Orbs 'r' Us

Happy Halloween...only 30 days left til Halloween
26 days left til Haunt starts!!!
I had a surprise visit from my brother and sister-in-law today, from Devon, AB. It was really good to see them again as I rarely go anywhere except to the hospital lately. Feeling lots better and Halloween always perks up my spirits....pun intended.
Their whole family gets together at Halloween [in Devon] and put up a big yard display. They go all out like I do and they are quite a popular place to experience. This year they said was going to be their last yard decor set-up and the next year plan on moving it into the town's museum. I only wished that I could have made it to see theirs before the close down, pics never do things justice.
So we spent the short time that they were here exchanging trade secrets. They hope to make the 5 hr drive here the haunt weekend, just to experience our haunt and get ideas how to run theirs next year. Hopefully the weather co-operates! I know for sure both of them will be helping to scare others after their walk through!
Sadly I had to wave good-bye and wait for PoD & the Minions to pick me up so we could finish cleaning the basement area of the haunt.
Armed with coffee & water we arrived at the Court House. I was feeling a little edgy about being in there on a Saturday night but felt lots better when the key turned easily in the lock and the door opened like the place was happy to see us. Good omen!
PoD wasn't too happy to see that the door to the Custodian Quarters was closed and she was sure that we had left it open. I'm pretty sure we did also! It was empty inside so no reason to close the door or even lock it...which I do when I have my stuff in it. Later I had to retrieve the dust pan from the custodial kitchen and found nothing had changed. It's possible that someone had needed to get in the room next door to the quarters and push the door shut. No one works in the building on the weekend and the basement looks like it hasn't been cleaned in a looooong time! So who knows?
When I left the rooms I left the door open!
During all this time it was just me and the minions as PoD went home to get her drill/tool kit [she's a Jill also]. When she got back we got busy removing the old haunt walls [tarps] that weren't needed. I had forgotten that one of the tarps was really huge and we had to drag it out into the hallway to fold it. PoD grabbed one end and headed out into the hallway with it. Suddenly she stopped dead in her tracks, turning to me she said in a nervous voice "please tell me that you opened that door [custodial]"! I could have led her along by saying no but knew that she'd be out of there in a flash...with both kids dangling from each arm, feet not touching the ground....and me...well, I'd be on my own!
See her scared look and nervousness about having her back to the scary door I asked her if she wanted to trade places and she lost no time in switching with me. I do have to admit to being nervous myself about having my back to that dark open space and with the tarp being so long I had to back up very close to that doorway. We folded it pretty quick! Me acting brave outwardly but quaking inside! Controlling the urge to run is hard!
The rooms that we were cleaning were the old Dentist office...with LOTS of spiders. FAST spiders! I'm not as phobic about them as my daughter is but I'm not crazy about them either! The only good spider is a plastic spider....which by the way freaked out my granddaughter and in turn, brings it in and freaks out PoD! Why she would think her daughter would be carrying one is beyond me as the kid's just as phobic about them!
The hardest thing that night was getting the 3 dentist chairs down the hallway into a back room that were not using in the haunt. With lots of grunts and groans we wrangled them into the room.
These rooms were revised awhile back to house the dentist office and the walls should be in not too bad of shape? Wrong...they are crumbling to the point of wall turning to sand! We had to sweep up a mound of it! Also one of the windows had been busted in with part of a brick....probably from the chimney [that was ripped out by some idiot...but we won't get into that right now!]. Like to catch the creeps that like to bust windows and make them put in new ones!!!
We decided to call it an early evening and clean-up had only taken 1.5 hrs.
The only other place to clean in the basement is the hallway and it's overloaded right now with paper towel dispensers and chairs. This part doesn't have to be done until the last and the town needs to get at their vaults and other rooms. So the next step is the haunt walls in the Custodian Quarters and set-ups for creatures.
Next jaunt to the courthouse will be Tuesday, Oct. 3
Orbing out...QoH