After having gone to college and not having the opportunity to partake in Halloween antics for quite some time, when I finally had my own place and thus the space to do a few things for the holiday, I decided to do some decoration and hold a small Halloween party for my friends.

I planned ahead a little, and started searching for a new skeleton during the summer of 2000. His name is "Herb", and you can see him to the right. :) (click on any of the pictures to go to my year-2000 pictures). He's a "Fourth Quality" anatomical model. Such low quality models can not be used for science and educational purposes, and so the defective ones such as these can often be found for considerably lower prices. In this case, Herb has a few discolorations, the bolt-socket was drilled at the wrong angle for one of the legs (easily corrected by drilling a new hole), and both arms are left arms. Herb sat dressed as a grim reaper for the party, and overlooked the balcony on Halloween night.

The smaller skeleton, standing over the armillary, is a 1st quality "Mr Thrifty" skeleton, standing about 3 feet tall. It's not obvious in the picture, but sometime back in the 90's, he fell over and broke his arm off. My attempts to re-attach it have met with varied success. By the time this picture was taken, I had more or less given up and just wedged the shoulder-blade in between some ribs to hold him in place (as of 2006, he's still there, and still wedged together).

The hanging skeleton is a store-bought latex skeleton. He looks great hanging, since you can't as easily tell he's all floppy and soft. :)

The year 2000 started my tradition of placing Herb to overlook the street from my balcony every Halloween.