We survived the looting and pillaging mini-hordes. It took ten bags of candy to do it, but we didn't run out and actually have a few pieces left over for ourselves, like we need them.
Earlier in the day I came home to find my brother upset because he'd decided to frost the skeleton cakes with a glaze, apparently not realizing just how runny that would be (why not I don't know, it's not like he's never seen a glazed cake before), and ended up with two skulls that looked as if they'd been used for candle holders with wax dripping all down the sides. I liked the effect, but he didn't.
Later, he tried making a "fire" pit using colored streamers blown upward by a fan but, after a couple of hours constructing the thing, the fan he had wasn't strong enough to move anything so he went out but couldn't find a single window fan at WalMart (!) and finally purchased one at Lowe's which didn't have enough power, either, so the whole project went south. He took it surprisingly well, which is not his normal M.O.
The actual bribing of the monsters started a little late and slow this year but picked up after 8 p.m. and eventually ran long. I especially enjoyed the tiny three-year-old Batman and also the slightly older Batman who, being a little unclear on the concept, upon hearing us yell, "Hey, there's Batman!" lifted his mask and insisted, "No! It's me!" Never seen him before. We had a pair of moving sound-activated ghosts suspended from wires that crisscrossed the driveway moaning and cackling. Some kids were freaked out but the ones I liked were the kids who were so fascinated that they forget all about asking for treats and just stared transfixed as the ghosts floated by overhead.
The police stopped by at the height of the festivities and we were worried either the cars parked up and down the median strip of the main road were causing a hazard or the neighborhood curmudgeon had complained. (He's filed formal complaints at one time or another against every single property owner adjacent to him and a couple of others that aren't.) It turned out to be just a routine patrol and we all carried on.
The weirdest thing I saw all night though were pick-up trucks with flatbed trailers (the kind lawn care companies use to transport mowers) kitted out with chairs and even a porch swing all filled with kids cruising through looking for likely neighborhoods to loot. Apparently, those trailers are a thing down here.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
From Each According to His Abilities . . .
My brother demonstrated, again, why I end up doing most of the cooking around here.
He decided he wanted another skull cake to take to work and made red satin cake batter from a mix while I was out. I came back to find the skull halves in pieces. We debated all the things that could have gone wrong, from not being cooked through to trying to get them out of the molds before they were completely cooled down, when he suddenly remembered, while looking at the instructions on the next box before trying again, that he had neglected to add any eggs the first go around.
He's outside today setting up and inflating the Hallowe'en balloons (which is his métier) despite a continuing low-grade variable wind. There's just nothing else to do if we are to have any decorations at all. It should be O.K. for 24 hours despite Frankenstein's Monster's stakes being pulled from the ground by the wind over the weekend . . . and that was while it was still just a misshapen lump on the ground.
Neighbor Dan was out there, too, and very upset. His balloons have been lying around out in the weather so long that several of them have developed rips and tears and won't blow up. We had a leakage problem with the giant black cat last year and found Duct tape an excellent bandage.
The tombstones are in. The four new apparitions will stay in the living room until the last minute and then join us in the driveway when the first little monsters arrive.
As we've both been reasonably good about not eating the candy ourselves, there should be enough to go around. This year.
He decided he wanted another skull cake to take to work and made red satin cake batter from a mix while I was out. I came back to find the skull halves in pieces. We debated all the things that could have gone wrong, from not being cooked through to trying to get them out of the molds before they were completely cooled down, when he suddenly remembered, while looking at the instructions on the next box before trying again, that he had neglected to add any eggs the first go around.
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| (Seems like it took forever to find the split seam between the toes on the left front foot.) |
Neighbor Dan was out there, too, and very upset. His balloons have been lying around out in the weather so long that several of them have developed rips and tears and won't blow up. We had a leakage problem with the giant black cat last year and found Duct tape an excellent bandage.
The tombstones are in. The four new apparitions will stay in the living room until the last minute and then join us in the driveway when the first little monsters arrive.
As we've both been reasonably good about not eating the candy ourselves, there should be enough to go around. This year.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Making the Best of a Windy Situation
Even though Sandy missed us by about two hundred miles, it's big enough that the backside winds have been blowing steadily for the past four days. And, while they're from the north and dry thus giving us high clear skies and temperate days, they're also strong enough to prevent my brother from putting out any more inflatable Hallowe'en decorations or blowing up the ones that are already on the lawn.
Neighbor Dan has been unable to raise his legions either and his have been staked out since the first of the month which means the grass all around them is now almost two feet tall and what's under them is probably dead.
My brother has been receiving more Hallowe'en stuff than I knew about. There are now four life-size ethereal figures looming around the living room. Three females and one male, all close to six feet tall, with livid hands and faces and draped in linen and gauze. They can't go outside, either, until the calm returns.
