Happy Samhain!

The wheel turns, the wheel burns, and it is Samhain again, the time when the veil between the worlds is thinnest and anything is possible during the New Year....


Above is my contribution to the Pumpkin Patch this year... He's gonna go out on the porch 'round about 6ish, 7ish...whenever.
I'm being 'loose' this year. We are having people over-almost as an afterthought. I decided I wanted to make soda bread and Irish Beef Stew (with Guinness!), and TRex&J2 were at loose ends, so they were invited to dinner, and J is at loose ends, so he's invited to dinner...
Sic-un is currently taking a nap and I've been cooking.
Bread, then stew. And the stew is simmering.
The house is clean.
Laundry is done.
I'm wearing clean clothes.
The house smells good (stew-YUMYUM)...
I think I'm gonna hit my pipe and kick back a few until people start arriving...If they do. If they don't, no biggie.
Like I said...I'm being 'loose' this year.

Happy Halloween, my loves. Be safe and be smart and have a ton of fun.

All Hallow's aftermath and November.

...or shall I say NaNoWriMo? I'm trying it again this year. Failed first attempt in 2005? 2004? Something like. I was still with Idiot and trying hard to not lose my mind. I'm all together this year, so perhaps that will make the difference.

So how did I do today? Seeing how it IS the first of Nov, and the day after Halloween and I was incredibly busy today, I'm very impressed with myself. I may still write more if I get bit again by it, but right now I'm sitting pretty at 1718 words reported, 2811 done (I reported, then had to get out a bit more), and 2 chapters kicked out. What's it about? Well, see, that's the hard part...
I don't have an outline.
Well, I don't. I started an outline. I did. I was going to introduce the world to the people that live in my head: Marge and Harvey, The Clerk, all of them. I had it outlined...
And then I remembered a dream I had a bit ago and it wasn't a pleasant dream. It was rather dark and rather scary, and unfinished...The bladder woke me up before I was done with the dream. Best analogy would be 'rape fantasy', but it's not. It was a dream, an unpleasant dream (to say the least) and no... There was no enjoyment out of it. But there is a story there. And since it saw fit to bite me hard enough to make me discard an outline and characters pre-made? I'll run with it and see where I end up.
I just hope I can be....ruthless? It'll work. Ruthless enough to write 50K on the subject.  I will be posting excerpts when I get some chunks under my belt. I will say it's rough. ROUGHrough. One of the things that got me last time was the on-the-fly editing. That's not happening with this one. I will spell-check, and I am going back through every 20 minutes or so and re-reading. Re-working bits to make them work the way they're being written in my head as opposed to how my fingers are typing it. In some cases, surprisingly enough, I'm keeping the way my fingers are typing instead of what's in my head...that doesn't usually happen.
Usually, I write as if I were reading a book. It's flowing better with this one, and going in without a plan, with only the barest hints of a plot from a 1/2 remembered dream... I really have no expectations. I'm seeing if I can do it, that's all.

KE posted recently about not writing. And not writing scares me. So. NaNoWriMo.
***
All Hallow's was... Vaguely depressing. I ended up going to 2 haunted houses... The first was at Cherokee Caverns, a cave system very close to us. Sic-un didn't want to go, Sos-u did. It was fun, got some good ideas for my non-existent haunted house and since all proceeds went to the Caverns (main/only fund raiser of the year and it's completely volunteer run), it was a good cause.
The second was Saturday night, at Sos-u's school. It was actually better than the Cavern, but I'm still going to pick it apart. Yes, it sounds cheesy and it was a good HH, but still... I wasn't scared. I was actually laughing through it. It doesn't really work if people keep asking you 'Are you scared?' as they're trying to scare you. And it didn't help that the (I think cheerleading team) was dressed as 'nurses' and were supposed to read a script as you went through. None of them could project one iota, at least as far as I could see. The script was pretty good, patter about how the high school used to be a mental institution, and it was a good setting for it. The school appears to be from the 40's or so, perhaps as early as the 20's, but I'm not sure on that. It's solid, institutional... A good setting. Good idea, OK execution, needs some work.
Sos-u was in full makeup, called Sic-un daddy-o which was cute.
I carved yesterday, made up the last of the pumpkin from 2009 into a fluffy pie. Here's the lantern....

