We Love The Stars Too Fondly

It’s one night in particular when I miss the old house.

We always had hundreds of kids coming by. Families. Teenagers. Little kids. Pets.

If it was clear we always brought out the telescopes and let everyone take a look. It was magical.

No more. Last year I think we had a small handful of trick or treaters, a dozen at the most.

This year, not a single person stopped by. We’re at the top of the hill and off on a side street, but I didn’t even see anyone on any of the streets leading into our tract when I drove home.

Maybe it’s the fires. There’s another big one going off tonight, over 5,000 acres already in just a few hours. The “good” news for us is that it’s off in
Ventura County and doesn’t seem to be a threat to our wedding plans for Saturday.

Let the partying begin. Halloween’s over and was something of a bust (although we did have a fun Halloween lunch party at my new office!)…

…but the wedding weekend is going to be AWESOME!

Hello, November!

Let the partying begin!

Anyone who rides roller coasters is familiar with the “lift hill.” It’s the slow part at the beginning of many coasters where you slowly get hauled up a big, BIG hill to get the gravitational potential energy that’s going to be expended to propel you through a series of high speed twists, loops, spins, and other maneuvers generally intended to make you puke.

Usually you’re pulled up by a big chain underneath the car and you hear it clacking and clanking all the way up. But at the top there’s a change in the timbre of the sound as the first cars start to go over the summit and the rest of the train quickly follows and the cars pull away from the chain.

In a metamorphic sense, that final sound as you go over the top is the theme song for today.

There’s the new job, which is going well, but which is extremely busy and a bit intense.

There’s my usual bit at the CAF hangar where I’m always running the Red Queen’s Race.

And the winds have started howling here again tonight while the humidity has dropped into single digits. In the Bay Area there are close to two million people without power (NOT a typo!) as PG&E deliberately shuts down the grid to prevent the fires that its faulty infrastructure started two or three days ago. Here in LA there are still a couple of fires burning but the evacuation orders have been lifted – for now. We remain vigilant and nervous.

But for us personally, the big source of life’s flips, spins, loops, and stomach-lurching changes is a wedding next Saturday. Our youngest daughter is getting married, and the family starts coming into town tomorrow. I got to spend most of today frantically cleaning up the back yard and preparing it for the multiple parties and celebrations being held here next weekend. I spent a while this evening putting together a baby walker for some of the young ones coming in, one of whom I’ll be meeting for the first time.

I got my tux today. (First one I’ve ever owned.) I have a week to learn how to tie a bow-tie. (I accidentally got a clip-on as an emergency back-up if needed – I won’t need it.)

So maybe expect short posts the rest of the week.

Oh, and needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, I won’t be doing “NaNoWriMo” this year.

No matter how much I might enjoy the roller coaster of life, there’s only so much screaming I can handle!