Halloween's Almost Here!

Blech! Spider web to the face. Gross, and completely appropriate for Halloween. Thin, sticky threads are matted in my eyebrows. The now-homeless spider had better not be nearby.

A centaur gallops up to my door before I can clean myself up and get inside.

"Trick-or-Treat!"

"Sorry kid, I don't do candy."

"But I said 'Trick-or-Treat.' That means you have to give me something."

"No it doesn't. There's no Halloween contract I signed. No law makes me. Go away now."

"Okay. But if you don't give me a treat then I get to play a trick on you."

Damn. The kid knows the history. A few years ago I wouldn't have expected it, but now that there's Wikipedia I guess I should know better.

"Good luck with that, little guy," I tell him as I slip through the door and close it in his face. I'll just have to be prepared for an egg in the mailbox or some t.p. in the morning. But I don't want to deal with anyone anymore tonight.

I'm so tired that I can barely stumble into bed before falling asleep.

Man, this morning I feel icky. All sticky and cotton-mouthed. I can hardly move. WTF? It's like I've woken up in a Kafka story to find myself in a giant spider web.

That little brat!




This is another product of Word Whips. I don't know how they have prompts that almost always work for me and almost no one else does.

An Opinion vs. an Argument

I've had a few conversations with various people recently where we have differences of opinion and I can't decide if we're actually arguing or just have different views. I used to be a very argumentative person and have worked to change that and mellow out, but how do I balance that with expressing that I have the right to disagree?

The second challenge for me has been that after these conversations I'll find out that he person I was talking to used incorrect evidence to make a point or I'll remember something to support one of my points that wasn't believed. I've just been letting it go, but it's frustrating because I want to say, "See, I  am perfectly justified in having this opinion. I'm not saying you're wrong, but you don't get to say I'm wrong either." I need to find a non-argumentative way to follow up on previous conversations. Or to not care about what other people think.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

One of my previous posts was "how does your family do turkey" and at the time my family doing turkey was having a friend prepare it. But since then, I've actually cooked a couple of darn good turkeys. So I can proudly say that I cook my own birds now, thank you very much. Remember, there's no point in being intimidated by something you might want to try.

Old people can be cool

A little while ago we went on a tour of Vancouver because it was advertised as a free community bus tour with stories about the city. Everyone else on the tour was at least a decade older than us. At first I felt silly, but watching all these older people actually talk to each other and introduce themselves to us made me feel like actually young people should be more open and outgoing.

Then a few nights later we went to hear a co-worker's dad's band play at the local Legion. As soon as the set began a group of middle-aged and older people started dancing. They were so unselfconsious and obviously enjoying themselves that it made me think again that maybe my generation has really missed out on something by being so unfriendly.

But then someone pointed out that maybe these guys were like us when they were young and they've just gotten less self-conscious with age. I hope so because otherwise we have a lonely future to look forward to.