As I write this, it's late-October. I am in the office, listening to Thursday Night Football on my Sangean PR-D18 radio. Work for the day is done. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL team are playing the Baltimore Ravens, and the game is almost tied.
The night has just fallen, and I am about to head home from work. I'll probably stop at the local fast food drive-through, and get a fish sandwich, and maybe some fries with that. It will cost me about ten bucks. Five or six years ago it would have cost more like 7 or 8 bucks. Inflation here is real.
The leaves are starting to turn colors in the city, but not so much in the greenbelt where I live, maybe 10 miles out from Seattle. One thing that we've had is a fairly warm October so far, but it's getting cold at night. I've put off switching up the heat in the house because I'm trying to save money, but I know that soon enough I'll have to turn on the heat a bit, and of course that means the power bill will go up. But you've got to live.
My cats are already complaining about the cold. I got a small heating pad that I intend to put in their cat bed. Driving out of the box-store parking lot, after I bought the heating pad, a guy decided to back out of his parking spot in a hurry and he slammed into my car. There's nothing like an ***hole who doesn't look where they're backing up their f***ing SUV.
Luckily I wasn't hurt, but the front left fender and door of my car were messed up, and I had to get them straightened out at a body shop earlier today. Fortunately, that didn't cost much.
It's been a tough month so far, really.
I don't look forwards to the cold, nor do I look forwards to the rain. Work has picked up, and that's good, but the threat of the cold is wearing on me already, and then I think about friends I have in Europe and they're facing a Fall and Winter without heat. Even though they don't really talk about it, I know they're facing the possibility because I pay attention to the news from the EU because of my friends there (one in Norway, a FB friend in Sweden, another in Germany, and a female friend in Austria).
At the same time, here in the US we have elections that are turning on the economy, and the economy isn't really hopping right now. I don't know what any political party can really do to prevent recessions, but the elections will turn on the recession we seem to be entering now, and it looks like regardless of who gets into power in Washington, D.C. money will be tight for a while.
I know that in the indie book writers' and publishers' forums online the authors are talking about their sales dropping. They're feeling the pinch, because everyone else is feeling the pinch. It's not an easy time to be in the book writing and publishing business. On the radio forums the experts talk about revenues being tight. It seems nearly every industry I know is 'feeling the pinch' (an Americanism for looking at your wallet and seeing less money in it).
At times like this I try to remember the people who do not have it as well as I do. Things are tough all over, except for the multi-billionaires, but it's always been that way. In ancient times the kings lived like kings, and the peasants were told to deal with it and shut up.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I've posted some photos here of a couple places that have cool Halloween decorations up early, as well as a few that were put up by people on Halloween. As I write this, the only Halloween decoration I have up right now is my Mickey Mouse electric pumpkin. I got him in 2016 and -- unfortunately -- right after I got him it wasn't a great time for me. That aside, Mickey Mouse is always the first Halloween decoration I put up, and he's the last one I take down, just because.
Unfortunately, electric pumpkins are kind of hard to find in the stores anymore, so I always take good care of the ones I've got.
A few houses in the region have pretty good Halloween displays, which are always fun to see. I have included a couple pictures I took with my cell phone of them.
A neighbor had a really cool tall ghostly skeleton figure, that looked a little bit like a fluorescent version of Iron Maiden's Eddie the Ghoul. It lit up and its head and upper body moved from side to side. Really cool.
As Halloween is just a couple days away as I write this, I am sort of equivocal about it, even though Halloween always has been my favorite holiday, along with Christmas. I'll probably put up a few electric Jack O' Lanterns at least, so the trick-or-treaters know that they're welcome, as I already bought the candy for them.
Here's hoping that for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, Autumn is a good one. For those in the Southern Hemisphere (I do have a few readers in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, NZ, and even one or two in South Africa), a great Spring.
Post Script.... It is now the morning after Halloween as I ready to post this. I put out my Jack O' Lanterns, as you can see in a couple of my pictures. And I also was able to take some decent shots of a few other people's Halloween decorations, too.
This Halloween wasn't so bad, even though I wasn't really pepped up for it. I had maybe five different small groups of kids come up to trick-or-treat, and if their parents came with them, I gave the parents candy, too. Usually I end up with extra candy -- I did this time, as always -- and I don't eat much sugary stuff. Sometimes I double the amount of candy bars I give the kids if it's late and I don't think there will be many more trick-or-treaters.
It went OK, overall. It's a fun thing to interact with the neighbors and their kids in a positive way. I also rode around the neighborhood here a few times, so I got a little exercise while checking out decorations. The night air was fresh, and not too cold, maybe 45-50F / 7-8C. There weren't a lot of houses with decorations, but the ones that had them, you could really tell they loved Halloween.
Until next time,
Peace.
C.C. October 29th, 2022. Posted October 31st, 2022 (Halloween).
Addendum: I added two pics on Nov. 5th, because I finally got some good shots of one of the displays, and found another one I'd taken that looked good. They fit in well with the Halloween nature of the blog post. :-)
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