All Hallows Eve Time

It's that time of year again when summer is finished, the crops are in and we celebrate the harvest and coming of winter. All Hallows Eve or as we know it Halloween is upon us. The link that I provided is a great description of how we come to celebrate Halloween. I find that it's an interesting read.

All that aside, I think that Halloween is one of my favorite days. It's fun to watch all the children dress up. Each year I wonder what the costume of preference will be. When we first moved into our neighborhood there were lots of children so we would have a great turnout of little ghouls and goblins. One year I dressed up as the witch from Hansel and Gretel and sat in a dark entry and as the children would approach I would sing "Nibble nibble mousy, whose nibbling at my housy" then would cackle. Believe me the little ones had really big eyes after that. Then I would get up and approach them with the candy bucket, you should have seen their faces when they saw me in costume.

But over the years the children and their parents started going to the malls for trick or treating and it didn't take long for our neighborhood to see the demise of trick or treating. Even though we purchased our candy and had the porch light on last year, no one came to our house. So Dave had a sugar high.

This year we will once again purchase the candy and leave the porch light on and set out our little witch and her kitty all lit up as I have invited some of the children of my co-workers to come by.

Another reason I love this time of year is the house decorations. I love creative people who have an eye for such things. I'm creative but in different ways. Dave and I spied these two houses as we were coming back from dinner one evening and I just had to have a picture of them.

We had a fun day at work Friday, most everyone dressed up and we brought food and ate all day long. I fixed Taco Soup, Someone brought chopped brisket sandwiches, another brought Texas Caviar as well as little smokies, then there were veggie and fruit plates, doughnuts and cookies and cupcakes. We had a lot of fun with all the costumes and pranks we played on each other. Here is a group of us and some of the zany outfits we had on. Others were dressed but not able to be in the picture so their individual pictures are below.

One person brought up a teacup pot belly pig names Spartacus, and you guessed it...I will leave that for you to figure out. Farmer Teddy and Spartacus Moose, the only pig I know that has his own Facebook page.

It was fun to sit on my front porch last night and listen to the OU Pride perform music from The Rocky Horror Show, The Munsters and other selection down at the soccer field for the Bedlam game between OU and OSU. They had over 2000 fans show up. Unfortunately OU lost to OSU 2-0. Maybe next year. But the girls did make it to the Big XII championship, so we are proud of their efforts.

Stay safe and Happy Halloween...and Happy Trails until next time.

Another Week Gone...

It's Friday and heading into the weekend. At the moment we're getting ready to get soaked again as another round of rain passes through the area. Don't get me wrong we really need the rain, but my poor little dog just hates thunder. At about 1:10 a.m. this morning he started whining as he jumped up on my bed and proceeded to sit on my head shaking up a storm. He does that when he is scared. After arousing me from a great sleep, I had to get up and put him in his crate. it seems to be the only thing that calms him. It took me awhile to get back to sleep but sleep I did until the alarm went off at 6:40 a.m. We had the attic fan running and the cool night air was wonderful.


I love to wake up slowly and unhurried as my day just seems to go better when I do. So I generally hit the snooze button and turn on Fox and Friends to see what has happened overnight. I will toggle between that and one of the local stations to see what is going on with the weather. I then put out the dogs and wake Dave so he can make the coffee. I bring in the dogs and finish getting dressed, grab my cuppa coffee and out the door we go so Dave can take me to work. I just wish I could sleep in on the weekends. That would be loverly.

What's on my plate this weekend? More of getting rid of stuff. Between the big dog and Dave I have managed to downsize my collection of bowls this week. I had some beef grease in a bowl at the back of the stove, letting it solidify and the big boy got up and pulled that down breaking the bowl, and Dave was soaping up a bowl to clean it and it slipped out of his hands and broke in the sink. So that is two less of what I have to get rid of.

We will most likely watch the Sooners play Missouri and watch some Sunday Pro football, will have to see who is playing though. But that is it for our weekend. Nothing exciting going on unless we decide to go somewhere. Just chillin before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 come out next month. We can hardly wait.

I will say this though...I will be glad when this election cycle is over. I'm fed up with all the campaign phone calls we get each day. I know...they're trying to get the pulse of the voter but enough already, I don't need 10+ calls a day of campaign messages and pollsters taking polls.

Well that's it for now, pizza night tonight and a movie, The Half Blood Prince, a Harry Potter film . So...getting ready to go grab one of our favorites, Pepperoni and Mushroom on a thin crust. Have a good Friday everyone.

Happy trails...

Just an Ordinary Day....NOT!!!!!!

What started out as a normal mundane Wednesday turned out so far to be far from mundane. Around 9 o'clock this morning while sitting at my desk a low rumble started then cresendoed into a solid shake of the building lasting four seconds but for me lasted longer than that. EARTHQUAKE!!!!! 5.1 on the Richter scale. I've never experienced an earthquake before. At first thought that it was jets doing a very low flyover when I realized that there was no jet noise. The adrenalin started rising and everyone in the office started talking at once. "What was going on?" "Was that an earthquake?"

The quake was located about 6 miles east of Norman out by Lake Thunderbird near Highway 9. Jones, Oklahoma which is north of us gets lots of 3. quakes which are not felt here. But this one was felt in Kansas City, KS and Grapevine, TX

One of the skylights in one of our tall buildings here on campus cracke severly so they evacuated the building for precautionary measures. I called Dave and he said the pictures on the wall were bouncing all over the place.

Just as we were all starting to lower the adrenalin levels, the fire alarm went off in the building. False alarm or not we have to evacuate. So I grabbed my purse, blue book (I am the official head counter), cell phone and out the door I went with the rest of the crew. Once down 4 flights of stairs and out the door we learn that it's a false alarm. Adrenalin rising again and trying to come back down, I quipped "well to complete the drill for the day we just need a tornado and the day will be complete." Oops did I just say that? The day is not over and yet and it's Oklahoma. As Will Rogers said "Wait a minute and the weather will change."

Well so much for an ordinary day!

Happy trails....

And Behind Door Number 2....

Is a beautiful pre-op room just waiting for you...today starts the countdown to my next knee surgery which will take place on December 1st. 55 days and counting. I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet since I don't know if I will have health care next year provided by the university or not. Everything is so up in the air and such a mess.

Once this is taken care of I will for the first time in over 25 years be able to bend down normally and pick something up off the floor without pain. Acting like a giraffe all these years has not exactly been pleasurable. One of the side effects from the first surgery has been that my left foot has been hurting me. When I talked to the Dr. today he informed me that once we get the other leg done that my feet will be in their normal walking position and the pain should stop so in the meantime, I am to wear inserts to support the arch and to keep the foot from rolling inward. We will see how that goes.

I know I'm going to have a lot of work ahead of me. I so looked forward to the first surgery last year in getting my left knee fixed. Don't get me wrong. I am looking forward to this surgery as well but with less enthusiasm since I know all the hard work involved in getting better. But done it must be, so without further adieu...So with true American fortitude...Onward Ho!

Happy Trails.....