Halloween weekend

 

I like walking around the neighborhood checking out the decorations. Some families really go all out for Halloween, and skeletons are big this year.

These people covered their entire front yard with funny little skeletons. Cute!

 

And John spotted this West Seattle insider humor. Get it?

I have a Costco size bag of gummy bears, hopefully enough. There's a Buckeye game on Saturday night, so I'll probably be the one upstairs handing out candy. I'm always surprised how many kids show up at the door, almost all with their watchful parents waiting on the sidewalk. We used to let Amanda and her friends loose in the neighborhood, but those were different times in West Seattle. 

Halloween in small town Twisp is much more relaxed and young and old get into it, with a dedicated trick-or-treat zone for kids on Burgar Street, a traditional costume party for adults at the Twisp River Tap House, and a haunted house at the Community Center, among other things. I know Maya and her gang of girlfriends will be haunting the haunted house. Nova probably has more grown up plans with her senior friends. 

Enjoy your weekend. Remember we have that nonsense clock changing thing again on Sunday. This is a rough one for those of us who tend to wake up too early and get hungry for dinner at 5 pm. 

 

Way back when

 

 Our new television...

Exactly 20 years ago, October 2006, we bought what was then a state-of-the art Samsung digital TV. It was new technology at the time and a big iffy purchase, but that TV eventually exceeded our expectations. We got our money's worth. 

Since then, we've worn out and replaced most of the appliances in this house, some two or three times, but that good old TV just kept humming along. Well, until recently, when it finally started showing signs of old age.

Costco online delivery to the rescue. A strong young fellow carried a 55 inch TV box right down to the basement yesterday. This saved us from pushing a giant carton through the warehouse and across a rainy parking lot, then trying to wedge it in the Honda. Not mention, coming home and probably finding no parking spot on the street in front of the house. 

We got it safely out of the box together then John spent the entire afternoon hooking everything up to his liking. He's very good at keeping our little raft of technology afloat, thank goodness, otherwise I'd be dead in the water here.

We are of the generation who remembers fuzzy black and white pictures with rabbit ear antennas sitting on top of the TV. Interesting, that we still watch the network channels though antenna, but the apparatus lives up in the attic crawl space. (We watch our movies etc. with an AppleTV streaming device, so don't bother with a cable service.) 

You know how you walk in Costco, and see that display of blindingly bright new televisions? The picture on the old TV was good, but this new dynamic is an eye-popping improvement. The screen is also slightly larger and we sat there last night, marveling at the incredibly fine details of the world series, broadcast LIVE all the way from Florida. Ten times better than the most expensive seats there. It is a marvelous world in so many ways.

We don't really follow baseball through the regular season, but always enjoy the World Series. The ultimate escapist TV, and we could all use some of that these days. 

  

The fig eaters

 

The starlings and squirrels aren't the only ones who like a fig treat in the fall. This mama racoon and her baby came through this weekend and helped themselves to the fallen bounty. She looked at me like I was trespassing on their picnic. And in many ways, I was. 

"Let us live out our days with grace and humility, then let the wild things inherit the earth." 

 From "The High House," by Jessie Greengrass. 

 

Aw. Check out at these not-so-wild best friends. Animals possess this wonderful quality of always being in the present moment, and they help us spent time there.

Fall finally decided to show up here, with daily rain in the forecast for the foreseeable future. 

The final mow

 

We've been busy around the old homestead. John did the last mow of the year, and doesn't that look neat and tidy. Frankly, I'm ready to batten down the hatches and head indoors.

 Have a good weekend. 

 

 

A hack job

 

 

This amazing stretch of October weather goes on. It really feels more like September. 

 

I went nuclear option on that flower bed yesterday, using the weed eater to whack off the tops of invasive violets and Creeping jenny. I haven't kept up on the weeding lately, so that was a visually satisfying quick fix. Of course the roots grow back, but that's a problem for another season.  

 

 

It's been warm and still, so lots of stuff needs to fall down and make a mess, including the pecked figs left from the starling feeding frenzy. The squirrels are busy, busy, busy in the yard. Our resident window spider, Charlotte, gets fatter and fatter. They know something is up. This weather can’t last forever. 

 

Today is National Nut Day. BTW, walnuts are the oldest cultivated tree food, dating back to around 10,000 BC. 

 

Our grandmother made a good, heavy black walnut cake, a Pennsylvania Dutch specialty. I should try this recipe, something you can't make from a box, so Maya approved. Walnuts have a complex and memorable flavor profile. 

 

John had a wonderful slice of walnut cake once at the Tate Museum Cafe, and you can bet he never forgot  it. That may have been the highlight of our London trip for him, certainly in regard to food, most of which was memorable in another way. 

Cool or creepy?

 

John got an iPhone 18 Pro for his birthday, and he likes to show off the new features, compared to my old 17 model.

The reader mode which he uses for articles now has a new summarize feature. This is powered by Apple intelligence and it condenses large amount of text data, giving you an instant summary. Kind of like an automatic Cliff Notes. 

It also works on my individual blog posts, and yesterday it came up with the summary below. Since I never actually wrote "time and age has mellowed me" (which may or may not be true) I found it somewhat creepy how it made that conjecture from a narrative of sitting outside looking at the garden. 

Summary

Time and age mellowed the narrator, who now accepts a decaying garden in Seattle’s warm October. A spice cake with walnuts prompted laughter about Maya’s baking standards; John eats it. Past energy on the land contrasts with present quietude.