Setting Up for the Season

Halloween is our favorite holiday (I'm sure this news stuns you), and we always do up the house and yard a bit. Our decorations are modest compared to many folks around who really do it up, but they're at least as sincere as Linus's pumpkin patch. Here's a few pics of this year's fall dressing.

Last week, we kicked off our Halloween movie season with our traditional favorite, Night (Curse) of the Demon (1957). We've run several seasonal goodies so far, including The Autopsy of Jane Doe; Halloween III: Season of the Witch; Oculus; Malevolent; Nope; The Ritual; Ouija: Origin of Evil; Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark; It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!; The Thing (the 2011 prequel); The Thing (John Carpenter's 1982 classic); and a handful of others. Brugger is in Michigan again, though this time for a relatively brief trip, so I'll probably entertain myself with a few Bigfoot flicks while she's gone.

Let It Snow... (Again)

Literally, a few hours after the last of the snow from the other day melted, bit more fell today—about the same amount we had the first time. This evening, I decided to go walkies around the neighborhood to look at the holiday decorations. There's a pretty good many around, and that makes me happy because I love seeing the neighborhood all done up. It's pretty cold out there, but once I got moving, I felt plenty comfortable.

 

I was most curious to see how our lit-up trees in the woods behind our house looked from other vantage points. There are several areas on the neighboring streets from which I can see them, and they really do look great—kind of like a bunch of fiery creepy crawlies from another dimension.

 

As they should.

 

Our next-door neighbors have a nicely decorated place, and they put some lights of their own around the edge of the woods next to us. So, we have what looks like a convocation of spritely spirits out there, and I heartily approve.

The lights in the woods seen from our driveway; they're to the right of the house in the photo above, just out of the camera's view.

Our next-door neighbors' place and some of their outdoor lights, seen from in the woods.

Since Brugger is in Michigan, I took the opportunity to wrap her Christmas presents today and put them under the tree. I always label them clearly, so that, come Christmas Day, there is no confusion about what belongs to whom.

It's Starting to Look a Bit Like Christmas

Black Friday is when I typically start decorating for Christmas, and so it was this year. I do love the festiveness of the Christmas season, and Brugger and I always try to do up the house as best we can. We both have a bunch of decorative stuff from our days of living in our separate places, and there's a good bit that Mom had in the house. Mom's decorations were always nice, but fairly low-key. Ms. B. and I tend shoot for at least slightly more extravagant.

Prepping!

Tomorrow—Saturday, 10/11—is our annual Halloween Party, and we're expecting a pretty good crowd. This week, we've spent a lot of time cleaning, buying supplies, cleaning, decorating, getting our costumes together, and cleaning. Come Sunday, we'll no doubt need to clean again. But at least the house will be clean before we dirty it all up again.

Brugger and I been well into our Halloween movies this week. We've watched Night (Curse) of the Demon, The Thing (2011), and The Thing (1982), which are absolute prerequisites before Halloween can come. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is also on that list, and I suspect we'll get to it in the next couple of days. We've also caught Evil Dead Rise, The Exorcist, Don't Breathe, Island of the Night of the Damned Doomed Big Heat (a.k.a. Night of the Big Heat, Island of the Burning Damned, and Island of the Burning Doomed (I wrote about it a long time ago here). Tonight, since it's finally available after all these years, we're going to watch Something Wicked This Way Comes. I don't think I've seen it since it was at the theater in 1983, and I recall really liking it way back when.

 

Oh, yeah, there's more stuff a-coming. Hope it's coming for you too. Hahaha,

An Oktoberfest Weekend

October has been my favorite month for most of my life, certainly as an adult. It's the Halloween season, don't you know! Since I was a kid, going up to the Blue Ridge Parkway in the fall has been a family tradition. Apart from colorful fall foliage, the primary attraction for many decades was breakfast at Mabry Mill; sadly, the restaurant is no longer open. The leaves haven't turned yet, but the Virginia mountains are always beautiful, so we didn't mind going a little early this season. On Friday, Brugger and I drove up to Villa Appalaccia, our favorite winery within traveling distance, where we enjoyed an excellent tasting, a partial bottle of their excellent Dolcetto, and some light nibbles that we brought along with us. Following that, we drove over to nearby Chateau Morrisette Winery & Restaurant, where we had another very good tasting, followed by dinner at the restaurant. I had Osso Buco, which was enjoyable enough, though I'm afraid it was hardly my best dinner here. The shanks weren't as tender as they should have been, and the sauce did not go well with the accompanying polenta. Still, the restaurant is beautiful, with traditionally excellent food, and consistently good service, so my enthusiasm for it is no way is in no way diminished.

