OctoberFEST!

Soooo.. you know we have not been around for awhile but we have been busy beavers the whole month preparing for the final day of October!! And let me tell you this month was completely EPIC! We will start from the beginning so fear not here comes our fantasy life!

The Beginning of October starts with the real reason we are here: WORK! The entire hospital went live with a new computer system and how convenient that they named it: EPIC! Things were fine, it is literally just a computer system but the regular employees had some anxiety about the matter.  Being tweedle dee and tweedle dum we threw out as much sarcasm as possible to lighten the mood. People think we are "super users" but we are just good 'ole travel nurses ready to adapt to anything that comes our way. Andddd, thats enough work talk for now! Onto the real fun!

Since we were in a helping, giving mood we decided to dedicate our Saturday morning to Habitat for Humanity. We met Trish, head contractor aka Spastic Sally. Then there was Ron, counselor extraordinaire! In close tow was his group of delinquents that god only knows the reasons they were there. So naturally we made friends immediately and soon became mentors for these young troubled minds. Overall they taught us how to hammer and we taught them how to live a fantasy life. Had we scored the reality TV show we want, you could have seen the lives changing before your eyes. Scary, right?!?!?! The day ended with free lunch and one delinquents stealing Jenn's water bottle, apparently we did not reach that sad sack.

Sara went home for a week and Jenn stayed here, yes we do separate from time to time. But believe me it was not easy and extremely sad week away from each other. Sleep was scarce with one twin bed cold and empty.

Being the cheap asses that we are, the only email at work that really stuck out was for discounted tickets at the pumpkin patch. These tickets included the scariest haunted house ever! and a corn maze that you could be lost in for days if you are not smart. Luckily, both minds were present which created a whole one.

Being that this month had to be epic our first stop was Wal-mart to get matching PUMPKIN face shirts! Let me tell you they wear cute! We almost could not control our excitement on the 20 minute drive there. Occasional outbursts and careless driving was the result of our long awaited trip to the pumpkin patch. Once we got there we realized the matching shirts and lack of children may have made us stand out a bit. Some looks and snickers confirmed this. However, we reassured ourselves with our favorite motto: "We are only here for a couple months and will never see these people again". We carried on through mazes of activities with each one opening our mouths a lil wider perhaps some drool even graced the corners of our lips! This place was huge! First stop, haunted house. You think being in our mid 20s we could handle a haunted house in the broad daylight, but we couldn't! We held eachother tightly and began to sweat profusely. I think we were the only 2 screaming the entire time through ever twist and turn. When we finally made to the end the lone scarer mocked us. This is when we realized that only 2 people were working the haunted house and one was outside at the beginning. Apparently does not take much to entertain and scare us. Once our heartbeats calmed down we snapped numerous pictures behind cutout pumpkins, corns, sunflowers, trains, and our favorite zip liners.

Next, we tried to hop a fence into kiddie land but for some reason we chose not to, only to find you had to be less than 100lbs and pay extra. Not only would it have been embarrassing, but we could have gotten kicked out and missed out on the fun to come! So we carried on.

The corn maze: it was huge, it was cut out like some space NASA exhibit, it had really difficult questions about space that made us feel stupid, and again there were people laughing at us throughout the maze. Needless to say, we wandered around acting a fool until we found a group of people who knew how to read the map. We casually joined their group with a couple quick jokes and they led us out of this horrible maze. Next time we are taking a flask so at least we will have rations if we are lost.

One downfall was that we did not get carted out to the field on hayride, but instead they brought the pumpkins to you. Knowing the ones on the ground had been picked over we decided to jump up on the tractors to sort through the good ones. One worker offered us job as he sat back and watched us. With much debate we picked 2 of the best pumpkins in the entire world! At this point the patch had seen enough of us and we had beer to drink and pumpkins to carve! We made our way our home only to get about a mile when we realized our precious cargo was not safe in the trunk. So we pulled over and strapped em in.

The entire act of pumpkin carving took up the whole rest of our evening, but the result was well worth it. Especially, with the pumpkin seeds! (that almost burnt down our house making, not sure if it was our irresponsible drinking or faulty oven..go with the oven)





       


Back to work for a minute. We realized that we work with some of the best people ever. Melissa helps us with our drinking skills and Juliet helped us with our sewing skills during the next part of this epic month.

Napa Valley is about 2 hours away and Melissa's family are members at what seems to be every winery there. She got us a private taste testing at one of the nicest wineries. For the first half we behaved like princesses in a palace. However, the wine was strong and when we were told it was time go and wine was still on the table there was a problem. This issue had to be fixed quick. As Melissa was being escorted to pick up here $1200 worth of wine. Jenn and Sara realized that Sara had left very important paperwork in the wine tasting room and had to go back to get it immediately followed the smells of undrunk wine and finished off our glasses...we simply could not be rude. Food was a must so we stopped for burgers at Gott's Joint that was from dives, diners, and drives or drivers, diners and dive ins...A hell it was one of those places from the food network and it was good! The next winery was nothing special but Melissa met her future husband there ;) He glided and talked with such a soft tender voice it just eased the mind. We had to drag Melissa out of that one!! Next stop was determined by our BOGO coupon, which ended up being free anyways, we are not sure how or why people just give us things but we are not going to question it. Napa was fun but there are more serious things to come!