We did get to make use of one of his new purchases: a skull shaped (two halves, front and back) cake pan. He brought it out last night and we made up a double batch of pound cake* batter because the skull cavities looked a lot larger than they turned out to be so, after baking, we ended up excising a lot more of the material between the two halves than we had intended in order to get them to fit together properly the result being we have most of a pound cake, in two pieces, left over which is
actually a nice problem to have.
While the width of the skull cake is almost right, especially given the extremely pronounced zygomatics, the parietal is truncated giving it something of a bullet shape when viewed from the side. It remains, nevertheless, delicious.
My brother found some black food coloring when he went out late last night for additional baking supplies, so I am leaving the skull decorating to him.
* Is a double batch of pound cake a kilo cake? Sorry.
Neighbor Dan has been unable to raise his legions either and his have been staked out since the first of the month which means the grass all around them is now almost two feet tall and what's under them is probably dead.My brother has been receiving more Hallowe'en stuff than I knew about. There are now four life-size ethereal figures looming around the living room. Three females and one male, all close to six feet tall, with livid hands and faces and draped in linen and gauze. They can't go outside, either, until the calm returns.
We did get to make use of one of his new purchases: a skull shaped (two halves, front and back) cake pan. He brought it out last night and we made up a double batch of pound cake* batter because the skull cavities looked a lot larger than they turned out to be so, after baking, we ended up excising a lot more of the material between the two halves than we had intended in order to get them to fit together properly the result being we have most of a pound cake, in two pieces, left over which is
While the width of the skull cake is almost right, especially given the extremely pronounced zygomatics, the parietal is truncated giving it something of a bullet shape when viewed from the side. It remains, nevertheless, delicious.
My brother found some black food coloring when he went out late last night for additional baking supplies, so I am leaving the skull decorating to him.
* Is a double batch of pound cake a kilo cake? Sorry.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Familiar Faces Standing in the Light at the End of the Tunnel
The county Supervisor of Elections sends out sample ballots to every registered voter a couple of weeks prior to the election so we can all familiarize ourselves with what's up for decision this time around. I received mine yesterday.
The good news is: this means we're very close to the end of our two-year-long civic iron man triathalon. I look forward to the return of the overbearing used-car salesmen, ambulance chasing lawyers, screaming furniture warehouse pitchmen and concernedly sensitive hospice hucksters to our local airwaves. The bad news is: that final hurdle at the finish line.
We've been warned for a while now that this year's ballot would be exceptionally long, thanks to our pusillanimous legislature that decided, rather than actually doing its job and passing laws, to kick the responsibility over to us by creating an even dozen constitutional ballot initiatives and then exempting its initiatives from the legal requirements for brevity and clarity that ones proposed by, say, real concerned citizens are subject to*. Our ballot will be seven pages long**.
The first two pages are for candidates for office, the second page being entirely for the election of various judges which is a stupid concept in the first place and a legacy of Jim Crow but constitutional and just the way they do things down here. Technically, the judges are appointed and these are just retention elections but still.
What fascinated me, though, was the first column on the first page which is devoted entirely to the presidential/vice presidential race. In this state, at least, there are ten different tickets running for those offices. At the top of the list, of course, are Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden (in that order, our governor being Republican thus giving that party top billing). After that, I'm not sure what order these candidates are in. Perhaps by vote total in the previous election? It's certainly not alphabetical by either candidate or party. Speaking of which, the three-letter abbreviations used for the parties are not much help.
The third party listed is "OBJ". Objectivist? After that, I recognize Gary Johnson and the "LBT", or Libertarian. There's Virgil Goode and what I assume from "CPF" is Conservative Party of Florida although it could just as easily be Communist. (O.K. a quick Google search indicates the "C" stands for Constitution. Apologies to all those on the far left and/or right.) "GRE" equals Green and I recognize Jill Stein. I assume "SOC" is Socialist. (And good luck to you, too, in this state.)
I have no idea what the REF, PSL, PFP, AIP, or JPF parties are even though Roseanne Barr (yes, that Roseanne Barr!) and Cindy Sheehan (of camping out in W's front yard fame) are the PFP candidates.
And then, here, at the very bottom of the ballot is a candidate I know personally, who I have met on a number of occasions and spoken to. Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson, former mayor of Salt Lake City, lefty burr under the saddle of the Utah legislature, is the presidential candidate for the JPF and is on the ballot here in Florida.
It is indeed a small, and very strange, world.
*I intend to vote no on all of them. The ones I have been able to read are awful and I have no intention of voting "Yes" on anything I haven't read.
