Micronometer Monday

micronometer ~ instrument for measuring short periods of time

Everyone survive both Halloween and the time change? Although frankly, of the two, I find Halloween much easier to deal with, despite the weather.

I hate the time change, I don’t care which way the clock goes. I’ve heard a rumour though that there’s a movement to do away with the twice a year annoyance. It serves no real purpose and studies show it does more harm than good. I’m crossing my fingers that the legislation passes and turning the clocks becomes a thing of the past.

We had a very rainy All Hallow’s Eve, and I started out feeling bad for the trick-or-treaters but we ended up having more kids show up than ever before. A normal Halloween for us is no more than 10 kids, this year we had 30!

And because it was raining and I wasn’t expecting many kids, I was rather generous with the treats, which meant I had little in the way of leftovers to indulge in afterwards. But that’s what the November 1st candy sales are for. LOL

But it wasn’t just candy that was on sale, decorations were on sale too. The wind that followed the rain pretty much shredded my dollar store ghost that was hanging from the tree in the front yard, but for three dollars I replaced him with a skeleton dressed in rags whose eyes light up. I also got a set of eyes to have glowing from a window, and a witch that cackles wickedly. I’m all set for Halloween 2020.

My ghost wasn’t the only thing the wind shredded. Our next door neighbour lost the willow tree in their back yard. The thing pulled right up by its roots. This was not a small tree, but the damage it caused was minimal – a Halloween miracle. And it was also a miracle that the wind was coming from the west. Had it come from the east the tree would have fallen in the other direction and taken out our brand new fence.

November 1 means the beginning of NaNo – National Novel Writing Month – where I attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I’m only about 5,000 words behind so far. Am I worried? Not really. This is kind of a typical pattern with me. Fall behind, catch up, fall behind, catch up, panic write at the very end to win.

It also means that the blog posts this month might be a little sparse. ‘Cause, it’s NaNo time, and I’m already behind. :-)

Megacerine Monday

megacerine ~ extinct giant deer

If I were to describe last week with one word, that word would be eventful.

To begin with, the daughter had her furnace serviced and suddenly it was no longer working. Seems like too much of a coincidence for it to have happened at that precise time of its own volition, but there’s no way of proving it was the service guy’s fault. At any rate, it was a tad chilly over there the rest of the week. They’re getting a new one installed today and in the meantime the grandbaby enjoyed family time in front of the fireplace.

Tuesday night, of course, was Halloween. One of the jobs I usually dread is having to carve the jack o’lantern. Scooping the pumpkin out is messy and my knives are inadequate for any kind of fine work. But this year the daughter bought a pumpkin carving kit and I could not believe the difference it made!

Despite my awesome pumpkin we didn’t have a lot of trick or treaters, but then we never do. Our neighborhood is kind of tucked out of the way and it’s really dark, thanks to the energy saving street lights. Of course my favorite trick or treater was the grandbaby.

Is she not the cutest little bunny ever? And that would be her pirate Grappy she’s hugging. She’s convinced he’s Captain Feathersword from the Wiggles Show, so it was to be expected that she insisted he dress up like a pirate. Actually, she was very firm on what costumes everyone should be wearing: Grappy was a pirate, Grammy was a witch, mommy was a librarian (and yes, she can pronounce the word properly), and daddy was a skeleton.

And of course at the stroke of midnight on Halloween, thousands of writers all over the world began typing madly as National Novel Writing Month began. The idea is to write 50,000 words during the 30 days of November. If you’d like to learn more about it, check it out HERE. So far I’m on track, but you never know what the week ahead will bring.

Friday the daughter took the day off work and we took a road trip with the grandbaby up to Stoney Creek to visit our Aunt Jennie. It’s been too long since we’ve seen her - a good visit but over too soon. Unfortunately even though we left early we still ran into traffic and the two hour drive home turned into more than three hours.

The office still isn’t finished, but it’s getting there, although you wouldn’t know it to look at it, there’s stuff all over the place. But I did manage to empty several boxes and I’m slowly filling the drawers.

This week’s job in the office will be going through the boxes of files and deciding which ones I want to keep in the desk drawers to have them close at hand, which ones will go in the filing cabinet, and which ones will go into storage boxes in the closet. Decisions, decisions.

So... what’s ahead for you this week?