Nov. 1. NaBloPoMo

Happy Halloween...or a bit after Halloween. This photo is from two days earlier, of a pumpkin given to my parents in Iowa, which was already falling apart (the top fell in the next day) and a bit moldy. I did virtually nothing to celebrate the holiday, since I was away from Chicago over the weekend (and away from parties I didn't know about/wasn't invited to). All I saw were a few costumes at the Iowa State Cyclones hockey game, and then on Halloween back in Chicago while taking the CTA. It's always a lost holiday for me--I have material (vintage clothes, uniforms--including some found in abandoned buildings!) for literally hundreds of costumes, but nowhere to wear it. At least I like pumpkins and I like candy. Day after Halloween, I almost forgot to look for candy except at my local Family Dollar, which didn't have much (Walgreens is a better bet). I bought a bag of candy corn for 50 cents and ate too much of it already. The store had Halloween decor still hanging from the ceiling all over...and plenty of Christmas decorations already up. Little trees on top of the refrigerated cases on both sides of the entrance. (They start stocking winter holiday merchandise the first day of fall every year.)

This is my first time actually signing into Blogger in months, since its redesign (which I haven't explored much yet). It appears I still can't combine my old Blogger account with my Gmail account and it appears posting photos still isn't any easier. But I wanted to try NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month, established in 2006 as an alternative to National Novel Writing Month (which I kind of hoped to try last year, but I know my limitations!): it's now hosted at BlogHer. I need to officially list myself and promote myself and figure out how I'll handle posts on a few days I'm out of town in November, but I'll try to have something up every day.