 

HALLOWEEN!! Just a week away and we have yet to find the perfect duo costume. Out of nowhere we come up with an EPIC costume! PB and J!!! For some this task may be a challenge but we are determined to make the best costume ever. We basically asked who had a sewing machine, when we got turned down by some we basically begged Juliet to let us use hers. She was more than welcoming to have us! The actual construction of the bread only took a little while. It was the banana bread, fresh fruit, home grown figs, and coffee that kept us there all day. Finally, Juliet wrapped up a loaf of bread, the rest of fruit and cheese, and entire bag of coffee beans and the coffee machine/grinder and shipped us out the door. Once home we smeared the costumes with peanut butter and jelly and stood back to view this epic costume!


Airy even got in on the festivities with her pumpkin costume from the 99 cent store. (Our favorite store ever)

Days later it was party time! We were told to bring something to share so we made jell-o shots with an entire bottle of vodka (Later we come to realize that we may have had more that our fair share).  Then it was onto beautifying ourselves. In all the excitement we thought that our cardboard filled, larger than life pieces of bread could fit in the car with us still in them...EPIC fail. A couple passersbys snickered but no worries we stripped our bread and were on the road. We needed to stop to get a beverage for the evening. When we stopped in a small town grocery store to buy liquor in only black spandex we again got looks and snickers (not the candy). We found rum and coke and took it to the counter, but the cashier refused to sell to out of staters!!!!!!! Literally we were thinking this was a halloween trick and made a joke out of it too. People around us would not buy it for us either, so we realized we were out of luck and to the liquor store we must go! Then we headed to Angies, aka unicorn. We tried again to act shy and coy but PB and J could not be restrained! From this moment on the night is blur, bits and pieces are found through pictures. The party bus took us to the Santinis Milk Farm and Barn. The Barn was Amazing! Jenn just kept saying " Sara you won't believe this! You are going to shit yourself!" And that was just 2 steps into the barn! I mean there were spider webs, pumpkins, ghosts, Frankensteins, food, drinks, a live band dressed like the ghostbusters! I mean really is this real life!?!?! So naturally we pretended it was not and but be part of the fantasy we live and completely acted a fool. There was dancing and not just any dancing. One minute PB and J were sandwiching the Easter Bunny or a Flamingo or drinking milk from the wet T-shirt contest chic! We even met a white man turned black in ESCALON! Apparently this is unheard of in the small town of Escalon. You would think with co-workers present we would behave, but this was not the case. Jelly disappeared to a truck and peanut butter thinks she was on swings. Neither can recall with who, but they were definitely "sailing" with Jerry! Thankfully the party bus scooped us all back us and delivered us safely our new friend Angies house. We found the key under the mat and let ourselves in.

The next morning was rufffff! Literally we had to head to San Fran for the 49ers vs Browns game immediately. So we stopped home, shed what was left our costumes, threw on some browns gear, took our morning after pills aka ibuprofen and headed out the door. Jenn's mom said we shouldn't be driving, which has only happened one other time in our life so we must have sounded still drunk.. Grease was needed so MACDonalds it was. When they wouldn't serve us lunch we settled for some egg mcmuffins and were on the road again. Once in San Fran we quickly checked in to our luxurious hostel and caught a cable car to the stadium. On the way there we thought we were delusional when we saw a small baby perched on top of the trash can. We realized this was going to be a loooong eventful day. We chose not to take the baby as we had enough responsibility caring for ourselves....

We were welcomed onto the train by fellow Browns fans, but once off the train it was a ghetto walk to a shitty stadium. At this point our buzz was wearing off and hangover hell was setting in. Just in time for high temperatures and hecklers everywhere! We sat thru a couple of quarters and literally thought we were gonna die, so we headed back to the city. People hated that we were Browns fans, but loved our masks so all in all we made a lot of new friends on the train. After some good, fresh sea food at the fisherman's wharf we headed home to the hostel. We thought we would just head back to rest our baby eyes, but when we walked in a full blown halloweeen party was underway in the common area. We had to join and do a lil people watching. We found people there who had never celebrated halloween ever! They were giddy excitement. We also discovered hostels are EVERYWHERE! With this new knowledge you can only imagine what EPIC adventures are to come! When we woke up we realized in our moment of drunkeness the day before we had forgotten to pack a toothbrush, change of clothes, soap, or any other sanitary items. So we had to jet back to our equally filthy apartment and do some damage control. You cannot judge us, but we did smell like rot and when we got home our pumpkins had rotted from the inside out full of flies and possibly maggots. GROSSSSSSSSS! Our apartment looked like someone robbed it, but first made a nice dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup and left all the dirty dishes! (oops! that must have been us before the halloween party).

We still needed a to have bit more adrenaline going for work that night! It was after all halloween night! So we made caramel apples covered in candy for work, and again wore our matching pumpkin shirts!

The days after this are a blur. We spent the first couple days of November catching up on sleep and rebuilding ourselves, preparing for the next epic event!

As we write this we realize how EPIC the month of October was, but for us it is just another day in the life of Jenn and Sara and their fantasy life!