Halloween-town....?

The title of this post refers to my wife's favorite Halloween themed movie....right up there with Hocus Pocus.

As for me, I'm more partial to the old Universal Monster films like Bela Lugosi's Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolfman, and Boris Karloff's Frankenstein.

Needless to say, we both enjoy the fun that Halloween can bring and, since this is our first year in an honest-to-gosh home and not a gated community rental, we decided to take advantage. The neighbors have told us that tons of kids prowl this small neighborhood in search of sugary sweets so, while it's not quite Halloweentown,  we have to be ready.

To that point:

Multiple (at least 10) bags of candy have been bought and prepared.

We have the porch all ghastly and spooky....in a disco sort of way....

The ghost looks he's doing The Hustle

The projector to run old Halloween movies (such as the above mentioned Halloween Town, Hotel Transylvania and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein....my pick, of course) has been purchased and tested on our makeshift screen. We plan on hanging the screen in front of the garage so kids coming up the driveway will get the best view.

The fog machine to put behind the projector screen, for that added bit of eeriness, has been purchased....still needs testing.

We even put our front yard palm and oak trees to work...

I told my wife's sisters "My wife's sister ran into the tree.." I'll let them decide which witch is which :)

We'll see if Bartlebee's arms make it another week

The guy up the street has his place decked out to the hilt. It looks very cool and I'll try to snap a picture tonight if I get a chance. There's no way we can 'compete' (meant in the most good natured way possible, of course) this year....but there's always.....next year. <insert Vincent Price laughter here>

So, what sort of decorations, if any, do you like to put up on Halloween? Do you get lots of 'trick or treaters'? If not, does that bother you?

More updates to come......hopefully <again, insert Vincent Price laughter here>

Long Time, No....

....See?

....Hear?

....Blog?

Yep, all of the above.

My wife gets home from work in about thirty minutes (it's now 3:01pm EST), so I challenged myself to get a (VERY) long overdue blog post out there before she gets home.

So, what have I been doing in the past two months, since I've put fingers to keyboard at the ole' blog?

Not much, really. We're still basking in the afterglow of getting our new home and getting settled. It's at a point, now, where everything has it's place and it's looking like we've been here for years.

Besides that, we bought a new vehicle.

We had two....a 2007 Ford Focus, that my wife bought before I came into the picture, and a 1996 Honda Civic that my wife won in a raffle about a year ago. The Honda has been very dependable, especially for having over 196,000 mile on it. The Focus....not so much. Don't get me wrong, it's been a pretty solid car but it's now getting to the "little things going wrong with it each month" stage....and usually to the tune of around $200.00-$300.00 a month.  Since we've both seen where this could lead, we decided to go car hunting before we really needed to. Long story short, we wound up getting a 2016 Jeep Patriot. We were lucky in that we were in a good position to put down a sizable (almost half) down payment. That, along with trading in the Focus (so long, pal) put our monthly payments at around $200.00 a month, so it didn't work out too badly.

My new home project is to get my office area set up and, as you can tell, it needs a lot of work.

Which I could use because, believe it, or not, I'm still writing....here and there...as well as going back and doing some editing on my NaNo project from four years (man, has it been that long?) ago. 

Speaking of NaNo, I've decided to not even attempt it this year. The past three years have been dismal failures....no one's fault but my own...and I don't want to disappoint myself again. To those of you doing it, I doff my Panama Jack and support you all the way. Maybe next year for me.

Next month, my wife and I will be celebrating our five year wedding anniversary. Not bad for a guy who had relegated himself to being a bachelor for the rest of his life. More to come on that topic next month.

So, how have you all been keeping? 

Tell me what's new and exciting in your lives. I have to live vicariously through someone! :)

Oh, and by the way, it's now 3:27pm EST. 

Challenge complete!