A Guam Halloween...

This is the first Halloween in…well, my life that I have not dressed up. Sad, ain’t it?

Even on my mission I had Halloween costumes. I love Halloween. I like to dress up, get candy, watch scary movies; the whole thing. This year was very different.

To start the holiday off, I watched the newly released on DVD Season 8 Halloween episode of the Simpsons a week before Halloween. Then, on Saturday, I participated in the 14th annual underwater pumpkin carving competition. If you thought carving a pumpkin was hard on a table, try cutting into a very buoyant pumpkin under water in a current with a cheap kitchen knife.

I hadn’t given much thought to what I’d carve, but one idea came to me that I thought would be creative. I would make a Nintendo® GamePumpkin® Special Hallo-Wii-n® Edition. All I would have to do is cut open the top, clean it out, cut open a hole in the front for the controller and one in the back for the power. I had to make all of my cuts underwater, so I had to hope my cuts were accurate. I was not going to bring my GameCube into the water to see if it would fit.

As my luck would have it, the pumpkin was too small to fit my GameCube into. I had to be creative on the spot, since I only had enough time to go back to my house to grab the equipment before I had to get my pumpkin judged. I ended up losing the all expense paid dive trip to Australia to some dumb shape of Guam pumpkin with political posters on it…blah.

In my haste I forgot to grab my camera. So, no pictures. The dive shop that sponsored the event is supposed to have pictures on their website, but as of today, no luck. I’ll make another post when they do.

The night before, I watched Death Becomes Her. Funny movie. On Halloween day, I came to work wearing my usual outfit - white shirt and tie. I didn’t trick-or-treat, but some co-workers brought candy! That was nice. I also put in a special Halloween music CD in my car to listen to all day.

After work I watched Evil Dead II – Dead by Dawn. It’s cheesy, but great for the occasion. Then, upon finishing the movie, I had some fun. I guess you could say that I did dress up. For the first time, I dressed up as a scuba diver, and then went night scuba diving. Diving at night is very different. You can only see a very small area ahead of your light. If you look around, you see nothing and wonder where you are. It can be disorienting. That was an appropriate Halloween activity.

On the way back to shore, one of the people I went diving with all of the sudden freaked out. He threw off his mask and light and grabbed his shirt. For a second both him and I thought he had been stung by something. Somehow, he actually got a fish down his shirt. It was a good catch. I’ve never seen someone catch one like that. It was too small to eat, so we let it go. Maybe next time.

All in all, Halloween wasn’t bad. But it was different. I guess that moving to Guam will change everything, even my treasured holiday traditions. There is only one thing that I really need to change. I need to get myself a wife, fast, and start having kids. That way, I can enjoy Halloween properly and have an excuse to dress up and go trick-or-treating again.