' September success, predicting 12 or 13 wins and noting that the Broncos were on pace to break the NFL record for points scored in a season. Even I knew that the Broncos weren't going to continue to average 30+ points a game. And what do you know? They have averaged 15 points in their last four games.

Coming into this season, I felt that the Broncos would probably contend for a playoff spot, but were probably two years away from being a serious contender. And I still feel that way. The defense is just as bad as it was last season, and the offensive talent is still young.

But contending for the Super Bowl in two years isn't automatic. The Broncos need good drafts in 2009 and 2010. The media finally figured out sometime last year the obvious, which was that the Broncos weren't very good because of their crap-tacular drafts from 2001 to 2004. They have only two players left from those drafts - guard Ben Hamilton and linebacker D.J. Williams. Although it's fair to note that they also drafted Clinton Portis during that period, who they got two good years from and then traded for Champ Bailey.

The 2005 draft looked pretty promising. But then Darrent Williams, the prize of that draft, was murdered on New Year's Day 2007. Dominique Foxworth was traded to Atlanta a few weeks ago for a 7th-round draft choice. Karl Paymah probably won't be around next year. So that's another draft which produced no long-term fruit for the Broncos.

Thank goodness the Broncos nailed the 2006 draft - picking up Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, Tony Scheffler, and Elvis Dumervil - or else the Broncos would really be in a sorry state.

But then there is the 2007 draft - it's still early, but it's looking pretty shaky. The top two picks, Jarvis Moss and Tim Crowder, haven't shown much even though there isn't much competition on the defensive line. Third round pick Ryan Harris is starting on the offensive line, and fourth round pick Marcus Thomas is starting on the defensive line. But who knows how many of those guys will be around in three years? And the main problem isn't entirely just who the Broncos chose to draft - it's the fact that they traded FIVE additional picks to move up in the draft and select Moss and Thomas. So that's a total of SEVEN picks spent on two guys who don't appear headed for the Pro Bowl any time soon.

And let's not forget the number of other questionable choices Mike Shanahan made over 2006-07: picking up Dre Bly, Travis Henry, and Javon Walker; dumping defensive coordinator Larry Coyer for Jim Bates; and the decision to which all panicked moves since can be traced back to: replacing Jake Plummer with Jay Cutler midway through the 2006 season when Plummer would have led the Broncos to a playoff berth that season.

As to whether it was the right choice to acquire Cutler in the first place, I'm not about to suggest that. After all, Cutler is God's gift to football. My question is - why have the Broncos been so hopeless since he took over as the QB?

Location, Location, Location

So we really like our new house which we have lived in for almost one year. One thing we really like is the proximity to so many places. We sort of planned for being close to the school, but we sort of just got lucky on everything else. Here's the rundown:

0.1 MILES - Dairy Queen, 7-11
0.3 MILES - Elementary school, high school
0.5 MILES - Albertson's
1.0 MILES - King Soopers, Safeway, Target, Lowe's, Church
2.0 MILES - Wal-Mart, Home Depot

Also, we don't do much fast food, but McDonald's, Subway, Burger King, Taco Bell, Arby's, and KFC are all within a one-mile radius.

The farthest place I drive to regularly is the office, which is only 5.6 miles. Plus we do Sam's Club, which is 6.5 miles. It's great having everything else really close. And our neighborhood isn't overly noisy - unlike our last place, which offered better proximity to our bank and insurance agent but not much else.

Compare this to living in North Carolina, where it was a couple of miles to the nearest grocery store, 5 miles to Wal-mart, 10 miles to Target, 15 miles to Sam's.

Or compare it to growing up: 15 miles to the nearest supermarket, 15 miles to Wal-Mart, 135 miles to the nearest Target (or any other major chain without a Mart in the name).

Much Better

It seems like since we bought our house one year ago, most of our efforts have been focused on the exterior of our home. With the help of friends and family, we've painted (although not quite done), replaced the windows, replaced the front door and storm door, redone the landscaping in front, removed about 60% of the overgrown bushes in the backyard, and cleared a garden spot. And so it looks much better than it did one year ago. Here are some of our last projects of 2008 before the snow and ice comes:

The first picture is our project of yesterday. We have this spot in the front where the grass is long gone and consisted mostly of goathead-producing weeds. It looked truly awful and I neglected to take a good "before" picture. What I have posted is an "intermediate" photo. A few weeks ago we did some weed killer. And then yesterday we tilled and pulled out all the old dead weeds. We put down a walkway between the driveway and the front porch using pavers we dug up from all over the yard. And we put down grass seed in hopes of making the front a bit more attractive. The heavens erupted with approval for our hard work and rained a lot yesterday, so we haven't had to worry about watering it yet. So hopefully we can see some progress in the few weeks. But even with just the dirt patch it looks much better than it did with the weeds.

The second picture is of our new rain gutter. The old original gutter was kind of trashed due to a basketball hoop once being mounted over the top of it, and it leaked water all over the place. So I tore down the old one and installed a new vinyl gutter. The hardest part was probably figuring out how to do the bend from the gutter to the downspout. I decided to save $10 by keeping the old metal downspout, which was just fine. The trick was getting the right number of pieces to link them together, and I also wound up having to remove the downspout from the house so that I could hack about six inches off the downspout in order to get the angle right. But it looks much better than what we had, and what's more important, it works much better.

