And now, November

* I only had perhaps 15 trick or treaters yesterday evening. Most of them seemed to be in the 4 to 8 age range. (No teenagers making the barest attempt at a 'costume' and sticking their hand out for candy like I've had some years. Oh, I give them candy but if they haven't gone to much trouble to make a costume I give 'em the stink-eye first). Most unusual costume: perhaps-7-year old girl wearing fox ears, snout, and tail, but also a tiara and a pink cape. Perhaps there's a fox-princess character out there I'm not aware of (Or maybe she's a fan of the old Disney version of Robin Hood and was Maid Marian?), or maybe she just made up a character on her own.

I will say most of the kids said "Thank you" without a parental prompt, and many of them also added "Happy Halloween!" (It's possible their parents coached them before leaving to go trick or treating, but I know in exciting situations it's easy to forget your manners when you're a kid)

* So now I've got lots of little 3 Musketeers, little plain Hershey bars, and little Kit Kats left. The Hershey bars I can perhaps use next time I bake something (maybe I'll make toffee cookies at some point and bring them in). I LIKE the other two but I still have more than I would or should eat, so I will have to figure out a disposal mechanism. (We no longer have weekly Youth Group, having relatively few Youth and most of them involved in sports, so I can't just take the candy to church)

* One of the other faculty rounded-up all the "faculty dressed" students and photographed them for posterity. There were more than I thought there were but one fellow really didn't capture the essence of the guy he was aping.

The best ones, IMHO, were the guy doing the herpetologist, the guy doing the ornithologist, and the woman doing me - of course, we are probably the three who dress the most "distinctively" - the herpetologist usually wears old jeans, a t-shirt with a flannel shirt over it, often an old bandanna, and he usually has a scruffy beard. The ornithologist is clean shaven (he is also very tall but that is hard to do in a costume) and almost invariably wears pressed dark jeans and a plaid cotton shirt (also pressed. He is not married so either he doesn't mind ironing or he sends all his laundry out). I am, well, me. In the photo the person doing me did even better than she did when walking the halls - she had a pair of enormous knitting needles and she also captured what I admit with some embarrassment is a typical pose for me - chin tilted up, looking like I am looking down my nose. I do it without thinking about it but it must be something very characteristic because I have a photo in my house of a great-grandmother (whom I never met) who has the same attitude to her head, and everyone who sees the picture comments on how much I look like her. (It may be that, like me, she was somewhat short-sighted)

What's the Bobbie Burns saying?

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

I don't know. I admit I was a bit self-conscious as I got dressed this morning ("nope, can't wear a shawl today") but now I'm just laughing about it. (And anyway, they did ALL the people who teach the Conservation classes (though none in the medical-sciences area), so no one was really singled out). And anyway, if they thought we'd be mad or offended, they probably wouldn't have done it, so probably in an odd little circular way, we should feel flattered.

(Now, next year: I challenge them to do it but gender-swap. Knowing our students the men will have much more trouble with that than the women will.)

* I have to decide about this afternoon. I had first thought of going and doing "big" grocery shopping (i.e., going to Sherman) today, but then I remembered: yesterday was payday. (I don't QUITE live paycheck to paycheck, so I tend to be less conscious of it). So maybe not. I don't know. But I don't want to spend part of my Saturday going tomorrow. So I'll have to decide.

* Yes, I am aware that that and the "what am I going to do with all this leftover candy" are what some would call First World Problems.