Happy trees and scary hair

My sister always comes up with the most creative Halloween costumes. This year she dressed as Bob Ross, the painter from the PBS series:





Because we are all just overgrown kids, we had to take turns with her fake hair:









Et tu, Buddy?

Road trip!

Mom, Ginger, and I took a couple days and went up to Tallahassee. Some highlights:

Getting Sassy and Ginger together. This picture is the least blurry of the initial ones, because it was almost impossible to get them both still at the same time:



Sassy loves to be held like a baby:



Hanging out with Bobby Bowden:



Seeing the apartment I lived in when I was 5, which is directly across the street from Mike's apartment (top floor):



Ginger's trip to the groomer:



Sassy loves a man in uniform:

Canine Olympic event?

Simultaneous pooping:

Technocats

I wanted to find out if any of my parents' cats enjoyed the iPad as much as Eddie does. Turns out at least 3 of them do:



One of them even took this amazing selfie:

Happy birthday, Dave!

When I posted earlier about seeing my prom date, I was marveling over the technological advances that have made a photo taken with my telephone so vastly superior to one taken with my parents' camera 30 years ago. But then this afternoon we got together with Dave to celebrate his birthday, and this disappointing photo is the only evidence:



There are 3 possible reasons for the poor image quality:

1) We are just naturally blurry people.

2) This photo was taken with my parents' camera from 1983.

3) Drinks at Chili's are 2-for-1, and I was in no condition to evaluate picture quality on my phone.

I will leave it to you to decide which is the correct answer.

Class of 1983 rules!

I had a great time at my reunion but unfortunately didn't take many photos. I did manage to get one though with Jason, my prom date from back in the day:



I think we've held up pretty well. Here's the "before" shot:

Pirates in DeLeon Springs

Mom, Jenny, and I went to a little community fair up in DeLeon Springs this morning. Here they "arrrrrr" clowning around:

Candy? More like can'tdy

I don't candy right. Just ask my mom and my sister.

I brought down several bags of candy to make goody bags for Mike and Annabelle and their roommates for Halloween. Mom and Jenny were watching me make them. I dumped all the candy into a giant bowl and was filling the goody bags by grabbing handfuls of candy. I thought that gave the bags a happy, spontaneous quality, but apparently I was wrong. Mom and Jenny were horrified. They insisted on dumping all the candy back out and sorting it by type. Then it was, "Here's a Snickers for you and one for you and . . . " So if the kids should ever get together and audit their goody bags, I guess they will see that I love them all exactly the same, because heaven forbid somebody should get more Smarties than chocolate.



We put the "fun" in dysfunctional! :-)

Florida greetings

Fred is out of town on business for a couple weeks, so Ginger and I came on down to Florida for my 30th high school reunion. My classmates are posting their senior pictures on Facebook. I, unfortunately, do not have a senior picture--you know, the kind where they put that fancy black drape around your shoulders to make it look like you're wearing a ball gown--because I really just decided to graduate early sometime during my junior year. So this is my junior-senior photo:

Banner weekend 2.0

We weren't the only ones having a great weekend. Annabelle and Aurek took a bus to Syracuse, which is his hometown. Annabelle got to stay with Maya, one of her best friends:



And she and Aurek had a Great Gatsby moment:

Banner weekend

It's funny to think back on how reluctant we were to come to the DC area. We are having the best time! This weekend was fantastic.

Friday night, Fred and I took the metro up to Foggy Bottom and had dinner at Circa. I never knew a mojito could be worth $11, but it so totally was! I also had the scallops and risotto, which I will probably dream about for weeks to come.

After supper, we made our way over to George Washington University to hear David Sedaris speak. Afterwards we stood in line for hours to get my book signed, but again--totally worth it! Sedaris is super-friendly, and the reason the line takes so long is that he talks to every single person. I got to tell him what an indexer is, and I made him laugh when I told him I had been working on an index for a book on "patent prosecution in federal court but it isn't nearly as exciting as it sounds." When he signed my book, he drew me as a cat:



We didn't get home until close to 2 a.m., so we spent most of Saturday in recovery mode. Saturday afternoon/evening though, we went to 2 different get-togethers with Army friends from various points of Fred's career. Then we topped off the weekend today by finally participating in the ALS walk in the city with friends who go back to Fred's first tour at Bragg. We've sent a small donation annually for years, but it was so nice to be able to be a part of it.

Snug as a bug

And now comes Meliora time

It wasn't too hard to say goodbye to Annabelle last week, because we knew we would be seeing her just a few days later. We went to Rochester the very next weekend for Meliora Weekend, which is kind of a combination of homecoming and parents' weekend. We had a lovely time seeing Annabelle in her new environment, and she seems really happy there. Some highlights:

Seeing Annabelle playing with the pep band at the football game:



Seeing the yarn-bombed trees again:







Meeting Aurek and having the waiter think that they were brother and sister:



Now we're back home though and won't get another Annabelle fix until Thanksgiving!

PS: Ginger stayed with friends while we were gone and was treated like a princess. Literally:

Hell, no, we won't go!

I put Annabelle on a plane back to Rochester this morning. She was flying out of Baltimore, and since I'm terrified of driving around here in rush hour, we took the metro up. It's a good way to do it, but it does take a couple hours. Since it was rush hour, we were able to catch a yellow line train out of Franconia and take it all the way to Greenbelt (outside of rush hour, it would have required blue and green trains). From Greenbelt, there's an express bus that goes straight to BWI. Because I didn't have the car to worry about, I was able to stop off in the city on my way home and attend the rally outside the Supreme Court during the McCutcheon v. FEC oral arguments. If you recall, I went to a talk last month about this case.

Here are some pictures from this morning:











Yes, that's Sen. Bernie Sanders in that last one!

Fall break

Rochester's fall break comes early in the year. It seems we had scarcely gotten Annabelle settled into her dorm room before we were going to the airport to pick her up for a long weekend. We've been having a mellow time just enjoying being home together, especially since this long weekend effectively doubles the length of time she has lived in this house.

The number one activity has been hugging critters. Here's the big reunion between a girl and her dog:



Sorry it's so blurry, but there was a lot of wiggling going on.

And one with Harvey:



I guess Eddie didn't make himself available for photos, but he has been on the receiving end of plenty of loving.

I made a little video clip of Harvey doing what we call his Dexter dance: