We started October by going to see Postmodern Jukebox again... obviously this is not an ussie! |
No Casey Abrams this time, but we did get to see Tambourine Guy! Everyone was excellent! |
Then we got to see "long lost" relatives that were silly enough to drive from Alaska to North Carolina via Oregon... |
Dad saw Alaska (though this is probably Siberia!), but did it from an airplane on the way to China again... |
I swear I didn't go drinking while Dad was in China - besides Mom took this picture! |
Dad took this one of the lights from his hotel room... |
And this one of the strange sights over the city (apparently he traveled back to the early '60s before the world was in color as well.) |
He came back in time for us to celebrate my birthday at Red Robin... |
And then celebrate my actual birthday at home... |
Look! The meta birthday photo! |
Another meta photo! Dad only included this one because he gave me this book of photos for my birthday... |
Books and jewelry and Pop Tarts! Oh my! |
And new puzzles! I can't wait to work on 1000 pieces that basically look identical... |
I, of course, went with another traditional birthday cake design... and Mom came through with the execution! |
Which I shared with my friends at my third birthday celebration this month! |
They looked like this before the cake I swear! |
Amazingly the cake didn't set off the smoke detector... |
Not everyone survived the whole party, but a few of my friends hung in until the next day! |
Dad just wanted to prove that it is Fall... |
Hard to believe we're still having "beautiful" sunny days... I can't wait for the rain to finally start! |
Look at me! I'm the Rocket Man! You know... Reginald Kenneth Dwight... Sir Elton John... come on, it's obvious isn't it? |
October... October... October... What can I say that hasn't been said before? According to Mark Twain, nothing. "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages." Of course, that has been said before. By Mark Twain, remember? What has gotten into you?
Do you know what happens when you DuckDuckGo "mark twain october"? Do you know that DuckDuckGo is not a verb? Neither is Google, but people talk about Googling things all the time, so I feel completely justified in using DDG as a verb... even better, I can acronize DuckDuckGo and then turn it in to a verb! And according to the Urban Dictionary, acronize is a word so just stop complaining about that now... But do you remember where this paragraph started? In some stock markets, the Mark Twain effect is the phenomenon of stock returns in October being lower than in other months. The name comes from a line in Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson: "October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February."
Of course, most of us don't think of the stock market when we think of October. Most of us think of Lucie's birthday! You should anyway. In case you didn't there are multiple pictures to remind you.
The rest of you probably thought I was going to All Hallows Eve... And what do you think of when you think of Halloween? Christmas, right! Well that's what you think of if you go to Home Depot or Lowes where the Halloween decorations have already been replaced by Christmas yard art... But, if you are still thinking about Halloween you are probably thinking of witches!
Why are witches a common costume on Halloween? In the Middle Ages, women labeled as witches (from the Anglo-Saxon word wicce, or “wise one”) practiced divination. Such a woman would curl up near a fireplace and go into a trancelike state by chanting, meditating, or using hallucinogenic herbs. Superstitious people believed that these women flew out of their chimneys on broomsticks and terrorized the countryside with their magical deeds.
How did we get from women getting high and chillin' by the fire to riding on broomsticks and terrorizing the countryside? I'll tell you how. Surely you know what's about to come next... (now that is, "no I don't and stop calling me Shirley" but before that aside it would have been...) IT IS JUST A PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT! And of course, it is the biggest one ever...