For Halloween, enjoy this spooky tree at Madrona Marsh.
Our neighborhood saw a lot more trick-or-treaters tonight than we have in years. By 8:00 kids were walking back to the sidewalk from our door shouting to their friends, “Hey, they still have candy!” It was pure chance that I bought extra this afternoon, and I’m glad I did.
Cool: Michael’s is selling plastic teal pumpkins for people who plan on offering non-food treats for allergic trick or treaters as part of the Teal Pumpkin Project. You can still paint a pumpkin teal, of course, but this simplifies the setup. (Are we really that close to Halloween already?)
I haven’t been to Comikaze Expo since their first year. It’s always been close to Long Beach Comic-Con, and I’d choose Long Beach every time. This year, though, LBCC was in mid-September, and Comikaze was Halloween weekend. And since we missed out on San Diego, it seemed like a good plan for a family comic-con.
Alas, the best laid schemes…
The kiddo and I have both been dealing with a cold all week, and last night’s attempt at trick-or-treating made it clear that going into LA and spending the day at a huge convention wasn’t going to work out too well. With or without cosplay.
But we tossed up a few Halloween decorations, and I managed to spookify one of my shots from our marsh hike a few weeks back, and J. had a chance to wear the Mixed Emotions costume (all the emotions from Inside Out) we’ve been piecing together all month.
Incidentally…yeah, that’s a Christmas display behind him. On Halloween.
Christmas strikes deeper into Halloween’s territory, continuing a relentless campaign that began decades ago in response to a 1993 incursion from Halloween Town.
In recent years, Halloween has shored up its position by moving into previously unclaimed parts of the calendar in early October and September, itself running roughshod over tentative efforts by Oktoberfest to establish a foothold. Growth of adult Halloween parties with free-flowing alcohol have ensured that Oktoberfest can only offer one advantage over Halloween: Lederhosen. And you can wear those on Halloween too.
Late Halloween night, the first rainstorm of the season blew through town. By morning, it had mostly passed over us, but there were enough clouds around to make things look interesting after I dropped off my car for maintenance. With a couple of hours to kill, I walked to downtown Manhattan Beach for breakfast. I kept going all the way to the pier first, and was glad I did — otherwise I would have missed this:
One straggling cloud continued to drop rain on the coast a few miles to the north. A rainbow fragment neatly arced from the cloud down to the El Segundo power plant. (I thought that was kind of ironic.) Continue reading
