Halloween!

So, Halloween! The time of year when kids decide it's okay to dress up and demand candy. Actually,Halloween is a fun holiday to observe, even if I'm not that big on wearing a costume and participating in it and all.

It is a little bit strange to see how one's priorities towards Halloween shift as you get older. When you're really, really little, it's all about being completely freaked out that your parents have put you in a strange outfit and taken you around to see strange people since you're really not sure what the hell is going on. Once you get a couple years older, you realize that it's kind of fun and you get free candy. Dressing up as something fun and people giving you candy? Awesome! Then you get into those pre-teenage years, where it's all about causing mischief. I guess that's where the "trick" part of "trick-or-treat" comes in. Egging houses, terrorizing other kids, and still getting candy! Awesomer! Then you get into your teenage years and it's not so much about the candy anymore, it's more about the scary movies and the haunted houses and getting your girlfriend to hang onto you because she's scared and you're her big, tough man and all. Besides, candy gives you acne, so why bother with that stuff!? (That's a myth, by the way, but still.)

Now, once you get to college, Halloween is all about one thing: parties. Lots and lots of parties. With almost all girls wearing some variation on the hooker/slut costume. Well, that was what girls wore to most JU parties, regardless of the time of year, but still. There's a reason our Halloween party my senior year was probably one of the best parties we ever threw. And I didn't even have to wear a costume. I still have the eviction warning from it on my post-it board at home. Halloweens in college were probably my favorite. Drunken parties and me pelting people with candy and a SWAT team showing up around 11:30 and riding in the trunk of a Geo Storm to get to the next party and waking up on the floor of somebody's apartment without a hangover and no throwing up the night before. Good times!

Of course, once you're out of school and have a job and a home and all, your priorities shift waaaaaaay over to the other side. You don't open the bags of candy you bought for trick-or-treaters because you know you'll eat it all if you do that. You make sure you're home on time and have good candy like Snickers and Twix and Milky Way and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups so you can avoid your house getting egged or TP'd because you're the old guy that told the kids that anything that lands on your lawn becomes your property and the whippersnappers better stay off your property. I still watch the scary movies, at least. Tonight's feature will likely be Evil Dead 2 (an annual favorite) the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead and probably the original Nightmare On Elm Street. I might do Halloween, but that one's never really been my favorite. No costume party at Maki's house and I skipped two parties this weekend to go on a date, so maybe I am maturing just a little bit. Hopefully the horror movies and leftover candy will regress me a bit. I have been sitting at my desk at work with horns attached to my forehead today, so it's not all mature stuff, thankfully.

Up top is the pumpkin my department (well, one other girl and I, with her doing the majority of the work) carved for last year's pumpkin contest at work. He was designed to look like a football player in an old-school '30s-style helmet (hence, the facepaint and chin strap). Somehow we didn't win, though. Go figure. Rigged, I tell ya. RIGGED. At least it made for a cool pumpkin. Sadly, I did not carve one this year. Much like the blog, I've been a slacker lately. I may just post that picture every year, since I doubt I can top that one.

Happy Halloween, kids. Stay off my lawn.