Month: October 2020

NB: If you’re wondering why I’m doing this, I’m trying to warm up for NaNoWriMo. I figure that adding to this a few times throughout the day should help set the stage for several posts a day starting tomorrow.

11:10 am

I’m starting a bit behind. My dad and I slept later than usual (well, he slept later than usual — usually on breakfast day I sleep until after I hear my dad’s radio coming from his living room and when I woke up at 9, his living room was still silent. So I ended up sleeping until almost 10.

We had breakfast (delicious as always) and then I showered. While I was in the shower, I got a message from my boss saying that he finished up that report for me (yay!) but that none of the work I did on Thursday went through (boo!). Almost immediately after that, though, he sent another saying that the deadline had been extended until November 14, so we can finish the report tomorrow and have it in two weeks before the deadline (yay!).

Now I’m having trouble getting motivated to go out and do something. This is kind of a common problem for me. I’m almost the living embodiment of both senses of inertia. It takes a big effort for me to get motivated to get out and do things, but once I’m going, I’m going and it takes a big effort to get me to stop.

Should I do a separate Gratuitous Amazon Link for each section? A gratuitous photo for each? I guess I’ll just post this for now and decide later.

4:39

Trick-or-treating can start as early as 4:30 around here and I still haven’t done any walking today. So I set up my table with six candy bars on it (I bought entirely too much candy this year) and now I’m going to walk until I (a) see some trick-or-treaters or (b) the candy starts disappearing.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do if the table disappears.

I did go to the store today. I bought toothpaste, more candy (my store didn’t have M&Ms), whitening strips, and an eyebrow pencil. I figure that I need to up my makeup game if I’m going to get the kind of job I want (and then I can start judiciously scaling back the makeup from there).

Now to walk around the block for a while. I’ll check back in later.

7:49

I’ve given up on Halloween for the night. Mostly. I was unraveling a worn-out blanket so that I can use the yarn to make a new blanket and it was getting too dark and too cold to unravel successfully. So I came in.

The table’s still out there and I’ll check on it once in a while and when the amount of candy goes down, I’ll replenish it and then give up at 10 or whenever the candy runs out.

8:48

I just came in from checking on my table. I put six candy bars out at a time (some M&Ms, some other chocolate, some Skittles, some Starburst) and when I checked, they were all gone.

Did I have six individual trick-or-treaters? Did one or two take them all? Is one of my neighbors helping themselves? Who knows. At least my table’s still there.

9:01

I really thought we’d have a bumper crop of candy left over, but we’ve given out 40 candy bars so far. I have 14 left, 4 of which are Peanut M&Ms. No one in my family eats those, so those are going to work tomorrow. Let’s see how many of the 10 remaining non-Peanut M&Ms I have in 59 minutes.

10:19

I forgot to update right at 10, but the final count is exactly what it was last time. I guess trick-or-treating ends by 9:00. At least I gave the stragglers some extra time.

Tomorrow I take those four packs of Peanut M&Ms to work and foist them off on my coworkers and then my family has until April to finish off the last 10 candy bars.

Now for the Gratuitous Amazon Link. I was going to link to a movie, and when I clicked on it to get to the correct page, I accidentally rented it. It was much easier to link to movies from Amazon when I wasn’t an Amazon Prime member. Well, I found a DVD of it with Korean subtitles. Don’t ask me. It is my favorite scary movie: The Others, starring Nicole Kidman.

Now, in an hour and a half, we start November. Wish me luckPray for me.

12:29 am

Happy Halloween! I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I guess this first paragraph or so will be my plans for the day and then I’ll probably open and edit this post to do do a little live-blogging-ish things as the day goes on, and then I’ll maybe do a recap early in the morning of November 1 to see if I followed my plans.

In the morning, my dad and I are having breakfast together. We have breakfast on one weekend morning. I’m working Sunday, so we’re having breakfast today. I do have to drop by work really fast after that. I have to do a report for work and my boss needs to be there for me to do it, so I have to drop in and do the last two questions really fast today, because this is the deadline.

In the afternoon, I’m going to do my walking for the day. I’ve got to do about 20,000 steps today to finish the month where I want to be. I hope to get Mila from Evelyn and take her with me. Mila’s getting fixed on Friday, so some extra non-vet-related time with her would be nice.

In the evening, I might be having dinner with Alex. I don’t know what his work schedule looks like. After that, it’s possibly going to be trick-or-treating time. I may still have Mila with me at that point; I’ll probably take her back to Evelyn before then just because holiday nights are not a great time to be driving around out there. I got full-sized candy bars this year (two boxes of fruit-flavored and one of chocolate). Since the city recommends putting the candy on a table and cleaning the table after each group, I’m going to be camping out in the front yard. I’m going to put up one of those fabric camping chairs and sit out in the yard, listening to an audiobook and knitting until the end of trick-or-treat time. I have an outdoor fireplace and am thinking that I’d like to drag that out into the front and make a nice fire in it to keep me warm.

Then, as trick-or-treaters leave, I’ll wipe down the table and replace the candy bars. If there are any trick-or-treaters. We don’t get very many on a good year. And this hasn’t been a good year.

Then we’ll see how much more walking I need to do. If I can I’ll do some more walking and if I can’t, I’ll do some reading and then go to bed.

Also, since this ended up being too long, if I do the live-blogging thing, I’ll do it in a new post.

Gratuitous Amazon Link? Something scary or spooky or otherwise supernatural . . . I’ve got it! Down a Dark Hall, by Lois Duncan. I loved this book when I was a kid. I believe that this was the book that I was reading when I was alone at home at night when there was a rattling sound, kind of like a mason jar rolling along on its side. We didn’t have any mason jars and that scared the crap out of me. I ended up having put the book up for the night and spend the rest of the evening watching television.