Halloween Totals

The information you've all been waiting for . . . no it's not election returns, but Robin and Richard's Halloween Totals!

Number of Trick or Treaters: 153.
We were down significantly from last year, but we still had a good turn out. Because I was expecting 250 kids, the ones that did show up got A LOT of candy.

Best Costume: Forrest Gump (the little kid even talked like Forrest and his trick or treat bag had a box of chocolates on top.) Richard's vote goes to the Pink Flamingo, which was not supposed to be scary, but for some reason it scared the crap out of me. Chalk up another phobia. He also liked the firefighters in reflective gear (for the obvious safety reasons).

Kids talking on Cell Phones: 1 (although he paused his conversation long enough to trick or treat, and was very polite while trick or treating.)

Obnoxious Teenagers: 0 (what's the world coming to? They were all way polite. Maybe The Host by Stephanie Meyers is a true story).

Pieces of Candy Bought: 1600

Decorations the kids liked: I was worried about the placement of my giant spider because he was pretty spooky where he ended up and I was afraid he would scare the little kids walking past him as he is about the size of a small child. I got a lot of delighted "Look mommy, it's a spider!" responses instead. The string of eyeballs hanging from a tree was also popular. One little princess was absolutely captivated by the severed arm hanging in the spider web.

The biggest attraction of our house I think is that although we have a lot of scary decorations, we don't go out of our way to scare people or jump out at them. I prefer subtle terror to overt scare tactics any day. Halloween, at its core is about facing our fears and reaping the rewards after all. It's a lot easier to face those fears in a place where you feel trepidation but comfort at the same time. I think the pint-sized lady bugs, spidermen and firefighters would tend to agree.

Can I go to work with you?

Libby is hiding out in the lunch box waiting for Richard and hoping he'll take her to work, getting her away from the other oppressive cats.

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween time again! We've got the decorations up and we've added some floodlights this year to highlight some of our spooky areas. I also made some really spooky sound effects on my Mac. We're hoping for a good turn out this year despite the fact that the neighbors have scaled back on their decorations. We really need a good turn out as Richard can no longer consume whole bags of the Halloween candy. Speaking of Richard, here's a photo:

Hehe. Just kidding. He hasn't actually lost that much weight. Here's a new skull we bought to add to our decorations. Thanks to mom for talking the people at the Railroad Museum into shipping some new hats :-)

I'll send some updates on Trick Or Treat totals.

An evening with Nanci Griffith

I had a great concert experience last Saturday evening. Richard very thoughtfully bought tickets to see Nanci Griffith at a new venue they are trying to set up called Arrington Vineyards. Arrington Vineyards is a local winery founded by Kix Brooks (of Brooks and Dunn, a fairly popular country duo). The winery has free jazz concerts and wine tastings every weekend, but this was their first real concert. It was a very nice evening for it, nice full moon and fairly warm for this time of year. Nanci was as amazing as ever. She seemed to really enjoy the small venue. It was very cozy. I basically could sit as close to the stage as I wanted, which was very cool.

The other cool thing is that Kix Brooks himself kindly chauffered me to the top of the hill on one of the little people moving carts. We had a pleasant chat about the concert and the winery. How's that for service?