Jan Lyk’s Halloween Party

A few weeks ago, I get an evite from Jan Lyk for his Halloween Party. I wasn’t sure if I was going or not at first, since I’m not a big fan of getting dressed up in a costume. The last time I got dressed up was probably back in elementary school. I’ve never really been a big fan of Halloween. And after I found out I could buy my own candy, there was even less reason so. I remember when I was small, my mom would throw away about half my candies I got from Trick-or-Treating as she deemed them “poisonable.”

Anyway, back to the story. Not sure to accept or reject the invite yet, we got into a discussion of Xyon’s costume one day and somehow I verbally agreed to going to the party. The reason I provided for not accepting the invite yet was I wasn’t sure how many guests I’ll bring and pulled a Mechy/Horacio reason saying I wasn’t sure how many of my 10 different “female” friends were going to be available that night.

Now a verbal agreement is not binding, but neither is an evite confirmation, but since I already agreed to go, I started thinking of costumes. A bunch of anime characters pop up into my mind. First of course it was Kenshin, but his costume felt hard to come by. I then thought everyone says I look like Tenchi Muyo with my tail:

However, Tenchi’s costume is just a regular high school student. I thought maybe I can get a traditional Japanese high school uniform (the black ones actually looks pretty awesome), but there wasn’t really enough time to have one shipped and I had no idea where to pick one up locally.

So I started expanding my options beyond anime. I looked up a few costume shops around me to see if there were anything I liked. While I was in the first costume store, I saw a black jacket and thought it be pretty easy to dress up as Neo from The Matrix. All I would really need is a leather trench coat and some shades, though shades would make it difficult to navigate in a dark Halloween party. Anyway, after I dropped by a few other costume shops and didn’t really see anything I wanted, I went to Ross. Unfortunately, they said trench coats were seasonal things and if it’s not in the coats section, then they probably wouldn’t have it. The same thing happened at Target.

During sushi dinner that night with Stanman, Desperajo, and Carolynn, I brought up the fact that I was looking for a trench coat for my costume. Desperajo mentioned that he saw a really nice trench coat at Goodwill and I decided I would try checking there. Given it was Goodwill, it’ll probably not cost too much either. So the conversation of what you would dress up as for Halloween went around and Stanman said he’d dress up as Hiro from Heroes. I asked if he meant future Hiro, but Stanman declined and said he’d just be regular Hiro, the present day version. We all said that wasn’t really a costume as he just dresses normally with fuzzy hair. He goes, that’s fine with him. Carolynn then chimed in that I would look more like Hiro than Stanman, and Stanman argues that both he and I look pretty much the same, and I have to agree. We often get confused which Wii Miis is who.

Anyway, that gave me another idea: Future Hiro. I searched online to see if I can find a good picture of it and found this:

I thought awesome! Looks like I’ll need a black coat, a black fleece with zipper, black dress shirt, black pants, black shoes, a sword, and a black strap to hold the sword’s sheath. If you haven’t realized, black is one of my favorite colors, though some will argue that black is not a color at all, and is the absence of color, and to those I would just ignore.

Anyway, I started searching my wardrobe and it looks like I have the dress shirt and pants. I know I have a pair of black dress shoes, so that was taken care of also. I dug around all my laptop bags and found a few black straps that look like they’ll work. Looks like I’ll need to invest in a black coat, black fleece, and a sword for this endeavor.

I drop by Ross again and found a few black coats and fleeces and tried them on. I ended up purchasing one of each. However, when I got home and tried all 3 layers of clothing on (coat + fleece + dress shirt), it got unbearably hot, so I decided I didn’t really need the fleece and ended up returning it to Ross.

I also dropped by a party store and picked up a toy sword. I was thinking of bringing my real katana, but the thought of accidents turned me away. After I got home, I cut out some holes and attached the black strap to it. When I discussed my costume with Xyon, he insisted that I would need the symbol on my sword. So I ended up picking up a metallic gold marker from Office Depot and that worked out extremely well:

Here’s the total cost of my costume:
Black Coat: $50
Toy Sword: $6
Gold Marker: $3

And here’s the final outcome of the costume:

Anyway, just as I was about to leave for the party, I realized that I couldn’t find my black dress shoes. Tons of scenarios came into my mind. Did I take it back to LA during my last visit and forgot to bring it back? Did my mom hide them somewhere else? Has it always been in storage? I decided to give my mom a call and two rings in while I was searching the storage, I found it! I recalled the last time I wore these was during the CSD Christmas Party almost 2 years ago. I recall even buying a belt and tie for that event, which I haven’t worn once since. Anyway, it turns out that it was indeed still in storage (there’s still tons of boxes I have yet to open since my move).

So I drove to Microsoft because Xyon and I were carpooling from there. Turns out a few others were doing the same. We met up with Veneta, Thet, and Aurash. We got to Jan Lyk’s place around 9 and people started slowly coming in.

How the party went? I’ll let the pictures tell the story:

For the full album, check out: Jan Lyk’s Halloween Party 2007

One really funny incident that happened during the party was people were guessing what time it was. I looked at my clock on my cell phone and saw 1:47am. I thought, wasn’t it 1:30am almost an hour ago? Then it hit me, Daylight Savings Time. So while people were guessing 2:30, 2:42, etc, I couldn’t help but laugh. When I told them it was only 1:47, they wouldn’t believe me until I mentioned DST, then it hit them. Aurash continues to argue that his clock is synched with the atomic clocks and his clock shows 2:47am. Jeremy backs me up and says his phone has synched and updated with DST.

Here’s some helpful advise: Don’t try to bite or bend those glowy sticks beyond their capacity. I ended up with a mouth full of glowing orange liquid which tasted really really bad.

After the party, a bunch of us went to Denny’s and just chatted for quite a bit.