Happy Halloween 2009!!!
“It’s the most, wonderful tiiiiime of the yyyyeaaaar”. Yes, I’ve been in love with Halloween ever since I was young. The neighborhood I grew up in L.A. was a great place to go trick-or-treating. Dead bodies in front yards, live action death scenes, and neighbors that actually made you perform a trick to get your treat. As a shy kid (yes, I was a shy kid!) I always loved to dress up and be something I wasn’t, especially something creepy or frightening. The last time I attempted dressing up and trick-or-treating I was about 17 (hey, I had a young face and I’m short!) and I didn’t do it for the candy, I just wanted to show off my costume.
Nowadays I have a costume party on Halloween at my haunted mansion. We have a garage full of decorations that we’ve collected over the years. Most recently added was an animatronic witch that drags itself across the floor. The house is done up in lots of black-lights, spider webs, gouls and goblins and there’s a theme to every room. We even have the head of a dead fortune-teller at the front door. And watch your step as you head into the bathroom (don’t look in the tub if your squeamish).
But the best part of these shenanigans is the costumes that everyone is required to wear. If you show up without one I have about 10 very embarrassing ones you can choose from (believe me you want to show up in your own costume, these are horrible and a bit smelly). We have voting and a prizes give-away for the Scariest, Funniest, Most Creative and Best Couple or Group costumes.
Alan and I always go for the scariest and it’s always a surprise what we’re going to be. This year I have to say is going to be the hardest costume I’ve ever attempted but if I get it right, it will be amazing. Maybe I’ll quit Microsoft and work for Universal Studios (which BTW, I highly recommend going there on Halloween if you’re near Universal City!)
Here’s some costumes from previous years, try and guess what we’re going the be this year. I’ll post back pictures of this year’s party on Monday.
2003 | 
Ahh yes, the Angels of Death |
2004 |  I couldn’t find a picture of me, just Alan. Dr. Cute! |
2005 | 
Zombies love brrraaaaaiiiiinnnnssss….. |
2006 | 
I’m bride of Frankenstein and Frankie is above me with his mask off – this was the year we vowed NO MORE MASKS FOR ALAN. |
2007 | 
The devil made us do it! This is my first year at Microsoft and the year that Sara Ford came too. |
2008 | 
Remember, kids – Always wear your seat belt!!! |
2009 | GUESS! |
Happy Halloween!!!!
Beth is a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Community Team at Microsoft and is responsible for producing and managing content for business application developers, driving community features and team participation onto MSDN Developer Centers (http://msdn.com), and helping make Visual Studio one of the best developer tools in the world. She also produces regular content on her blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/bethmassi), Channel 9, and a variety of other developer sites and magazines. As a community champion and a long-time member of the Microsoft developer community she also helps with the San Francisco East Bay .NET user group and is a frequent speaker at various software development events. Before Microsoft, she was a Senior Architect at a health care software product company and a Microsoft Solutions Architect MVP. Over the last decade she has worked on distributed applications and frameworks, web and Windows-based applications using Microsoft development tools in a variety of businesses. She loves teaching, hiking, mountain biking, and driving really fast.
