Rudi and I have not yet carved our pumpkins, so I’m eagerly awaiting his arrival so we can get on with that.

In the meantime, I offer you some seasonal fun:

• Slate‘s “Tracking Tricks and Treats“
• The National Confectioners Association’s statistics and background about Halloween
• The History Channel offers you a history of the holiday
• “Scaredy Cat” from Garfield’s Halloween Adventure
• It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Yes, it’s the whole thing; no, I don’t know how they got permission, either….)
• Me!
  

  I’m not telling you. But I have a highly intelligent readership and I bet that you can figure it out. Feel free to check the comments if you’re feeling stumped. I’m sure someone will leave a clue there… And if you need a close-up of one of the details, feel free to check after the jump. (more…)

If you do not go to a costume shop to find the key items you need in order to make a Halloween costume work, you will need to be more creative.

I may not have figured out the villain for my novel yet, but I have figured out my costume for tomorrow. I just hope I haven’t used all my creativity in one fell swoop.

Photos tomorrow…

I am not really awake when Rudi leaves in the morning, so if you asked me what he wears to work, I would tell you bike shoes, a bike helmet, and a reflective vest. So I can honestly say that I really did not have that in mind when I picked out my wardrobe yesterday.

When he came home last night, he noticed we were both wearing khakis, but pointed out that he was wearing a periwinkle-colored shirt, while I had on green. But I’d already taken off my lilac sweater because it was too warm. And we were both wearing handknit socks!

Do you think this is a sign we spend too much time together?

The sugar maple in front of the Chapel at Conn turns the most beautiful shade of pink this time of year. It’s not really pink, of course, but the yellows and the reds of its leaves combine in such a way that it really is ablaze with color.

You don’t get anything like that down here.

Has it turned pink? Has it already gone past? Have its leaves fallen? A fresh wave of homesickness washes over me.

I was going to give you blow-by-blow details of my fun time at the National Book Festival today, but I’ve decided to postpone that until tomorrow. I was just lying on the couch with a ball of yarn and mindlessly watching tv and listening to the rain fall outside when my eyes started to close of their own accord and my body started to twitch. Since my body thinks that it’s time to sleep, I’m going to go oblige it by putting it to bed.

Some little old lady stole my knees. I didn’t see her do it, but I can tell she did, just the same.

How, you ask?

Because she left behind her knees when she took mine!

I mean, I just played an hour or so of volleyball today at the company picnic and followed it up — several hours later — with an hour-long bike ride.

Nothing too taxing for a 32-year-old.

But tonight I found myself hobbling around the Burrow and standing gingerly in the shower with a particularly achy knee.

It didn’t help that at one point during the game I was chasing after a ball and part of me went one way and part of me the other. Nor that I neglected to warm up before we started, really.

But 14 (wow!) years ago, when I was a college volleyball player, neither of those things would have caused me to limp longer than 5 or 10 minutes. (My tendency to run into solid, immobile objects, like bleachers, on the other hand, might have caused me a trip to the ER, but that was only once, I swear!)

Tonight, though, I’m just going to have to limp after that little old lady who’s running around with my perfectly good pair of knees.

But first I have to figure out who took my back and left me with this stiff one…