Back to ramblin' on.

We've been working, in a desultory fashion, on getting ready for Hallowe'en. I got a large pumpkin and cup off the BOTTOM and carved long triangular cutouts for a lantern effect. It looks OK, but nowhere near as wonderful as the magazine example. Oh, well. Down the street has a spider cut into their jack-o-lantern. Gorgeous. It's times like these I really miss Bernadette! She was in charge of Jack-o-lanterns the last 8 years she was home. Before that, the big kids did their thing, and I haven't been loose with a butcher knife and a pumpkin in a very long time. Or even a pumpkin carver, which DOES work better, and the innocent squash.

At least it yielded cooked pumpkin and pumpkin seeds.

One thing I did RIGHT, though, was hang all the icky skeletons and yarn ghosts from the snag in front, a Hallowe'en tree, and it looks terrific. Our neighbors have put out orange lights with green skeleton lights, too.

The palm is dropping some of its tiny dates, but I can look up and see there's a cornucopia yet to come. It might be different if these things were worth eating. I understand the natives did, but they didn't have brand-new superstores to provide their nutritional needs, and these dates are 90% seed with a thin layer of fruit around it. They may be part of the attraction for the neighborhood squirrels. Rich has taken to shooting seeds at them (the squirrels, not the dates, geeze!) with his slingshot. This is hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to hurt. We just don't want to encourage them. I was at a downtown park on Wednesday and went to scare one of the squirrels. Fat and sassy, he just stared at me. So then I knelt down like I had food, and the squirrel would have come right up to my hand if I'd stayed there. Bubonic plague, rabies, I don't care how cute they are.

I was down at that park to sort books for the sale in May, which I'll miss (*). I worked my way through 8 or so cases of books. It's a good start. I found one book, a Dorothy Dunnett, that was 1998, and apparently hadn't been discarded by the library. I pointed it out to our "boss" and he said to put it in a box, if they did it, their stupidity. It dawns on me that perhaps some person donated books and accidently included a library book, and will get dunned for it. Or they didn't check it back in and someone will get clobbered for it. I should have, I now think of it, walked it over to the local branch and shoved it in the slot. Oh, well.
I was talking to one woman, who told me about a So'th'n friend of hers who was teaching her about the South. "If they say 'you come by to see me real soon now' they don't mean it." As I left, I mentioned I wouldn't be in next week due to recovering from the election. She said, with a hint of a sneer, I swear, "I assume you're a Democrat." Any of you who have read anything I've written lately knows the answer to that. I was bemused. "What makes you say that?" "Oh," she said, "You just seem so relaxed..." So I set her straight and went out to harass squirrels.

There's a tuxedo cat from somewhere in the neighborhood who likes to visit and let me pet him. And pet him. And pet him. His tuxedo is a little rumpled... he has the odd white hair in his coat and a definite smudge on his nose. Nice cat. He may be here for the squirrels, but he's definitely staked out some porch territory as his.

Look at the nice pictures!

I sent Al's present to the wrong address, but he did get it.

It turns out Vince has alternate Thanksgiving plans this year, as well. He's going to Indiana with three of his college/Seattle friends.

Monica says she had a good time in New York and New England. She got to see turning leaves and learn ALL about the Revolution, and toured Nantucket (like Mendocino only 10 years older, she says.)

My niece did the Irish marathon in 5 hours and 44 minutes. Good for her!

And I heard from Rich's oldest nephew, and his parents are envious of the "Yarnot" logo. I told him, they're entitled, they can use it!

My foster-sis/cousin now has her 2-yr-old grandson staying with her. He calls her "Nana", so it's nice the tradition continues.

Yesterday the cows came a-calling, or at least the cow boxes. Rich was, understandably, thrilled, and put up his new system immediately. But there's one major difficulty with it. The IE4 won't talk to my ISP shell account. It goes into the Unix account, but not into the browser. Rich doesn't handle computer frustration any better than I do. We both are considering a torchlight march to Seattle, at this point. May the Department of Justice slam him into itty-bitty pieces. Windows 98 just shuts Rich down rather than being helpful.
Meanwhile, I discovered that another used computer store moved in where Byte Brokers used to be. I dropped in to see if there was a laptop for me, and found exactly what I want. It's not exactly a computer, it's a word processor with modem (2400 bd), but that's good enough. Except, of course, that the AC adaptor he gave me was the modem power cord, and the Brother doesn't work with it. I'll be back tomorrow getting the rest of it, but I'm just delighted. It's also not so expensive that if it's stolen, God forbid, I will be devastated. It's even got a game with it.
Meanwhile again, the scanner is just totally not working. Argh. I'm beginning to think it just crumped, right when I got the new system, but the timing was coincidental.

* Little thing like Bernadette graduating. For some reason, she thinks this is more important than a booksale.
THANKS, Melody!