Haunted Actual Hayride, plus Miscellany

We are nothing if not tenacious around here. Your Haunted Hayride gets rained out, you just get back on your feet, hitch a ride two nights later with your same work friends out to Old Saybrook, and you go on that Haunted Hayride. And then you go home, fix yourself a hot cocoa spiked with brandy, and watch the last four innings of the World Series.

In the constellation of autumn activities in Connecticut, I'd say that the Haunted Hayride represents a star that's brighter than the Corn Maze but not as bright as the Durham Fair.

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Saturday night, meanwhile, was my coworker Kate's annual Halloween costume party, attended by more or less the same set of work friends. (Such social butterflies! Apparently all pinned into the same display cabinet, this weekend.) I have lovingly attached the photographic record of my '40s-era soda jerk costume. Keen!

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I'm not a huge believer in Feng Shui, energy flows, etc., but I will tell you that having a giant, immobile, inoperative television in your living room does, very tangibly, represent a certain spiritual blockage in your life. To relieve this feeling, you must center yourself, then call upon your roommate to help you convey, with great effort, the source of the blockage into the back of his Suburu wagon. Then you travel to the city dump, where, in a moderate gray rain, you drive up to a ledge four feet over a heavy-waste dumpster and you just chuck that bastard. Thud. This is probably what it feels like to dispose of a body. It's a good feeling.

Then you get a new TV, and the spiritual energy renews itself and flows into your mind and body once more. Or if not spiritual energy, then at least part of Spaceballs.

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I may have exaggerated the extent to which that banana bread turned out badly. I didn't throw it away, and it was fairly edible after it had spent a while in the fridge. (The several muffins I made with excess batter were legitimately awful, though, and they weren't long for this world.) Duly noted. I am cautiously optimistic for the next attempt.