Crafting a Happy Halloween

Halloween was last week, and it was fun.

The family project was on full display. Tori made the mask and chain mail shirt that Kate wore, pictured here, and I think you'll agree it turned out amazing! We had been saving the pop top tabs from soda cans for months, and I spent a lot of time flattening them, bending them and then clipping. We all did a little of that. Spent so much time working with the pliers that I thought we'd all end up with bulging Popeye forearms. Then Tori figured out how to link them all together. The result was amazing.

It rained a little that evening – and for a little while it rained a lot – but the kids didn't let that slow them down. Much candy was amassed.We were Halloween central for Max and his friends, and they all came back soaked but delighted with themselves.

We had slightly – slightly – more trick-or-treaters than last year, six knocks on the door instead of last year's four. We're down at the end of the block, with two vacant houses to our left, so there's not a lot of incentive for kids to come down here.

I dressed in my pirate gear – well, what else? – and the first time I opened the door, growling, with cutlass in hand, I found five little kids and a dad. One little kid, three or four years old, took one look at me and ran! He eventually got coaxed back onto the porch and got his treat, and his dad thought it was funny. Made my night!

ODDS AND ENDS – The "most interesting man in the world?" I don't think so. The guy in the beer commercials is a cautionary tale for all of us getting to be of an age. He used to do all kinds of interesting things. Now he sits at a table and buys drinks for pretty girls and talks about how interesting he is. These days the most interesting men in the world, or at least in beer commercials, are the guys in the Heineken ads, plunging through the back alleys of exotic cities, dropping in on colorful bars and amazing parties with great bands and mysterious, beautiful women.

Still, either of those beers, Dos Equis or Heineken, beats the hell out of the mass produced American sludge passed off as beer. Anyone else notice this? Most of the ads for Coors Lite, Miller Lite and Bud Lite spend more time talking about the new shape of their bottles or their amazing cans than about the actual taste of their beer? That's because their beer tastes like horse piss. And I'm not talking about a healthy horse, here.