And here's the pie....

I kinda figured out why my pumpkin pie is fluffier, especially in mouth-feel, than anything my mom has turned out. It's all in the order of ingredients. She uses the Libby recipe, I use the Libby recipe. She uses homemade puree, so do I. Slightly different spices (I add more ginger, some allspice, and more cinnamon than the recipe calls for), but spice won't affect texture this way. So I paid attention this time.
I discovered I don't like the way the recipe is put together. They want you to stir the sugar and spices together in a separate bowl, then in your big bowl, beat eggs lightly, add pumpkin and spice/sugar mix, then evap milk.
Result? Tight, dense pumpkin pie.
Sugar, although a DRY ingredient, tends to act like a liquid. It is hydroscopic, will dissolve rapidly, and although you have tiny little grains, doesn't hold shape in any discernible manner. Eggs, although a wet ingredient, are indeed a fat and an emulsifier. Evap milk? Fat. Pumpkin puree? It's wet. SO. Seeing as how the only DRY ingredients are the spices, why would you mix those and sugar together then lump everything?
I whip my eggs until they are light yellow and ribbony, then add the sugar to whip it up. Get it fluffy. Stream in the evap milk, which gets fluffy too. Then the spices so they're evenly distributed, then the pumpkin puree. Pour it out, cook it up.
Fluffy pumpkin pie is worth the change in the order.
According to my Joy of Cooking, you can even whip evap milk and sugar into something like whipped cream. So it makes sense to whip it all first to fluffy. Oh, and I added a teaspoon or so of vanilla. It counterpoints the spice and pumpkin and warms everything up in a MOST interesting manner. The vanilla is added with the pumpkin.
***
And since it is now November 2, I have to go to work in a few hours. Enjoy your day, Dear Reader!

And once again...

I check in feeling like utter crap. Haven't started on the booze yet. Nor juice...But I have started decongestants and vitamins and we'll see how that goes for right now.

So what happened? I last checked in starting a headcold on 9-14. I can honestly say I didn't feel even moderately okay until around the first of October. Then my period hit... Not bad, but not really enjoyable. It was like getting hit in the lower abdomen repeatedly for about 1/2 a day, then... I wish they could all be that easy. I did have some trepidation this month. Last year, on 10-2, I started the Period From Hell. It lasted one full month, and it was heavy. I suffered no ill effects, apparently, but I still worried Mom Nature might get perverse and whammy me again.

Thank biology, didn't happen. Instead, I could look forward to the next weekend.  I had a really great weekend filled with going out and being social animals and just simply all sorts of sex (I got a new toy and had a willing partner to try it out with), some evidence of which still exists on my body.  Give someone carte blanche and they leave a pale yellowing bruise about 1/2 an inch across.  I love being me sometimes!

I have made a friend in the Alternate Dimension. And she's alternate, really. But in a cool way. Although she is cute and has red hair, there is no sexual attraction. I find myself wanting her as a friend. And my Japanese shark... She has found much happiness and I wish her much, much more. She is actually the reason for the newfound social activity. And yeah... Alternate Dimension bled over into my reality, my own time off... Work buddies? Hell...My bosses were there.

And I got drunk.
Kinda sorta really drunk, but not puke-y drunk...Weave-y happy drunk.
Drunk enough to get a rug burn (light!) on my knee and know how I got it there. It's really very simple. At the time it happened, it was easier to crawl into the bedroom instead of walking. Walking was a little... Off. Crawling? Piece of cake!
None of which was public. Public, I got hit on by my direct boss' date for the evening. Wasn't in the mood for a good ol' boy. He was the 1/2 drunk, wham-bam-thankyou-ma'am, gets grope-y and just....Boozy-type... Ew. No thank you. We were celebrating the upcoming LUMP-hood of a friend and her man. It was worth celebrating. I did have a designated driver. Sos-u was up, so he drove home.
Boy can't drive stick worth shit.
No hangover the next morning.