Below: Ms. B. and Old Dude at Villa Appalaccia and a couple of sunset views from the terrace at Chateau Morrisette.

Yesterday—Saturday—Brugger and I hauled ourselves, my books, and bookselling accoutrements uptown for Martinsville's 44th Annual Oktoberfest. I've been a regular vendor here for many years, and predictably for an event like this, sales can be very much hit or miss. Happily, this one was not at all a miss. I sold a record number of copies (which put me well into the black) and met lots of avid readers. I also ran into several good friends, some of whom I've not seen in far too many years.

 

Happily, good friends (and frequent traveling companions) Terry & Beth came up from Kernersville both to wander about Oktoberfest and hang out with us poor miscreants. After the fest was over and we'd broken down and packed up all our stuff, we all retired to Ground Zero for drinks and dinner. Ms. B. made a fantastic Italian chicken with basil & Parmesan on pasta that made us all very, very full. And then... cheesecake. Woot!

 

Below: A couple of images of Church Street during Oktoberfest.

Today, Ms. B. spent some time fixing up the living room to usher in the Halloween season, and this evening, we watched Night (Curse) of the Demon, which means things are getting real.

Beyond our own little corner of the world, things are far less content and "normal," so who's to say how the rest of our October (and beyond) will fare? For us this weekend, the world turned out to be very nice. I sure wish we all could enjoy much more peace, tranquility, and fulfillment. That said, I desperately wish certain people and parties wouldn't make that so damned hard.

Merry, Merry

Ms. B. and I put up some Christmas stuff last night. We've resolved that we're gonna be merry this season if it fuckin kills us.

Southern Nights, Northern Lights

It's damn near ironic that Ms. B.; our friends, Terry & Beth; and I returned from Michigan last week, where there had been talk that the Aurora Borealis, a.k.a. the Northern Lights, might be in evidence, particularly from the Upper Peninsula, where we spent a good portion of the trip. Sadly, the entire time we were there, atmospheric conditions failed to cooperate, and we never managed to view them. She's seen them plenty of times, but I have not, so it was a smidgen disappointing.

Now, the recent solar activity has made it so that the Northern Lights are showing up where here in Virginia and even points farther south. Now, they're not bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, other than perhaps as a bit of atmospheric haze; but cell phone cameras are frequently able to capture the light that our eyes can't.

This evening, Brugger and I drove out to nearby Forest Park Country Club, where we had a reasonably clear view of the sky with very little light pollution. We managed to get a few halfway decent shots of the Aurora, which was at least somewhat gratifying. One certainly doesn't see that every day here in VA.

Early in the evening, I spent some time putting out more Halloween decorations and carving a jack-o'-lantern. There will be more to come, but at least things are shaping up for the season. And we've shifted into high gear watching our regular Halloween-season movies. This weekend, we'll be partying at Terry & Beth's, the following at Joe & Suzy's, and following that, at our place. Busy times!

UFOs Over Greensboro

For at least a couple of decades, the residents of Greensboro’s Sunset Hills neighborhood have gone to town filling the sky with colorful balls of light for the Christmas season. These are essentially wads of chicken wire wrapped in strings of Christmas lights and suspended from the neighborhood’s many tall trees. In the early days, the display was mostly along a single road — Ridgeway Drive — but it soon spread to many of the neighboring lanes.

Last night, Brugger and I had to go out and about for supplies, and since we were in the neighborhood, we detoured down Greenway Drive, found a parking spot, and ventured into the chill night air on foot. Since the light balls have spread into nearby areas like a contagion — one far more agreeable than the covidz, of course — the night sky is full of them as far as the eye can see. We rambled to and fro for about a half-hour before returning to the vehicle, and then we headed to nearby WineStyles to enjoy a glass of wine each.

These are the UFOs over Greensboro.

