Solo in the City + The Halloween That Wasn't

It's been kind of a dull couple of weeks with Dave away. We are pretty good at going off on mini-adventures together - even if it's just to spend an afternoon walking all over the city. Without him around, I still love going on walks... but solo walks tend to end up being a bit shorter due to a combination of boredom and my desire to not walk alone in the dark. It stays pretty dark here in the mornings until almost 8am and then gets dark again around 6pm, so my window for walking after work isn't huge!

.  fall things, things fall .

On top of that it's been very rainy (duh), which also makes walking less appealing. Going on drives out of the city hasn't really been on the agenda either since our car window was smashed. I haven't been able to get it repaired yet because it's not my car and I'm not sure how insurance will work up here in Canada, as we haven't gotten Canadian car insurance yet. Dave will be coming home tomorrow (whoop!!) and we'll have to deal with it then. In the meantime I did an ultra ghetto patch-up job of duct taping a black garbage bag over the gaping hole in the door. It's funny b/c the guy with the truck beside ours (whose truck window was also smashed) has a very nice, clear plastic temporary seal on his window that looks like a professional did it, and ours looks like Oscar the Grouch stopped by to help out with the repair.

I did manage to take the car to a gas station yesterday in the pouring rain and spent some time vacuuming the glass up out of the backseat (and trunk and front seat and window pockets and under the rugs and inside the center console and seatback pockets and and and and GEEZUS THERE'S A TON OF BROKEN GLASS HERE!!). As soon as I started driving away from the gas station, though, a fresh cascade of broken glass fell out of the window frame and left a new pile on the floor in the back of the car. Awesome. Dave very helpfully pointed out to me last night that, "Car glass will not stay together broken. It will just keep crumbling." Now you tell me!

You might be asking why I opted to do all that in the pouring rain, and to that I say: a) Hey, it's always raining here. What, am I going to wait for a sunny day to vacuum? b) It was something that was hanging over my head and I just wanted to be done with it.  c) ... I actually just didn't notice it was raining before I left my apartment to undertake this project. I didn't bring an umbrella or wear rain-appropriate footwear either. When I returned home a half hour later, drenched from head to toe, the 20-year-old in the elevator with me timidly suggested that I ought to get myself an umbrella. So I stabbed him. #jk

What else is going on this week? Halloween. I took turns emotionally dressing up as both Debbie Downer and a sad panda this past weekend as Facebook was flooded with pics of people dressed up in ridiculous costumes and partying with their buds. I absolutely love Halloween and I always have. When we were younger, my sister Mallory and I used to start planning our Halloween costumes in November practically. My mother used to frequent fabric shops like JoAnn Fabrics (#whatupPittsfield?) and there was always an entire section of pattern books in the back of the store. Mallory and I would pore over these books looking at Halloween costume ideas, literally any time of the year. Fast forward to 2012 and I am still planning my Halloween costumes nearly years in advance. I even started setting calendar reminders for myself in my phone - i.e Early last year I actually set "South park character halloween costume" as a reminder for myself in my calendar for October 1, 2011. No jokes.

This year was the first year probably in my entire life that I didn't dress up for Halloween. I had no one to spend it with and no house party to attend!! WAH WAHHHH. Dave said that we could watch Halloween movies together when he gets home but we'll just see how that pans out. Mostly because there is no such thing as a movie store anymore and I'm pretty sure Redbox is fresh out of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Hocus Pocus. Netflix, I'm not even going to bother with your streaming library. I know you don't have what I need.

In the absence of current costumes, here is a look back at some awesome Halloweens past:

.  2003 halloween at umass - i'm in the middle as bedtime bear . 

.   halloween 2004 at umass.  super troopers were the costume to beat that year, chuggin' ron roberto out of syrup bottles  .

.  2006 halloween at umass - bonnie and an apparently deceased clyde. whateva  .

.  halloween 2009 boston - all black everything .

.  with princess leia and smurfette, photobomb courtesy of a wild thing . 

.  halloween 2010 boston - another year, another carebear. apparently everyone wanted to be childhood toys this year . 

.  we are laughinnnnnnnng .

.  halloween boston 2011 - mr. and mrs. potatohead and me as neon. so on trend .

I might not have dressed up in a costume this year but I sure have been eating as if I went trick-or-treating. Not sure where all this candy came from or why I'm trying so hard to give myself Type 2 diabetes but... Dave might come home to find that I've turned into a Rocket or a chocolate-creme cookie.

Hey here's something totally unrelated - Taylor Swift, the little angel-faced sweetheart, has a new album out that everyone is going nuts about because it has sold over 1 million copies in its first week. This isn't the important part. The important part is that this is putting good old 'NSync back in the news because they hold the all-time record for albums sold in one week, with 2.4 million sold. What up No Strings Attached and the year 2000?! If you knew me during high school, or paid any attention to my life at all, you would know that I was obsessed with 'NSync from at least the years 1999-2003. How obsessed? So obsessed that I knew without Googling it that No Strings Attached was released on March 21, 2000.

On that note, watch this:


And hell, watch this too:


Oh those boys, with their music video hijinks and puppet metaphors!

What did you dress up as for Halloween? Did you hand out candy? What was your favorite costume that you saw this year?