Happy Happy Halloween!

This has been one of the funnest Halloweens ever. Last night my girl and my nephew went trick or treating and me, my wonderful boyfriend and my sister went along as chaperones. (So yeah, more chaperones than trick or treaters.) A year older now, the kids had more stamina than last year and the extra pavement pounding meant a bigger haul. First thing my girl did when she got home was weigh her pillow case full of candy. She brought home 6.5 pounds. That's 1.5 pounds more than last year. It's also an obscene amount of candy. We'll save out a bunch to be used for lunch box treats and she'll take the rest and hide it in her room, where I will unearth it sometime next spring and toss out what's left since she'll have forgotten about it by then.
Today we went to a wedding! This is a wedding that has been in the works for a long long time and it was so satisfying to see it all go so well. The ceremony was held at Fort McClary midday. The weather was warm (for this time of year) and more or less sunny. Guests were told to dress either in costume or in regular wedding garb. We chose costumes, of course. I was a pirate, fully armed with a cutlass and a flintlock. (I may post a photo if one gets sent my way.) My boyfriend was a monk, Brother Seamus. My girl was a 50s girl in a poodle skirt and bobbysocks. The ceremony was beautiful and I admired how it emphasized their wholeness as individuals who were joining together to share in the fullness of life, not to fill an emptiness. It made me think of how my ex used to say marriage was about joining together to make up for what the other lacked and how that always struck me as so wrong.
Anyway, the bride was beautiful in her strapless satin gown with beaded spider web across the bodice and down the skirt and the groom was handsome in his black morning suit with deep maroon vest and a magnificent, thin and spiky red mohawk (that is his real hair, not a Halloween wig). The whole event was a fun mix of formal and ghouly. I loved how it reflected who they are and was all about fun and celebration and not at all about ostentation and pretension.

Daylight Killing Time

I didn't come up with that name for it myself. I saw it written in on the department calendar near the faculty mailboxes. Anyway, it's here. And that means it is 7:38 am on a Sunday morning and I am up, showered and dressed already. Weird. There's laundry, cleaning and grocery shopping to be done, so I guess it will get done early and then I will probably go back to trying to catch up on a sweater I'm knitting. I was about to finish the last shoulder piece yesterday afternoon, while the storm was raging around outside, and came to the horrible realization that I had made a fatal flaw in the sweater back down at the start of the armhole shaping. I thought about trying to work around it and then I realized I'd rather have a sweater I actually have a reasonable chance of wearing rather than something misshapen and relegated to the back of the drawer, but finished sooner than doing it right. So, I ripped it all out, both front and back, down to the beginning of the armholes and this time I did it correctly. I hope I at least still like the sweater when I'm finished making it.

NaBloPoMo

There is no way in hell I will ever write a novel in a month, or even likely in my lifetime. And yet, when November rolls around and NaNoWriMo begins, I always feel pangs of something like wistfulness. I'd love to attempt something like that, just not quite so ... ambitious. Fortunately, someone was insightful enough to call for NaBloPoMo. A post a day for the month of November. I think I can handle that. More than I can handle a novel anyway.

Things That Go Knock in the Night

Last night was not a great one for sleep. I was up later then usual putting the finishing touches on a translation job due at 9 a.m. this morning. About twenty minutes after I finally got to bed, the alarm clock in my girl's room went off because it had reset back to the default of midnight when we lost power Saturday night. I had remembered to reset her clock but not the alarm. She was too asleep to deal with it, so I got up, reset it for 6:30 and then went back to to bed. At 3:25 I got up to pee. Then at 5:15 I was awakened by short, sharp warning barks from the dog. Between his barks I could hear someone banging on the door. My first guess was that it was probably somehow going to be my PITA neighbor and I really wanted to just ignore it, but the dog was barking and he is not easy to ignore. Then I thought what if there was a gas leak or some other situation that jeopardized our safety. I got up and went to the door and of course it was my neighbor, in her pink bathrobe, apologizing and explaining that her car keys and phone "were locked in another car" and could she please borrow my phone to make a call. I said sure and brought her the cordless phone. She made her call, mostly likely to her boyfriend, whose car she had left, not locked, her keys and phone in. The dog went and laid back down in his bed. She returned the phone and the dog barked a couple more times for good measure since he remembered she was there. I tried to go back to sleep but my headache from yesterday had returned and instead I took some ibuprofen and got out of bed 20 minutes earlier than usual. I can't wait to no longer gave her as a neighbor.

The One, The Only!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Both my present and maiden name get zero matches here. I'm an original, one and only!

Wow

New Hampshire has had a stellar fall this year. Unlike the endless rain of last October we have had the warm sunny days and cool, but not too cold, nights to give us a beautiful show of fall foliage. The reds are particularly spectacular. I walk around with a camera on me at all times and will pull my car over to the side of the road to get a photo if I'm not in too much of a hurry and the scene strikes me right.
It's been a great fall in more than just a meteorological and scenery kind of way too. Although I am still (four months and counting since the trial, 2.5 years + since I initiated the process) waiting on the divorce order, life has continued to move along. My girl and my wonderful guy get along great. (Most likely because they both have minds that work in weird and weirdly similar ways.) We've been looking for a home to call our own and.... while not every last detail has been signed and nailed down, we're getting very close to that point! As my Mom commented to me recently, "Sometimes life is just grand. Sounds like this is such a time." I think she's right.

What's That You Say?

I say, ipskabibble.

I Can't Believe I'm Going to Say This But...

I heart Starbucks. Maybe I'm just a freebie whore, but I went in to the Dover Starbucks this afternoon while my girl was at dance class so I could get some work done on a translation job and the barrista girl gave me a free iced maple latte. I thought I tried to order a regular iced coffee, but then the girl was offering me a free maple latte (or macchiato, which I had to ask what the hell it was since I am not hip on the Starbucks lingo) to try and if I didn't like it I wouldn't have to pay for it. And she made it up, handed it to me, asked me to try it and let her know what I thought. She said if I didn't like it she'd make me something else and I didn't have to worry about paying for it. It was yummy so I kept it, and then left her a couple of bucks for a tip. As I was working on my translation I heard her comp a few other customer their drinks as well. I figure it's got to be some kind of marketing ploy, like YouWho wrote about recently. But you know what, I think it works because I know where I'll be next Tuesday afternoon.