Woooooooot—it’s Halloween! At long last!
Halloween is particularly fun when it’s on a Friday. My little town “observed” trick-or-treating last night, but I’m going with Dr. Fiancée and my niece and nephews tonight (we’re not dressing up, but the kids are). I’m looking forward to some family time.
How are you celebrating tonight, readers?
With that, here is 31 October 2019’s “Happy Halloween!“:
After my great Halloween fall, I decided I needed to do a proper Halloween post, even if it’s now All Saints’ Days.
Well, I’m sure the saints won’t mind. Maybe Saint Servatius will do me a solid.
Remember Bib Fortuna, Jabba the Hutt’s oily Twi’lek consigliere with the tentacles coming out of his head? Thanks to the power of imagination and LEGOs, you can now roleplay his downfall!
Like any self-respecting man-child, I’d been lusting after set #75326, Boba Fett’s Throne Room, for some time. To me, it’s Jabba the Hutt’s iconic throne room, just without the lovably disgusting, sluggish crime lord.
Unfortunately, this bad boy MSRPs for a whopping $100. Fortunately, my brother found it at Costco in an example of mercantile serendipity—he didn’t even know I wanted it—for $60. Finding any new LEGO set for 40% off is like, well, finding forty bucks on the ground—it doesn’t really happen.
I finally got around to building this bad boy over the weekend, and it was a pretty fun build. It wasn’t as deeply satisfying as some other sets I’ve done, but it also didn’t become tedious. All in all, it was pretty fun to put together, and I love the variety of mini-figures—especially the porcine Gamorrean Guard and the aquatic Quarren.
Ah, friendship. Sometimes it’s all laughs; other times, you’re moving a marble-topped dining room table up three flights of stairs on your day off.
Fortunately, my friends offer so much, and ask so little. This weekend’s trio offer up tunes, stories, and pictures:
I’d move a marble-topped table for any of them, any time.
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
It seems that flattery motivates contributors, at least 39 Pontiac Dream/Always a Kid for Today/Mike Fahey, who has sent along some lovely photographs of a recent trip he and his significant other took to Blakeney and the Morston Marshes, both places with distinctly British names.
I won’t offer much more by way of preamble, and instead have included the body of Ponty’s e-mail to me, which explains a bit more about the pictures in detail.
They remind me a great deal of the salt marshes around Beaufort, South Carolina, and the outlying barrier islands on the way to Fripp Island.
But enough from me. Here’s Ponty:
As noted in Saturday’s post, I spent the weekend in the woods. Specifically, my girlfriend, her friend, her friend’s husband, and I went camping at Watson Mill Bridge State Park outside of Comer, Georgia.
It was a rejuvenating experience. Last week was borderline hellacious, and by the end of it I was pretty much done with everything (’tis the season; thank goodness for Thanksgiving!). Spending two nights in the forest really cleansed my mind and soul. My body got a good workout on some vigorous woodland trails, though I also polluted it with plenty of s’mores and campfire hot dogs.
We stayed at one of the park’s three “pioneer” campsites, designed for primitive camping—camping without water or electricity (although I discovered a water spigot about one hundred feet from our camp, which I used to keep the dogs hydrated). Everything we cooked was over a fire, and the other couple was kitted out with all the necessities. The wife (you’ll see her in a picture below of me cooking over the fire) has been camping for years, and it is apparently one of her favorite activities, so she had all the gear necessary to cook and live outdoors (at least for a weekend).
Even at the primitive camp, and with a more experienced couple to help out, it was “easy mode” camping: we pulled our cars right up to the campsite, and it was a short walk to restrooms and showers in the main part of the camp. Still, I ended up going without a shower until we got out of the woods Sunday, but surprisingly did not smell like Bigfoot (even if I looked like him a bit).
Regardless, we definitely “roughed it,” as they say. We slept in very cold weather in our tents and sleeping bags (my sleeping bag was very warm), and even with some padding from an air mattress and yoga mats, I could definitely tell I was on the ground. The cold weather was glorious, though—there’s something invigorating about temperatures below fifty degrees Fahrenheit that gets the blood flowing. I woke up before everyone else Sunday morning and managed to get quite a bit of grading done at a picnic table, but not before taking a short walk around the park, during which I saw a white-tail deer prancing in the foliage (during the night, we heard coyotes in the distance; I was thankful not to see any of those).
My good online friend and photographic contributor 39 Pontiac Dreamer has sent in some lovely pictures of an English sunrise. To my discredit, he e-mailed me these photographs two months ago, and I am only now finding the time to post them, after repeated apologies, delays, equivocations, and plain excuses.
It’s been so long now, it escapes me what the genesis of these pictures were. I believe Ponty and I were carrying on a conversation in the comment section of a post about rising early in the morning, and that it’s the best time to get work done.
Regardless, here are some gorgeous photographs of a hazy English morning, just as the mighty sun peeks itself over the horizon:
Good ol’ 39 Pontiac Dreamer, one of my regular readers, is as big a fan of Halloween as I am. To that end, he e-mailed me a TON of Halloween pictures over the weekend, including his and his wife’s Jack O’Lanterns. He says hers is the more elaborate one, while he goes for a simpler, more classic approach (like me).
Per Ponty:
We had a few trick or treaters over the evening but, thankfully, not at a crucial point in any of our films…. The films in the pictures by the way are Ringu and the Romero classic Dawn of the Dead.
Ponty also sent me some excellent photographs of an English sunrise—in September! I’ve been so slammed, I keep forgetting to upload them. Look for those next Tuesday.
For now, here are the pictures of Ponty’s British Halloween:
I’m getting a late start tonight, as I’m recovering from last night’s Spooktacular. It was a good night overall, though attendance was down somewhat from last year. Still, we had tons of trick-or-treaters (they literally came by the truckloads, with kids dangling off of truck-pulled trailers), and some good music. I’ll have a full rundown later this week.
For now, it’s HALLOWEEN! As such, here’s a collection of some recent Halloween-related posts for your delectation:
Here’s hoping you all have a wonderful Halloween—and that I don’t get any more truckloads of trick-or-treaters, because I am all out of candy!
Happy Halloween!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
It’s Halloween Week! Besides Christmas (and probably Spring Break), it’s quite possibly my favorite week of the year.
It’s also the week of my third annual (and second on the front porch) Spooktacular! As such, I spent a good portion of the weekend making the preliminary preparations for having lots of people sitting on my front lawn for a couple of hours or so.
Among the myriad tasks I completed (such as some long overdue weed eating, and applying more ant bait to the lawn), I engaged in my favorite Halloween season ritual: carving a Jack O’Lantern! I picked up a couple of massive pumpkins from Sam’s Club for $7 each, and this one made for particularly attractive gourd. Just look at its perfectly jaunty, stout stem!
The Portly Politico 