Halloween II (better and bloodier)

The thing I love best about Halloween in NYC is that so many people dress so strangely here anyway, that very often you cannot tell what is a costume and what is their actual clothes.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

Happy Halloween (bwa-ha-HA-ha-ha)! I am being a revolutionary this year, so I will have no opportunity to laugh in an evil fashion and must, therefore, get it all out of my system in this blog. I asked my revolutionary expert friend (who brought the beret I am wearing back from Cuba (drink)) what revolutionaries do...all we could come up with was drink vodka and wear berets at a jaunty angle. I hope it is okay if I drink the vodka in the form of a dirty martini.

My boss is not in the office today (again), so I took a nice, long walk around the East Village and had lunch in an Organic Vegan restaurant with aging hippies that could not get over the fact that I had come all the way from Queens for lunch, despite my efforts to explain that, really, I worked just around the corner (also: half a mile is apparently not just around the corner in NYC, the way it is in the country).

This afternoon, I have to hike out to a much nicer section of the city than I am accustomed to (and by hike, I probably mean take the 6 train) and drop off a folder at my boss' place- more specifically, I am to leave it with her doorman. Then all the way back down to Washington Square for class and then my revolutionary side will explode and run amuck all over the Village. Yay!

In posts to come: my reaction to the Cuba (drink) summit. Really. I promise. The sixteen pages of notes I took have to be good for something...

How to Grow-up in the middle of nowhere surviving chronic comma abuse...

Well, I was going to head up this post with pics from my Homecoming/Halloween weekend, but as of yet, no one has sent me any. So instead, here is a scary picture of my friend, currently starring in a touring production of Dracula.

I don't mean to blame. What I am really saying is this: I need a digital camera.

About my second Homecoming: My first year back, I was very weirded out by the transformation from student to alum. I was also convinced, by my own behavior and that of my former classmates, that nothing changed. People still behaved the exact same way. No one learned from their past actions or mistakes. We were all content to go back to campus and behave just as we had when we'd all lived there, five short months earlier.

Luckily, an extra year has helped fixed that.

It seems that we still go back looking to drink a lot and party. A few of us go back looking to hook up with young undergrads, which is behavior I cannot get behind. But for the most part...we're growing. Fewer of us are repeating our mistakes from the past. He won't drink and drive. She won't sleep with the man who broke her heart again and again. We've learned a thing or two, since leaving our institute of learning. And that's a good thing.

Also, the most oft uttered phrase by alums back on campus is: "When I went to school here, BLANK was so much better/cooler/bigger/sexier/more fun, etc." And that amuses me.

And we lost our Homecoming game, which sucks. And someone stole my beautiful velvety witch's cape, just purchased on Friday afternoon, which meant I had to be a business casual witch when the trick or treaters came around on Monday night.

Having trick or treaters was awesome. My roommate and I grew up five minutes away from each other, in the middle of nowhere. As he put it: "We used to show up at each other's houses...and that was it for trick or treaters". So we were thrilled at the hordes of lady bugs and princesses and cowboys and superheroes that knocked on our door.

Kids are weird. They'll squirm on their toes, looking at you with big eyes, too timid to say the required 'trick or treat'...until you hold that candy towards them and then- BOOM- all shyness is gone and they are grabby little things. It was great! We weren't so crazy about the teenagers who came around in their sweats...but we figured it was okay to pay a candy tax to keep them from keying our cars or setting fires in our trash cans or whatever mischief suburban teenagers get up to. In the country, the hoodlums used to smash mailboxes. In my- real- neighborhood that I live in now, we don't have mailboxes, just a slot in the door. This is very puzzling to me. How do people send their mail out?

In other news, I finished my first short story for grad class, which can only be a good thing. And, though it generally it takes me a few months to like anything I've written, I am assured it is decent. I am not sure who is more insecure, actors or writers, and sadly, I am both. But my friend told me: "You are a short-story writing queen. You've made this story your bitch--it does what you ask of it, and says 'thank you' for the priviledge." That sounds pretty good to me.

I've also entered the infamous NaNoWriMo, which sounds like an Anime Convention, but is actually a marathon for writers. Participants are supposed to write a 50,000 word novel in one month (the month of November), paying little attention to quality and simply focusing on quantity. It is an exercise to get all of us perfectionist writers to actually finish something for once, dammit! I'm a big fan.

And I'll end this eternal blog with a priceless quote from my little sister about her own writing skills: "I am terribly sorry if I butchered the English language. I like run-ons, and sentence fragments. I have also been told that I abuse the comma."

By the pricking of my thumbs...

I feel my afternoon would best be spent outside, twirling around like a ballerina. Instead, I am in my cubicle, surreptitiously hijacking the internet for personal use. Ah, the pirouettes and arabesques I could have done! I also would have found some nice dried leaves to kick, even though it isn’t quite dry leaf season yet.

I don’t know how I feel about the coming Fall. Summer was longer than usual, since I’m out of college now. It was fun. I love the warm, sunny weather. I love my tan, and it’ll be sad when I have to fake it again. And, after fall comes winter, which I canNOT get excited about. Ew. But summer was starting to feel stagnant. Fall is going to bring so many exciting things. I hope.

I want to be a witch for Halloween this year.
Just a plain, old fashioned witch with stringy hair and a green face. I have never been a witch before- too boring. I don’t own a witch costume or even a witch hat. But I’m going to have trick or treaters this year- for the first time EVER!

This is because I am a country bumpkin now living in the middle of an apartment complex. I have seen children in the area- real live children. And where there are children, there is trick or treating. So, for the first time EVER, I have to stock up on candy and get run off my feet opening the door every two minutes. And perhaps I’ll cackle and say things like: “aren’t you a cute little fairy princess?” It will be just like the trick or treating on television. I am so excited.

And maybe I’ll have Hocus Pocus playing in the background, too.

When I was a kid, trick or treating consisted of dressing up (always my favorite part) and getting in my Mom’s car. We would have a five to ten minute drive between each house. Most of the time, the homeowner would invite my Mom in and she would have a drink and they would chat, and my sister and I would sit at the kitchen table, bored and trying not to eat all our candy. We would hit maybe fifteen houses in a night. Our friends would come to school with pillowcases full of treats the next day. We would each have a Tupperware container. Our Halloween experience seemed somewhat lacking, though we did always have extraordinary costumes.

This year I will have an ordinary costume and an extraordinary amount of trick or treaters. Woohoo!