Now I have one more week of work to get through (as of 8 minutes ago, it was 115 1/2 hours). Then I have a miraculous 10 days off. Saturday the 23rd through Monday November 1... Yeah, through. I'm taking off the day after the most important holiday of the year (to me. TO ME).

Which begs the question...

What to do for the pumpkin this year?
I really don't have anything in mind. Really. Well, there was the possibility of doing a tattoo machine on it. But that's not Halloween.
SO.
What to do for the pumpkin... I don't know what size I'll get (I want pumpkin for at least 1 pie and some bread!), and think I wanna go somewhat traditional, but maybe not if the design is nifty enough.
Anyone have ideas?
For your viewing pleasure....

Halloween for....2007? 2008? One of them, I think.

All Hallow's....

Ahhh.... the smell of fal...
Well, out here, it's not so much fall as it is wet leaves. It is raining again, and the leaves (those that have fallen) are soaking already. Mmmm. Mold.
***
I ended up carving a lantern. I almost didn't, but then changed my mind last minute and managed to find a perfectly sized and shaped pumpkin, with only 1 small ground-side spot.
I decided to go the traditional route, and free-handed a face...

With Flash

Without Flash

It's a happy face, methinks, and I'm glad I ended up carving it.
***
We have had only 1 beggar of sweets. I'm not surprised, it is the buckle of the Bible-Belt after all, but the next kid that knocks on my door is getting a fistful of Hershey's, no questions asked. I don't care if that kid is 40.
Otherwise it'll just sit and sit and sit unless I do something with it. As an aside, I have found you can make a pretty damn good cup of hot choco by melting 5-9 of the mini bars o'chocolate goodness in a double boiler and mixing milk in very slowly, by small amounts.
*+*+*+
All of the churches that I drive by on the way to work have things like 'Join us for our Trunk or Treat!' instead of trick or treat. I have to admit I'm curious as to what 'trunking' is, but I'm still pissed they're usurping one of the longest-running widely celebrated holidays in the world. It's almost as bad as the church-sponsored haunted houses. Instead of ghouls and ghosts jumping out at you, they show you the (insert sarcasm, folks!) really scary things like the junkie in the corner and the hugely pregnant 10 year old getting a 3rd trimester abortion (last I checked, illegal in TN, except to save the life of the mom and even then that's a bit dicey to prove)... You know, the 'sin' stuff.
I say every community has unwanted pregnancies and junkies and they have all had them since time immemorial. You can't tell me Zog and Brod and Ralm sitting around the fire in the Lower Paleolithic didn't share ganja. You know they did... They depended on plants for their lives, they'd know the properties and drugs inherent in each one. I mean, c'mon... We have cannibinoid receptors in our fucking brains. You also can't tell me they didn't fuck like bunnies every chance they got. Sex is not new and this generation did not invent it, damnit! I'm also pretty sure Ms. Paleo didn't want to be pregnant all the time.
I just wish those who believe in their religions would practice tolerance of others and let us have our holidays, you know?
*+*+*+
I only know about the single costumed one because Sic-un told me. I was at work all evening. All evening? Hell, all day.
They have split up my days off. I now no longer get a 'weekend'. I don't, apparently, deserve a 'weekend'. But because I still get 2 days off a week (Friday and Sunday. How's that for a slap?), I really have no recourse.
Rumor says merit raises have also been suspended, indefinitely, due to the current economic crisis.
I have a shit schedule (hours are great, days off suck), and I have no hope of getting paid more as any kind of recompense. Why complain, you say. Why not do something about it, you say.
The answer is known, but I don't want to look for another job. I won't throw away 7 1/2 years with my employer just because I get a shit schedule. I've had worse. I remember 3 ten-hour days paired with 2 days of 5 hours each and separated days off. I just wish all that loyalty on my part was worth something on their part.
***
I still wanna win the lottery.

Merry Samhain, folks. I hope yours is happy. Pumpkin gets blown out and brought inside (if it is indeed still lit....yeah, it is) at midnight.