Lights in the Sky

Interrupting the daily grind with some highlights from the past (two? -.-) weeks...

-Nine Inch Nails had a stop in San Antonio on their Lights in the Sky tour. Being long-time fans, D and I jumped on the opportunity to get seated tickets for the concert. The opening group, Ghostland Observatory (also here, but I like the MySpace link better), were absolutely rocking. Heavy Europop influence with streaks of David Bowie, Prince and... Elvis. Doesn't sound like it could be awesome, but it was great. And, of course, Trent and his gang brought everything they had when they took to the stage. True to the tour name, one of the main special effects of their show was a massive display system with LED lights sewn into a curtain drop. It was like having 4 transparent stage-sized monitors that could give the band any setting they wanted. There must have been literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lights. One setting had them in a desert, with a cloudy sky and shifting sand. Another obscured them in white noise, only to make a member visible when they approached the backside of the curtain. It's hard to put into words how awesome the end result was - we had a blast!

-Colin had his LaserQuest birthday party. Only one of his classmates showed up, and none of the neighborhood kids came. One of them cancelled at the last minute with no explanation. Noni's kids came, though, and we had just enough to make the minimum number of people we had planned for. D was a nervous wreck through most of it; I took care of most of the setup and such while she was in the laser tag arena. I don't know what it is about her and planning events, but she gets really wound up trying to make sure everything is just right. I think the failure of most of Colin's "friends" to show up threw her for a loop, and she never did just calm down.

-After the party, we trekked into the depths of the Texas Hill Country in search of the Bat Cave. LOL There actually is a bat cave called, for severe lack of creativity, Old Tunnel. It's a wildlife management area that is home to hundreds of thousands of bats, and every night around the same time, they come out in big swarms and fill the night sky. Noni had reserved a showing for the daycare kids, so we packed all her kids in our vehicles and left from the LaserQuest to the bat cave! The two younger girls that went with me in the convertible were dancing to the music on the radio with the convertible top down, and motioning for all the truckers we passed to honk. Hilarity ensued the whole way there.

When we got out there, we had a little less than an hour before the bats were supposed to come out, so a bunch of the older kids decided to go exploring around the wildlife area paths. When they got back, there were several kids missing, including Colin. -.-; Would figure he'd get lost in the wilderness... I went out and found him and the missing kids lost way out in the woods, off the marked trail (of course), across a small ravine. He was very happy to be back with the rest of us, and hopefully scared enough not to go hiking off like that again anytime soon.

Clara had started channeling lesser demons, so I went up to the top of the hill with her so she wouldn't disturb the park guide... er... bats. Seriously, she looked at me like I was from the moon when I got up from her lecture about the various bats of the world to go look for my son who was lost in the woods... Anyway, once I'd gotten Clara away from people, she complained a little bit longer and then settled right down, almost falling asleep at one point. It was just too dark and too late for such a little one. I set her on my lap when the bats started coming out, and she whispered a very excited "Wow!" while trying to follow the little critters across the night sky.

-Lastly, our house is decked out for Halloween! We put up strings of orange cluster lights around the doorway and purple cluster lights and creepy cloth hangings from the front window, a foam Jack-O-Lantern at the doorstep, replaced the porch light with a blacklight, and set up tombstones and ghoulish fencing in front of the bushes. We also got two pumpkins that we'll likely carve a day or two before Halloween. The San Antonio heat will make them get nasty if we carve them too much before then. I'll be sure to take/post Halloween pics on the Photobucket. Beside Christmas (for obvious reasons), Halloween is my favorite holiday! :D