**Some slightly paranoid commentators have opined that the length of the ballot is intentional and designed to discourage voters who may get frustrated at the amount of time needed and the backed up lines and just give up without voting but, as a voter suppression tactic, I don't see how that favors one side over the other. Never ascribe to Evil that which can be explained by Stupidity. For me, it's a moot point since we have early voting starting tomorrow and I intend to get it all over with then.
The good news is: this means we're very close to the end of our two-year-long civic iron man triathalon. I look forward to the return of the overbearing used-car salesmen, ambulance chasing lawyers, screaming furniture warehouse pitchmen and concernedly sensitive hospice hucksters to our local airwaves. The bad news is: that final hurdle at the finish line.
We've been warned for a while now that this year's ballot would be exceptionally long, thanks to our pusillanimous legislature that decided, rather than actually doing its job and passing laws, to kick the responsibility over to us by creating an even dozen constitutional ballot initiatives and then exempting its initiatives from the legal requirements for brevity and clarity that ones proposed by, say, real concerned citizens are subject to*. Our ballot will be seven pages long**.
The first two pages are for candidates for office, the second page being entirely for the election of various judges which is a stupid concept in the first place and a legacy of Jim Crow but constitutional and just the way they do things down here. Technically, the judges are appointed and these are just retention elections but still.
What fascinated me, though, was the first column on the first page which is devoted entirely to the presidential/vice presidential race. In this state, at least, there are ten different tickets running for those offices. At the top of the list, of course, are Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden (in that order, our governor being Republican thus giving that party top billing). After that, I'm not sure what order these candidates are in. Perhaps by vote total in the previous election? It's certainly not alphabetical by either candidate or party. Speaking of which, the three-letter abbreviations used for the parties are not much help.
The third party listed is "OBJ". Objectivist? After that, I recognize Gary Johnson and the "LBT", or Libertarian. There's Virgil Goode and what I assume from "CPF" is Conservative Party of Florida although it could just as easily be Communist. (O.K. a quick Google search indicates the "C" stands for Constitution. Apologies to all those on the far left and/or right.) "GRE" equals Green and I recognize Jill Stein. I assume "SOC" is Socialist. (And good luck to you, too, in this state.)
I have no idea what the REF, PSL, PFP, AIP, or JPF parties are even though Roseanne Barr (yes, that Roseanne Barr!) and Cindy Sheehan (of camping out in W's front yard fame) are the PFP candidates.
And then, here, at the very bottom of the ballot is a candidate I know personally, who I have met on a number of occasions and spoken to. Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson, former mayor of Salt Lake City, lefty burr under the saddle of the Utah legislature, is the presidential candidate for the JPF and is on the ballot here in Florida.
It is indeed a small, and very strange, world.
*I intend to vote no on all of them. The ones I have been able to read are awful and I have no intention of voting "Yes" on anything I haven't read.
**Some slightly paranoid commentators have opined that the length of the ballot is intentional and designed to discourage voters who may get frustrated at the amount of time needed and the backed up lines and just give up without voting but, as a voter suppression tactic, I don't see how that favors one side over the other. Never ascribe to Evil that which can be explained by Stupidity. For me, it's a moot point since we have early voting starting tomorrow and I intend to get it all over with then.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Transitions
A number of seasons are ending and beginning just now.
Rainy Season officially ended at the beginning of the month and I optimistically began leaving my car windows open to avoid the runaway greenhouse effect resulting from parking a sealed up vehicle in the sun. Unfortunately, the actual end-of-season is a bit more raggedy and I've had to bale twice now after leaving the car open at the library. And that doesn't even count my brother very kindly not waking me when he came home late one night as it started to shower and hanging towels all over my open windows. I have no idea why he has so many towels in his truck.
Rainy Season officially ended at the beginning of the month and I optimistically began leaving my car windows open to avoid the runaway greenhouse effect resulting from parking a sealed up vehicle in the sun. Unfortunately, the actual end-of-season is a bit more raggedy and I've had to bale twice now after leaving the car open at the library. And that doesn't even count my brother very kindly not waking me when he came home late one night as it started to shower and hanging towels all over my open windows. I have no idea why he has so many towels in his truck.
Fall is approaching. It is noticeably cooler (although today it's cloudy mostly because of Hurricane Sandy way off the east coast). I watched a tribe of very tiny ants stocking up for the coming "cold" spell. Scores of them were climbing up and down a vine including four triumphantly hoisting a cockroach leg aloft as they negotiated the tendrils. To be more precise, three of them were carrying the leg. The fourth had grabbed it in such a way that it's own legs couldn't reach any surface while they were moving and it just sort of dangled along for the ride not only not helping but actively adding to the burden.
