Halloween Weekend

Halloween was fun last night, though my total count came out 41 or so fewer kids than last year. (Updated to add: 137 vs. 178, though I forgot to use my clicky-thingy for the first two dozen or so, so I had to guesstimate that part of the count.) I still wound up with leftover candy.

Fewer prostitots than last year, more little Goth girls. Can't say I disapprove of that trend. Kids were impressed that I was able to identify their costumes: I recognized Optimus Prime, though I forgot that the yellow Transformer would be Bumblebee, and I was able to guess that a kid was Jango Fett and not Boba Fett, since his costume was mostly-blue instead of mostly-green.

I had one little girl sing a song. She was very sweet, though her little friends were too shy to join in. It involved an old lady who was skin and bones who went for a walk by the old graveyard and forgot to take the skin along. I asked if she knew where the old graveyard and she said yes, just the other side of those houses. She said her friends had visited there earlier because that's where their gramma is, and it was sad because they loved their gramma and used to visit her all the time when she was alive. And I told her that my gramma was dead too, but I bought her house and that's where we were now. She said "See you next year!" as they left.

No Obamas, McCains, Bidens, or Palins, but I did have a Hillary Clinton and a George Bush the Elder show up together. To Hillary I said "I voted for you!", but after I gave G.H.W.B. his candy I shouted "NOW GET OFF MY PORCH AND GO BACK TO LUBBOCK!" Well, Lubbock is the site of Bush the Lesser's movie-set ranch, so I screwed that up.

I stayed the house over last night. This morning I did the heating system maintenance I've been slacking off on in the warmer weather. I waited until after 11:30 to go out and start mowing the lawn for what I hope was the final time for the season (particularly since I WD-40'd the blades and put it in my shed instead of on my back porch.) The morning had been very cold up until that point, but once the sun broke through the clouds everything warmed up very quickly - including the gnats, which were swarming everywhere. But I got my mowing done, and my weed-whacking, and I pulled out the tomatoes and put away the spiral stakes and WD-40's my shovels and garden fork and pruned the grapes slightly and cut down the thorny things I thought were raspberries but weren't and...

Ouch. I'm sore now.

Before I left the house I reset all the clocks back to Standard Time ("Fall Back.") I have quite a few clocks there.

I also changed the batteries in my smoke detectors last night. Partly because this is something you should do every time you change the clocks, but mostly because they were dead and I didn't want to be.

Now I'm off to the Sideshow Gathering. This will only be my second one. I'd better check the schedule before I go. If you're anywhere near Wilkes-Barre this weekend, please consider stopping in at the Woodlands!