Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

It was unseasonably warm on Halloween* this year. On Saturday, November 1, Ben raked leaves and I spent some peaceful time lying in one of the piles before we shoved them into bags. The sun was extraordinarily bright, as you can see from my squinty eyes in this photo.

Then we had beautiful fall weather for a couple days, and a cold front came in with some rain. It snowed in the mountains, and then last night the rain turned to snow here in Utah Valley. I woke up on the Day After Obama Won to see a soft blanket of snow, only an inch or so, covering the yard. It was really beautiful. It mostly melted by the afternoon, but not before Ben took this sweet photo of a wilting, snow-covered jack-o-lantern on our front porch.

*Oh yeah, Halloween. I Twitter my thoughts but then sometimes forget to expand those thoughts into blog posts. Some friends came over and we ate chili (Ben made an amazing Beer Chili that I have demanded he make again soon) in pumpkin-looking bread bowls and drank hot mulled apple cider (that was spiked with rum for a few of us). Tons of kids came to the door, so it’s a good thing that our friends brought extra candy.

Our friends’ 13-year-old daughter came over dressed in all black with a black cloak, a faceless hood, and a plastic scythe. She stood very still in a semi-dark area next the the path up to our house and scared the BEJESUS out of some people (with our blessing, of course). The girl has patience.

Most people walked up and declared bravely to their friends that she was just a life-size lawn ornament. Then, after they got their candy and were walking away from the house, she would suddently pop out at them either silently or with a little roar. It was especially awesome to see it happen to the cocky kids who came up to the door and couldn’t even be bothered to say trick-or-treat. When little kids were there, she just turned her head in their direction, though most didn’t notice. Some walked away just a little bit faster.

After the last of the Aren’t You a Little Old For This trick-or-treaters straggled by, we watched Brothers Grimm. The younger kids stayed upstairs for a Tiny Toons marathon.

Overall, it was a fun Halloween shared with friends. The only crappy thing happened when our friends were leaving… their three kids had each carved a pumpkin and brought them over to help decorate our front porch. Some assholes kicked them off the porch while we were watching the movie. Two had their faces smashed in, but one survived… and that’s the one in the photo above.

A couple neighbors also had their jack-o-lanterns kicked off their porches, and they of course don’t think it could have been anyone in our neighborhood. Riiiiiiiiiiight. But I don’t care where the assholes came from, I just know that it was really horrible to have to watch the kids’ faces fall when they saw what had happened. Anger would have been my only reaction had they been my carved pumpkins that were kicked off, but seeing those kids’ faces and not having an answer for them was the worst. So I guess next year, the jack-o-lanterns are coming inside when the porch light goes off.