And to you, the SEB regulars who show up here every day just to see what I’m blowing hot air about today. We’re coming up on the seven year anniversary of SEB and that just blows my mind. I never thought I’d still be at it after this much time or that I’d still be saying anything interesting enough to attract much attention. You folks have had a much more profound impact on my life than I would have guessed when I started this venture back in 2001. You have given me encouragement, helped see me through some of the worst times, celebrated with me through some of the best times, and shown a generosity that knows no bounds. So let me say sincerely and from the bottom of my heart: Thank you. I am so very grateful that you drop by every day and say hello.

I can recall from my childhood trips to my maternal grandparents for Thanksgiving most years and I can recall that we eventually started staying home for Thanksgiving, but I couldn’t tell you at what point we made that change or why. It’s a change I’m aware of, but wasn’t so jarring that the exact point of change is embedded in my mind. There will come a point, just as it did with my grandparents, where my own parents won’t be around to have Thanksgiving with anymore and the same will eventually come to pass with my in-laws and at that point staying home will be more or less a given. Which is also a weird thing to think about. I wonder if Courtney, once she moves out on her own, will make the trip back every year to spend Thanksgiving with us for a few years and carry on the tradition. I wonder if I’ll know how to cook a turkey properly by the time that comes to pass.

I don’t see my older brother or younger sister as much as I’d like to so the holidays have always been one of the few times we get to see each other. My sister’s schedule is very incompatible with my own and the distance between Ann Arbor, where I live, and Pontiac, where she’s living in our childhood neighborhood, is enough to make visiting with any frequency difficult. Of my two siblings I get along with my sister the best, but our lives are so different to each other’s that I often don’t have a clue what to talk to her about. My brother and I get along a lot better than we did as kids, but there are other… stresses… in the relationship between our two families that keeps our contact limited to holidays. And, again, our lives are different enough that I’m never sure what the hell to talk to him about. I actually talk more with his son than I do him because my nephew is a bit of a geek like me.

There are days when I wish my relationship with both my brother and sister could be closer than it is and that sentiment is part of why holidays like Thanksgiving are nice as it’s one of the few days I’m likely to see them. Usually that wishing-we-were-closer feeling is gone by the end of the day as I realize just how little I have to say that either one of them would care much about. I have no idea what the hell we’d do other than sit around and talk anyway as our hobbies are wildly different. Still, not seeing them on Thursday will be a little weird. My parent’s less so because I see them fairly regularly throughout the year.

Not really sure why I decided to write all this down. I don’t really have a point with it other than “it’s kinda weird” which isn’t really a point as much as an observation. But, here you go.

So are any of you dressing up today? I gave some thought to it myself as my current job is fine with the idea, but the only thing I could pull together quickly would’ve been the Renaissance garb I just wore a week ago for a wedding and I didn’t feel like wiggling into it again. We weren’t sure whether or not to pick up any candy for any potential trick-or-treaters tonight as we’re in an apartment complex once again and the last one we lived in didn’t tend to attract the kids despite the potential bonanza it offered with all the doors so close together. Perhaps the kids in Ann Arbor will be a bit braver so it’s a good thing my in-laws dropped by yesterday with some extra candy they had for us to hand out if anyone should scream outside our door.

With money being as tight as it is we’ve not really decorated the house much for the holiday. I don’t even have a proper Jack-o-lantern. It doesn’t help that a lot of the decorations are packed away in boxes from the move yet and some of those boxes are still in my in-law’s basement. We do have two Halloween themed place mats though. That’s something I can stick in the window at least. So, yeah, Halloween is a bit pathetic at our house this year. Maybe it’ll be a bit better next year.

What are you guys doing for Halloween?

If you only read via RSS then you’ll just have to imagine what they look like. Or visit the site directly. Or just live with the soul crushing unfulfilled curiosity that ignoring this entry will bring you.

Whatever works for you.

Fortunately the guy who did make that projected video, Mark Gervais, is selling it on DVD so lesser talented people like me can scare the crap out of kids on Halloween. He uses a simple white sheet, a standard digital projector, and a good sized window. The results look great and are just the right level of scariness that most kids won’t be too afraid to approach your door.

