Happy Halloween!

I love Halloween. What other day of the year can you be anything you want to be? I'm gonna miss Ekans and #1 sharing the stoop with me to accept the neighborhood ghouls, ghosts, and goblins, though.

We get over a hundred trick-or-treaters, but I'm not sure how many over 100. We typically offered chocolate snack bars of verious kinds, including the kinds WE liked. This year, we're both 10 lbs overweight, so I bought one bag of 300 dum dums. Not something we're interested in eating, dum dum pops are pretty ecologically friendly. The sticks are cardboard, the pops are basically just sugar and corn syrup, and the wrapper is waxed paper. The price is right, as well ($8.00).



Harvested sweet potatoes this week. They grow DOWN, with the largest being at the top of the mound and size receding as I dug deeper. I've been told that other types of potatoes grow UP, but I killed mine this year, so can only assume that's true. I'll definitely grow sweet potatoes again next Spring, starting SEVERAL mounds with plants I've started indoors.



That was a nice treat for Halloween.

Don't let this be YOU.

I wouldn't mind this link going viral at all.

/The Obama Song.

Gay Marriage.

No. 1, Phi Alpha Honor Society, Iota Omega Chapter.

Last night, No. 1 was inducted into the Phi Alpha Honor Society. UTA's campus holds the Iota Omega Chapter. It's specific to students in the Social Work Program. She was allowed two guests, choosing Dave and me. Em was at work.



Her phone rang on the drive over to UTA and it turned out that we were right behind the caller on the road, so followed her to a parking space.



Here she is, along with Dave, before the function, which reminded me much of the Senior Tea at my High School, where we invited our moms to share coffee/tea/snacks at a table with other seniors and their families.

The whole thing lasted only an hour or so with the inductees lining up much like in a graduation ceremony to receive their awards and medals. No. 1 was first.





Group photo op came at the end, but I didn't get worthy pictures.

Congratulations No. 1; I'm very proud of you!

Eleventh Hour.

[removed because I got tired of it playing automatically]

FINALLY!

It got so hot so fast this year that the tomatoes never had a chance to fruit. Spent the whole summer just trying to keep them alive for fall, and we've finally had nights cool enough to set fruit on one.

This week's experiments shouldn't be discussed. Made two loaves of bread (using the in-house oven because I was baking something else outside) and it wasn't until after the bread dough did nothing on first rise that I noticed I hadn't added the sugar and yeast. D'OH! Normally, the yeast is the first ingredient, so my brain on automatic pilot must have assumed it was already in there. So, I beat the yeast/sugar mix into the dough and set it outside to rise again. The loaves didn't do a great rise, and one loaf even burned on the bottom! I've never had that happen before. Scraped off the burnt part and it was a very tasty accompaniment to tuna salad, so good recipe, faulty operator.

Rain today ... another FINALLY! Still haven't gotten the garden plot started, but I'll try to find time for that this week. Just getting around to updating my grocery file ... you know the one ... where you document how much you paid for various foods so you'll know how much food SHOULD cost. I HATE data entry ... I HATE data entry. With the economy tanking, I figure this file is more important now than ever. Bought a few New York strip steaks on sale last week and then sent Em to get more when I realized that the price was the same we paid in 2006. Might not see THAT price for a while.

Movie day today and then tomorrow evening a debate party at the home of someone I've not yet met. Sounds like she wants us to talk about the bill Congress passed recently while we're all together. ????