we had some tasty tasty shrimp boil that chuck and keith produced. although there was sausage and chicken in there too, so can it really be a 'shrimp' boil? i dont care, it was yummy in my mouth. we all carved punkins and they all turned out pretty badass, i must say. (you can see for yourself once ben uploads the pictures). i used a stencil from one of the books, it was a pirate skull and crossbones, which laurie did a loverly job with. so i used that, but i didn't do the eye patch and i gave it fangs, which are hard to see from far away. sigh. anyway, it was almost a very sad tragedy and i almost got the 'nip/tuck' o'lantern award for the year. i was all done and had scraped the stringiness that you could see through the holes and i just turned the whole thing upside down over the trash can and shook it out. when i returned to my chair and looked down at the punkin in my lap, he had but one eye. the piece that was his other eye and nose apparently went trash can diving. but i was able to stick it back on with toothpicks, so all is well. though i guess i do still get the nip/tuck award technically. anyway, we sat around the fire, beering and toasting, roasting and burning marshmallows. and laurie made this amazing-looking chocolate cake that i never had room to try. rumor has it i should've just eaten some anyway. oh well.

pic stolen from laurie's blog - thanks larry!

yesterday was more reading for me, and my delightful husband made some tastyyummy pumpkin scones with cranberries and dark chocolate. i have one with me for the breakfasting.

then we went to carey's for the rest of the steelers game and to begin the "Week of Horror! (Horror, horror, horror)." every night this week we're going to a different person's house for to watch a horror movie of the host's choosing. so we started last night with jared's selection of hellraiser: bloodline, which he remembered to be awesome. turns out, vodka doesn't make for an accurate memory. though i had seen it at some point, all i really remembered was pinhead and spaceship. and it wasn't bad really, it was just 80s horror bad - even though it was made in the 90s. but still, the creatures in those movies always look awesome, and not too many 'big bads' look cooler than pinhead. tonight we're on hiatus because the titans have the monday night football game, but tomorrow it's off to dan's for.... he hasn't decided yet. but a horror movie. definitely a horror movie.

ok. i may have to go poke the baby here in a minute. the teething and probably growing are making her quite the late sleeper lately, which apparently makes her the late-stay upper or the not-sleep-through-the nighter. daddy's not such a fan of that. i'll give her a little bit though i suppose. maybe start to find out if all of Rousseau's walks in Reveries of the Solitary Walker are going to be as 'everybody hates me but i don't care, but i must care, because i'm writing this down, but no, no, i don't care, they're imbeciles. definitely don't care. nope. why don't they like meeeee?" as his introductory one. granted, i like what i've read of him in the past and i fully understand why everyone hated him and why to some degree they shouldn't have, but yeesh, man. anyhoo, i have tom waits and coffee, two things that make a frigid, tired, stupid-traffic filled monday morning not so terrible. peace. oh, and don't forget to harrass ben in the comments if he doesn't post pictures in a timely manner.

maybe that's the reason i'm blah. i mean, freezing lowers your body temperature and slow down your systems and stuff, so i have settled into a state of frozen lethargy apparently. i have no real reason otherwise. i really don't have a case of the mondays. somehow i'm not tired today, even though ben and i stayed up past our bedtime last night. we churched, then went to jim and nick's with the tuckers (man, i would do things for those cheese muffins. dirty things. bad things. things requiring repentance later) where i made the (un)fortunate discovery that not only is their food great, they are masters of the pie as well. our pie-eating lead to ben punning (i can't remember why) "pie definition," which spawned a conversation to determine to what that would make the best title. becky determined that it should be a pie cookbook. i determined that i should never own a pie cookbook. anyway, after we got home we had to watch true blood and then we still weren't totally sleepy so we watched family guy, too. but still, magically not too tired. (knocking on wooden table as we speak - i have class tonight)

we did have a great weekend, though. saturday was spent moving our current batch of wine (a pinotage) from the glass carboy to the plastic bucket, cleaning the carboy so we could return the wine to it and add some stuff to give it a few extra months of tasty. that took longer than we expected, but oh well. november 1 we shall bottle it. yay! then we had an adventure to costco, always and interesting experience and to our 'main event' for the evening: we ventured to cmt to watch the premiere of the exciting new show 'hulk hogan's celebrity wrestling' with a few people from the creative dept. and yes, it was just as fantastic as it sounds,  even better perhaps since the head of creative was dressed as a luchadore. he even had a cape. anyway, after that most of them went to a haunted house but we were forced to be responsible and go home and clean our filthy, neglected, dog-hair covered house. it's much better now.

yesterday we watched some footballs, then i played in the backyard and ben took pictures of me for fun or something. and today i was productive during the morning nap and have spent the other times being entertained greatly by various baby sounds and flailings. she's so awesome. ridiculously happy all the time. i need some of that in my coffee. anyway, perhaps eventually i'll have something at least remotely interesting to say. there's always lots going on in my head, trying to make sense of it and transcribe it is the tricky part. i'm feeling very self-absorbed lately and i do not like it one bit. (oh the irony of blogging that. i'm so narcisstic, look at me, read my blog about nothing, waaah!). there's a lot going on in the general vicinity of me, and no i havent sorted out that french thing yet, though ben keeps saying "take the class, take the class" i may soon give up. that'd be one less thing to swirl about, having a tangible (or internetangible) set of lessons, the accountability, the structure. anyway, if you've made it to the end, kudos. i have no real reward unfortunately. i have this: i'm listening to the bon iver album and i really don't think i'll ever get tired of it, i'm freezing, but half an hour from heading towards coffee (then class, also freezing), i am truly, unbelievably freaking blessed, in just about every possible way (except perhaps metabolically :->), and if you're reading this, then you have access to (and probably own) a computer, electricity and in all likelihood a place to live, you too, are so much better off than so much of the world. say thank you. oh, and tomorrow a happy post, i promise.