My Kind of Hallowe'en

For some reason that I don't quite get, people love Halloween. I have never really been into it, and don't really enjoy the dressing up part. It might be because it's always so cold and Halloween costumes for women tend to leave little to the imagination, but I think it's also because my costume ideas tend to just become a a big pile of FAIL.

This year I was sort of saved from Halloween because my mom was visiting. Even though she left on Halloween, and left me time for some fun, I am just too tired. Plus I didn't have time to even think about a costume.

So, for Halloween, I put on my The Graveyard Book t-shirt and I wrote a short review on Charlaine Harris' Club Dead. Lame? Yes. But it's better than nothing. After all, Neil Gaiman wrote The Graveyard Book, and he recently proposed that we should all give each other scary books for Halloween; and Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series is about vampires.

Oh, and thinking it would be scary, we watched Let the Right One In to start off the Halloween weekend. It was not scary at all, but it was a good foreign film, and a very interesting portrayal of a vampire.

Who am I kidding? My Halloween "celebration" was less than half-hearted. At any rate, Happy Halloween! There's still time to go out and find a scary book to give. I recommend Mr. Gaiman's Coraline. The Other Mother is spooky-ooky no matter how old you are.

Wooden Gate Quilts

Yesterday my mom and I were challenged to control our fabric-shopping impulses at Wooden Gate Quilts in Danville, California. It was my first time in the store, and I might already heart the place.

Wooden Gate is a cute little shop on Railroad Avenue, and it has the best fabric selection I have seen yet. They even have a good sized sale section (30% off of selected fabric) with some neat finds.

I don't really follow fabric designers, so I can't really tell you who they carry, other than from the cuts I purchased. The yellow flower print is by Tina Givens, the green one is by Amy Butler, and I also picked up something by Moda. Sorry, no sample of the Moda fabric as it is a surprise for someone.

If you are ever on the East Bay and are a fabric lover, I highly suggest you stop by the shop. The ladies who helped my mom and I were just the kind of friendly retailers I like, they merchandise really well, the shop is cute and the fabric selection is so hard to pass up.

When I Had a Bad Day

Sometimes Seth and I don't make proper use of our Netflix account, and movies sit at our house a little too long. There have been times when I have given up on ever watching the movie, and just returned it. Then there are other times when someone out there in the universe must have known that I needed to wait for just the right moment.

The right moment for us to watch Temple Grandin came last week. I had a particularly bad day, and was just not happy. It was an evening to park it on the couch, and just veg; so we put Temple Grandin and gave into the laze.

Not only was that one of the better movies we have seen in a longtime, but it was just the right feel-good movie for me at that particular moment.

Temple Grandin is one cool woman.

I don't want to ruin the story for anyone, but in case you have no idea who she is, Temple Grandin is a 63-year-old woman with high-functioning autism. If you want to know more, rent the movie. I know I want to know more about her, and so I will be looking for a book about her at the library.

Breaking News Worth Watching

Did you have a bad day today? Then watch these Chilean miners be rescued. It is one of the most unbelievable things I have ever seen.

I just watched Miner #2 come up from from more than 2,000 feet underground. He was so exuberant after 69 days of trapped life in a collapsed mine. I feel for Miner #33, and the last rescuers.

Thank goodness for tenacity. Thank goodness for technology. Thank goodness for humanity.

On Overload

Lately, everything seems to be broken or a mess. From the car to the cell phone to ear phones...it never ends. It's got me a little discombobulated.

On top of that I haven't had much home-time recently, and I've got a project that I want to finish before my mom gets here. She gets here in about a week. The project is still in pieces. Some of them have been sewn together, but some of them have not. It still counts as being in pieces.

And then I want to clean the house before my mom gets here (it's really embarrassing for "guests" to see how we really live). This is something I would normally do over the weekend, but this weekend also happens to be one of the only weekends for us to go tailgating in SoCal. So, we're tailgating in SoCal. There will be no cleaning of the house this weekend.

On top of all this, I am still grasping onto my books. Yes, I must read. I need something to occupy my mental hamster. It's too bad I'm struggling with the book. So now I'm reading two.

This makes no sense. But, sometimes, this is how I roll through the mess. Burn the candle at both its proverbial ends.

Seattle in September

About a week ago, Seth and I were in my favorite city-to-visit, Seattle, Washington. We were there for a wedding, and unfortunately couldn't stay for very long because of my work schedule. However, we made the most of it, and enjoyed our weekend in the Pacific Northwest.

One of the most memorable parts of our trip was the dinner we had on our first night. Thanks to a last minute recommendation we headed to The Kingfish Cafe for some Southern food. I will admit that we were starving, but I have had plenty of unsatisfying meals while hungry. This dinner was de-li-cious! Seth got the gumbo and I got the buttermilk fried chicken. They were both yummy, and the chicken was cooked perfectly. Then there were the mashed potatoes and collard greens. Yum.

After dinner we had the red velvet cake (at the recommendation of our server). This cake was amazing. This extremely large piece of cake was served on a dinner plate, with three dollops of whipped cream, strawberries, and drizzled in some sort of butterscotch heaven. The cream cheese frosting was divine. Seriously, if you're in Seattle, look this place up. The atmosphere was relaxed and hip, and it's not a touristy spot. And save room for the cake.

Oops, almost forgot about the rest of the trip. On a beautiful and sunny Saturday we walked down to Pike Place Market and stumbled upon the Artisan Food Festival and a wine and beer garden. Then we traipsed over to the Fox Sports Grill in time to see UCLA hook those Horns. Sunday ended up being totally overcast, but we walked to the International District for dim sum at Honey Court; stood outside of Qwest Field and debated trying to get tickets and watch Seahawks vs. Chargers; and took the Seattle Underground Tour.

All of a sudden it was time to go back to the Bay. And I didn't even get to drag Seth to Forks.