With the weather cooling down, Bartleby has decided to become an outdoor cat again. She spends her time sleeping beneath one or the other of our vehicles or, occasionally, in a lawn chair and comes in only to dine. When we open the door for her she complains loudly at our inattention for not opening it sooner and, as soon as she finishes her meal, she starts yelling at us to let her out again. I am become majordomo to the cat.
With the weather cooling down, Bartleby has decided to become an outdoor cat again. She spends her time sleeping beneath one or the other of our vehicles or, occasionally, in a lawn chair and comes in only to dine. When we open the door for her she complains loudly at our inattention for not opening it sooner and, as soon as she finishes her meal, she starts yelling at us to let her out again. I am become majordomo to the cat.
Also, the zombies have come and gone. It's an annual migration, pretty much confined to the other side of the river.
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Besides, Oktoberfest is here. After a couple of days no one on this side of the river will even notice a few zombies wandering loose.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
End Games: My Face-Palm Moment
In the first book of the Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, there is a scene outside the gate to Moria in which Gandalf sits pondering the riddle written over the door trying to uncover the password that will let his party through. He translates it as "Speak, Friend, and Enter," and becomes increasingly frustrated as his "300-lives-of-men" worth of accumulated wisdom allows him to drag up virtually every secret password known to history all to no avail until it is pointed out to him that the riddle can also be translated as "Say 'Friend,' and Enter."
Face palm.
Boy, have I been over-thinking these puzzles. I solved two of them in short order over the weekend after dialing back a bit. I blame the need to discover an extra step in Puzzle 3 for my assumption of an unnecessary extra step in Puzzle 4. I was looking for the right solution and muddied up the clues which had been presented as straightforward as possible.
Puzzle 5 I rebuilt three or four times and kept fiddling with until I finally noticed, through sheer physically manipulative luck, the final instructions were built into the structure of the puzzle itself. When followed, the puzzle changed shape on its own, without further fiddling, and the answer was written right on it (although that did take a little squinting to see).
Unfortunately, that still leaves me four puzzles to go, the last one being unlocked yesterday. With all of them released, it is now a simple race to see who can deliver the last answer first. I am sure I am so far behind as to be completely out of the running but no announcement has yet been made, so I will keep plugging away.
Face palm.
Boy, have I been over-thinking these puzzles. I solved two of them in short order over the weekend after dialing back a bit. I blame the need to discover an extra step in Puzzle 3 for my assumption of an unnecessary extra step in Puzzle 4. I was looking for the right solution and muddied up the clues which had been presented as straightforward as possible.
Puzzle 5 I rebuilt three or four times and kept fiddling with until I finally noticed, through sheer physically manipulative luck, the final instructions were built into the structure of the puzzle itself. When followed, the puzzle changed shape on its own, without further fiddling, and the answer was written right on it (although that did take a little squinting to see).
Unfortunately, that still leaves me four puzzles to go, the last one being unlocked yesterday. With all of them released, it is now a simple race to see who can deliver the last answer first. I am sure I am so far behind as to be completely out of the running but no announcement has yet been made, so I will keep plugging away.
Friday, October 19, 2012
And Not a Moment Too Soon
The UPS guy delivered four large boxes of body parts this morning.
I didn't know what they were, of course, when they arrived but they were addressed to my brother so I stacked the cartons in front of the door to his room. He took one look at them, smiled, and said, "Ah! Dead people!"
It seems we will be competing with Neighbor Dan in Hallowe'en excess this year after all. Neighbor Dan's blow-up menagerie of goblins, ghoulies and monsters has been spread across his lawn since the beginning of the month. Several of them are new this year. (The main effect, so far, is that Neighbor Dan has been unable to mow for almost three weeks and it shows.) All we've had to show until now are half a dozen balloon-head ghosts swaying around the live oak, and those only went up two days ago.
The contents of my brother's boxes consist of various zombie bits to be used to create a graveyard uprising.
I didn't know what they were, of course, when they arrived but they were addressed to my brother so I stacked the cartons in front of the door to his room. He took one look at them, smiled, and said, "Ah! Dead people!"
It seems we will be competing with Neighbor Dan in Hallowe'en excess this year after all. Neighbor Dan's blow-up menagerie of goblins, ghoulies and monsters has been spread across his lawn since the beginning of the month. Several of them are new this year. (The main effect, so far, is that Neighbor Dan has been unable to mow for almost three weeks and it shows.) All we've had to show until now are half a dozen balloon-head ghosts swaying around the live oak, and those only went up two days ago.
The contents of my brother's boxes consist of various zombie bits to be used to create a graveyard uprising.
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| (What a graveyard uprising might look like.) |
My brother has started laying electric cords in preparation for the implantation of the inflatables. We're already stocked up on candy. I predict by the end of this weekend we will be in full holiday battle mode.
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