I used to blame my childhood memory of having my candies jacked (oops--hanging with adolescents clearly has vocabulary implications) by some older kid when I was 9 and then having that kid pull a knife on me when I chased him.
Really, though, that wasn't it. It was more the craziness that we moved into in our current neighborhood 15 years ago. For the first few years it was always "150+ kids at our door, pipe bomb blew up the kiosk where we all pick up our mail, stupid kids next door keeping mine awake for a couple weeks with screechers and firecrackers every night..."
Now it's way more relaxed. My better half actually was arguing that we should just take each kid to their planned celebratory location, turn off the outside lights, and bugger off somewhere ourselves. That used to always be me.
Now I'm the one who wants to be sure someone's here handing out candy--at least until the 17 year olds in garbage bags with holes for their arms start showing up at 9:00 p.m.
In sort of related things, I had a visit around lunchtime from a grad of '06--there were supposed to be two of them and we were going to reprise/update my favorite halloween photo from about five years ago when they made me up as a zombie.
The one who did come still wanted to do it, and after she finished making me rather undead, we did a few photos.
While looking for a video of a play she was in, I ran across the montage video of embarassing clips from the past I made for her grad class. We debated the wisdom of my posting it on facebook; there's one friend whose gender feelings and changes might make that old video particularly unwelcome, but maybe an edited version?
Watching it brought back some memories. Made me think of a quote someone passed along--I think it was from Camus? "Nothing thwarts happiness like the memory of happiness". If you knew the back story that would make sense.
Then I had to go see my daughter and the rest of the junior band kids play for the olympic torch gathering. You see, the torch was lit in Greece, then flown here to be relayed throughout this area, across the province and then around the country. Doesn't really make sense--shouldn't they have started on the east coast and worked their way across to Vancouver? I guess the hype begins and ends out here.
The weather was nicer than expected, and I walked to the park a few blocks from the school. Thing is, I was still decked out as a zombie--just added my glasses. I got a few funny looks, but there were others in olympics-related costumes, plus they'd been expecting protesters anyway, so maybe it wasn't all that strange, considering it was the day before halloween.
I caught one parent photographing me from a distance; she's someone I know though. It was funny as various band kids spotted me and then figured out who I was. A couple of grads from last year came by as well--after one's mom took our photo I asked her to take one on my camera as well:
On our way back, my daughter and I encountered the torch relay. Man--what a lot of cops from various police forces were on duty riding by on motorbikes and in various vehicles--I'm sure I saw over a hundred. All for a silly publicity gimmick.
Anyway, this rambling is good practice for Nanowrimo. I'm still scrambling for a decent novel idea, but I'm thinking of taking another shot this year. The person who got me started on this a few years ago told me she's trying again this year, and if she can do it while fulfilling her college work obligations, surely I might pull it off. (I'm one for three on this, but the last time I really didn't give it an honest try.)
If you've got any last minute suggestions for my novel direction, let me know. If you're going to take a crack at it yourself, let me know that as well.
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