Experiment in Terror

I always enjoy putting up the Christmas decorations at the old homestead, a.k.a. Pleasant Hill, in Martinsville, but this year is going to be a little different. With my daughter, Allison, and her best pal, Cannoli, currently residing here, things may end up... interesting. You see, this is Cannoli's first Christmas, at least as a member of this family. He's plenty young and plenty full of vim and vigor, so it's a toss-up whether the tree and household decorations will survive the season (or even the first night). So far, he has shown a little curiosity about the colorful additions to the house, but he hasn't indulged any destructive impulses. Whether this relatively tranquil state of affairs lasts... well, it's anyone's guess.

Initially, I was thinking it might be well to forgo putting up the tree, but as Allison and I talked over our arrangements for the holidays, we decided to chance it. It is tradition, after all; in my six-plus decades of existence, there has never been a Christmas without a tree in this house. Of course, in my six-plus decades of existence, only when I was a wee young lad did a feline also occupy this dwelling. To the best of my recollection from those days, we suffered no cat vs. Christmas tree disasters. Here's hoping for an equally positive experience.

Cannoli: "do i eat it, climb it, or knock it down?"

Atmospheres

Casa di Rodan is always populated by spooky inhabitants, both animate and otherwise, but for the sake of posterity, here are a few images of this year’s Halloween decorations.

Lights, Please

It is now after Thanksgiving, which means I can legitimately put up some Christmas decorations at Casa di Rodan. Now, my decorating is never elaborate. Going elaborate means a massive taking-it-all-down-after-Christmas effort, which is so very displeasing. Still, I do enjoy getting some purty lights burning around the house. Way back when — mid 1990s, I think — there was a house up the street from ours in Martinsville where the property owners literally filled the woods with those tube-light snowflakes, and it was gorgeous... almost surreal (I wish to god I had some photos from back then). That spectacle inspired grandiose dreams that I might similarly fill the woods around our Martinsville place with such lights. So, in the late 1990s, I think it was, Mrs. Death and I invested in a bunch of them, but the whole filling the woods thing never really came about. Nowadays, though, every year, I at least put a bunch of the thingummies in the trees around my house here in Greensboro.

I had set up my wee little fiber optic tree in the living room last week — a couple of days before Thanksgiving actually. Yeah, I know, this is wrong, but since Thanksgiving was so late this year, I wanted to make sure I at least got in most of a month of Christmas tree time — not to mention Halloween-skull-what-lives-here-full-time time (see photo). Upstairs, I have a tiny little pre-lit tree, about two feet tall, that burns in the office window, just for good measure. Again, no great shakes, but you put all this stuff together, and you might think the old feller living here has at least a smidgen of the Christmas spirit. I don't know if that's what you call it, necessarily, but whatever it is, I got a little of it.

Given the complications that have arisen with my surviving family members, it's going to be a very different holiday season this year. Early on, I was afraid Thanksgiving might end up an emotional bust, but — thankfully — it turned out quite the opposite. It was the most relaxing, satisfying, invigorating Thanksgiving holiday I've had in years. Brugger and I managed to find some much-needed quality time like we haven't had in ages, so I really have to say that this year's Day of the Dead Bird earned high marks in my personal history book.

Now, due to complications arising from the already established complications (which discretion dictates I refrain from relating in detail), I have fallen way, way behind on my current Ameri-Scares novel. Happily, over the four-day weekend, I was able to make up for a good bit of lost time, but there is still more to compose than I am even a little bit comfortable with. (Yeah, yeah, pardon the dangling preposition.) I still have a bunch of short fiction on the burner, not to mention a couple of more Ameri-Scares entries down the line. Still and all, I find that composing these blogs is not only emotionally therapeutic, it galvanizes the old writing spirit, which — much to my dismay — I have found flagging as so many issues not of my own making weigh heavier and heavier each and every day. I tell you, mortality can be a monster, especially when it's not your own but your loved ones'. Aging has certainly brought with it a measure of wisdom I no doubt needed. On the other hand, gaining such wisdom is really a fucking pain in the ass, not to mention the heart, and I could sure do with a little break from this living in the land of the wise. Alas. There is no such box to check on survey form you get for Living Life in General.

All righty then. I have had my say for the evening. I've got Christmas lights, and I've got a martini. And I'm diving into Ameri-Scares Ohio: Fear the Grassman! It's scaring the pants off me as I'm writing it, I can tell you.

You, keep your pants on. This book, and more, are well on the way.