NEW YORK (AP)—It wasn’t the gruesome costumes or gory masks turning up at Lisa Bruno’s front door that spooked her on Halloween. It was the pudge lurking beneath the costumes.

“The kids were just so huge,“ Bruno says.

So five years ago, she was scared into changing her holiday handouts, giving out toys instead of candy. Other households do the same, offering stickers, pencils, Play-Doh or glow sticks, to mixed reviews from candy-loving children.

“I thought, here I am trying to take care of my health,“ says Bruno, of Des Plaines, Ill. “I felt a responsibility to my community to take care of the kids around me.“

... my initial reaction was: You can’t do that!! That violates the whole point of trick or treating! That was the ten-year-old side of my personality winning the initiative roll. Then the sensible-41-year-old side stepped in and said: Well, we are getting to be pretty fat as a society. I should know, I’m overweight myself. I carry it well and most people wouldn’t say I’m fat, but the truth is I am and all you have to do is take a look around you to see that I’m far from being alone in that regard.

Halloween holds a great number of fond memories for me as much for the joy of coming up with a costume and making it real as for the excitement of rushing from house to house to show it off and get free candy. I trick or treated well into my teens and after my peers had quit because it was something little kids did. I got around being asked “aren’t you a little old for this” by adults by utilizing increasingly clever costumes that impressed enough to distract people from my age and accompanying younger kids as a sort of chaperon. Most years the haul was so good that I’d still have Halloween candy left over well into December because we never were allowed to gorge ourselves on it all at once. Halloween night saw us eating a fair amount, but we learned early not to make ourselves sick on candy. Halloween candy was something you savored for weeks after the event and each time you dug in it brought back sweet memories of a plan well executed and a haul legendary in its proportions.

Even back then, though, there were people who substituted other stuff for candy. There was the dentist who thought handing out toothbrushes would somehow go over well one year. It didn’t and his house was roundly TP’ed by the next morning. The next year he was still handing out toothbrushes, but he was including a package of Dentyne gum with them so as to “sweeten” the deal. That worked a bit better. A couple of houses always gave out pennies instead of candy so there was always some random amount of change jangling around in the bottom of your pillow case by the end of the night. Never enough to get a decent piece of candy on your own ‘cause it usually added up to 13 cents or so. Sometimes you’d get those McDonald’s coupons good for a free hamburger or fries or something which meant you had to talk your parents into taking you to McDonald’s which wasn’t a common destination in our family. Those houses were the exception to the rule. Most homes gave out candy or other decent snacks such as chips or pretzels.

The rest of that news article talks about how some families are letting their kids go trick or treating and then getting them to give up some or all of the candy they collect in exchange for money or toys:

Halloween is the one night when Jennifer Taggart’s 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter get to eat whatever treats they want. Then they decide what’s going to be left for the “switch witch,“ who comes at night like the tooth fairy and takes the kids’ candy, leaving toys in her wake.

“The more candy they put out, the bigger the toy,“ says Taggart, of Los Angeles. “So far, my son has put out all of his candy every Halloween to get the biggest toy.“

[...] After her kids enjoy some candy while trick or treating, Julie Schoerke, of Nashville, Tenn., buys back as much of it as she can, offering a nickel for each piece of candy they like but don’t love, and a dime for each piece of something they love.

“They could decide how much to keep,“ says Schoerke, whose kids are 12 and 15. “Both would rather have the money, so they kept very little candy.

“I didn’t want them to have as much candy as they would get,“ she said. “They got huge amounts, and I knew they’d consume it until it was gone.“

I have to admit those are clever ways to deal with the issue and it leaves the choice up to the kids as to how much they want to keep. The last example they cite is the one that we used in our family: rationing. We usually had to ask before getting into our Halloween candy and then we were limited to four or five pieces at the most. That could still result in a helluva sugar high when there were Pixie Stix in the bags, but that was only a problem for the first couple of days as the really good stuff got consumed.