On the last picture, it's hard to see what we did. The original seal on the bottom of the garage door was in shoddy condition and all sorts of water would leak in whenever it rained heavily or when snow melted and ran off our crappy rain gutter. So we put on a new one - this was our general conference project. We would run out between sessions and work on it. Somehow, it still leaks slightly, maybe because the garage door isn't clamped down super hard, but it is much better than it was.

So we're almost ready for winter and next summer we should be able to focus on getting more things done on the inside of the house.

One Accountant's Request

One week from tomorrow is the drop-dead deadline for filing individual and partnership tax returns. Not having your stuff together by April 15 is quite understandable - if you have an interest in several S-corps or LLCs, it's highly unlikely that all those returns can be completed 3 1/2 months after year-end. So the IRS offers an automatic six-month filing extension.

And yet people are still apparently putting it off until the absolute last minute. In some cases, the return is almost completely done except for a handful of simple things that are missing - I have about 10 of those in my office right now.

One client was really anxious for her return for a couple of weeks ago - finally we got it all ready to go. All we need is a simple John Hancock in order to release it - I've been waiting on that for almost a week.

Another client has 98% of the stuff in for his 2007 return - and 0% of the stuff in for his 2006 return.

And there are another 6-10 files in the office for which we have received no 2007 information whatsoever. Not sure what their plans are.

Obviously, we're accountants so we take it a bit more seriously than your average American, but what is the holdup? Take a few minutes and get your stuff together! You don't have to wait until October 13 to get around to it! 2008 is almost over! 2007 is almost ancient history!

Today I was working on an S-corp return - the filing deadline for corporations was September 15. But we just barely got the stuff.

Tomorrow I'll be doing two individual returns for clients who are owners of a company that does business in about 10 states. So I'll be spending hours reading instructions for multiple states - good times. Each state has its own unique take on income taxes - it's loads of fun to figure them all out! I think I saw Maryland and New Jersey in there - at least two states I know nothing about! But it will keep me busy until the answers start rolling in on the other stuff.

Escape

Yes, I do read books, contrary to what my prior post may have led you to believe. Elizabeth borrowed this from her friend Jess. She read it and said, "You have to read this!" And so I did. And now I'm saying, "Read this book. Right now. Go buy it, or check it out, or borrow it, or whatever."

The book details the author's life growing up a Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint and later entering into a polygamous marriage and how she eventually found freedom. I don't think that was a spoiler - it says ESCAPE right on the cover.

The book was an eye-opener. Going in, I knew that the FLDS were a little wacky, but I don't think I comprehended how seriously evil some of the powerful people are. Every kind of abuse was described - physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual - all done in the name of celestial marriage. But really, it's all about control - plural marriage is just the tool they use to that end.

Some of the stories are mind-blowing and I wondered a time or two if maybe she was like that broken glass dude who got in trouble with Oprah a couple of years ago for embellishing his memoir. But it can't possibly be fiction - because who would have made this up?

I couldn't believe that something like this could have happened in the United States of America. Carolyn Jessop is awesome.

Learning to Read Was a Waste

So I saw this on another blog - and I realized I'm totally lame at literature!

These are the offical rules:

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them! :)"

MY COMMENTS ON THE RULES
1) As you can see, I've read just 3 of the 100. So I guess that I proved the point of whoever created this.
1a) What's the deal with putting several books on one line - i.e. all the Harry Potter books on one and the Complete Works of Shakespeare on one plus Hamlet separately? That puts it way over 100!
2) I don't intend to read anything until I have it in my hands and begin to open the cover. My question is that there is no provision in the rules made for "started but didn't finish" or "partial reads". I've read several of the works of Shakespeare, but not all of them. So I'm italicizing the ones I plan to finish someday. Maybe.
3) I don't love any of the 3 books I read. I read them one time each.
4) In lieu of striking out books I have no intention of reading, I'm striking out everything I've never heard of before, so I can't possibly have intended to read it!
5) It wouldn't take much work to get up to six - I can probably manage that.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Surprised, not shocked

So the Denver Broncos lost last week to the Kansas City Chiefs. Their hopes for an undefeated season are gone. Everyone expected the Broncos to roll to an easy victory - all five Denver Post columnists picked the Broncos, and there were a couple of inflammatory articles in the Sunday paper about how awful the Chiefs are. So that pretty much guaranteed a Chiefs victory.

As for me, I was cautiously optimistic about the Broncos' chances. For some reason, they have never done well in Arrowhead Stadium, especially since Mike Shanahan became coach. Under his leadership, the Broncos are 4-11 when playing @ Kansas City. Apparently everyone believes that history was swept away because the Broncos did win at Arrowhead last year. But I guess some things never change.

Things That Make You Go HMMM. . .

Interesting quote I saw in today's paper from Michelle Obama, who was up in Boulder trying to get teen slackers to register to vote yesterday.

"We're going to need your prayers; we're going to need your work. We're going to need you to pray; we're going to need you to work. And then after you work, pray a little more. And then after you've prayed, keep working."

?????????????

I guess her husband's public speaking ability hasn't rubbed off on her.