This Charming Cult

There is a cult living next door to us.  I am so not making that up at all.  They do weird things like invite a lot of people over, gather in the garage (door open, of course), hold hands and chant.  Within the past month they have moved the good times to the backyard where in the audience sit on folding chairs and listen to some guy in a terrible white suit (I believe he's the neighbor) do some kind of non-funny stand-up routine while other people take his pictures and film him at close range.  Today there was about six of them sitting around a table in the middle of the yard.  They were wearing shiny metallic party hats and looked like they were having a tea party with the devil (I believe it was my neighbor wearing a lot of makeup and devil horns on his forehead).  The party even had a strobe light and a box with a red flashing light...in...daylight.  Later, I believe they were attempting to be zombies who feared the strobe by running around awkwardly and moaning while someone else held the light up to their faces (and recording it, naturally).

It was with great pleasure that we broke up this party by coming outside and hosing various items off as loudly as possible.  We had two pans of burnt magic cookie bars sitting outside soaking and melting in the sun, and those made a delicious noise when spraying them out.  It was even better when we took ET's terrarium to wash out and get ready for his eventual return.  We totally ran our neighbor off in to his house.  I guess the loud sound of water against glass just doesn't go well with their performance, cult piece.

Since ET is never ever allowed to have sand again, we got him some nice substrate made out of recycled plastic bottles.  He is totally into the environment and will do anything to be green.  I got two carpet pieces so I can change them out for cleaning each week.  I'm a good mother like that.  We also got him a larger heating pad, since he is getting bigger (I wonder how much weight he lost when the stones were removed).

Before I came back inside to laze on the couch some more, I took some photos:

Lastly, an excellent action shot of the Bear ravenously eating grass (which he puked up on the nice wood floors approximately five minutes later):