As an adult Halloween has been a bit of a disappointment mainly because the places we’ve lived in the last decade or so haven’t seen much in the way of trick or treaters. I thought for sure when I moved into the Canton apartment that we’d have a ton of kids dropping by. What kid wouldn’t take advantage of the fact that each apartment had its own entrance? One stop could net four handfuls of candy if all the apartments on one side of the building were participating. So I bought a metric ass-ton of candy thinking we’d never get a chance to close the front door. By the end of the night we still had a metric ass-ton of candy left cause we saw all of four kids the entire night. I was so disappointed that I didn’t bother buying candy the rest of the time we lived there. Living with the in-laws was a little better, but even then the visitor count was low because the house was way back off the road with lots of trees covering the driveway making it not only difficult to tell if the porch light was on, but pretty damn scary to walk up to the house.  Now we’re in a town home which again has an individual entrance and a back door. No idea if we’ll see any kids this year or not, but we’re going to check with the complex and find out if kids drop by on Halloween. If they do then we’ll try to have some candy to hand out. This naturally makes me long for owning a home of my own in a nice neighborhood. Not only would I love to hand out candy on Halloween, but I’d love to have a yard I can decorate the hell out of in honor of the occasion. Not to mention Krismas being not too far away and all the yard decorating I could do for that as well.

So, yeah, I suppose I didn’t really discuss what the news article was about all that much. That happens often when something jogs nostalgia loose in my brain. I spend more time remembering how awesome something used to be that I never actually get around to thinking about the article itself. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I think it would be a shame if the trend to make Halloween candy-less becomes widespread. Perhaps it would be healthier, but I feel like it would lose something in the process. Though I suppose if that’s they way people choose to go then I’ll just have to learn to adapt and hang on to those cherished memories from my youth.

So have a Happy Undead Zombie Jesus day!

^{No, I’m not trying to make a particular point. I was just bored with writing Happy Easter for the sixth time since I started this blog.}

I hope I’m doing half as well as she is when I get to that age.

Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin—the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.

The Darwin Day Celebration website provides resources and publicity for individuals and institutions across the world to celebrate science and humanity every year, on, or near, February 12, Darwin’s birthday. In addition to information about the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, this website provides practical examples, advice and templates for organizing and publicizing Darwin Day events. It also provides a directory of events where you can find celebrations taking place near you or register your own event for others to find.

You can find a listing of various events being held in honor of Darwin Day by clicking here. I doubt I’ll be able to make it out to any of the various events happening here in Michigan, but I’ll probably raise a glass or two in honor of Darwin’s birthday just the same.

The new 6ft (1.8m) ball, weighing about 1,100lbs (500kg), is covered with 9,576 light-emitting diodes that use the same amount of electricity as 10 toasters.

The LEDs are more than twice as bright as the previous bulbs and are capable of creating a palette of 16m colours.

The original ball was dropped down the flagpole at One Times Square in 1907.

Made of iron and wood, it was 5ft in diameter and lit with 100 25W light bulbs.

That’s pretty cool and shows that LED lighting is probably going to be a growing trend this year. It’s already well underway as I noted there were a lot more LED Christmas lights being offered this season over the last one and for less money too.

On a related note it just so happened that when we paused the movie to watch the ball drop we landed on ABC’s Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years Eve or whatever the hell it’s called. I had gotten up to use the bathroom when the switch over occurred so I first heard Dick Clark prior to actually seeing him and I thought for a moment that he must be drunk based on his slurred speech. I was completely unaware that Clark had suffered a stroke back in 2004 and, in fact, missed that year’s broadcast of the show (Regis Philbin hosted it instead). Since then the show has been co-hosted by Ryan Seacrest who has, in my humble opinion, all of the charisma of fish bait.

Apparently I’ve not bothered to watch the show since Clark had his stroke as this was the first time I’ve heard him speak and I felt bad for the guy. He really looked like he was having a hard time of it and my only thought was that they should just let the guy retire instead of dragging him out every year to co-host what is really a big hype machine for standing around in Times Square in the cold for 60 seconds of excitement at midnight. I’m told, however, that Clark wanted to participate and that his speech has actually improved quite a bit since his return to the show for 2006. So I suppose that’s a good thing, but I still felt for the guy.

Word has it that once Dick Clark is incapable of hosting the show any longer (presumably because he’s dead) that Ryan Seacrest will officially replace him. Maybe that is what’s driving Dick Clark to keep doing the show despite his condition. He’s trying to save us from that lameness that will be Ryan Seacrest’s Rockin’ New Years Eve. In which case, may the non-existent deity bless you Dick Clark.