3.2: A pagan birthday cake

Do you remember the year you went from trick or treating to handing out the candies? It's always a hard decision. You want to maximize your candy-getting, but you don't wanna be out there so long that it gets pathetic.

I can't say I remember exactly when I made the change. I think I didn't go one year and then went the next. I remember going at least once while I lived on River Oaks Blvd (which was 2000 and 2001,) and I remember at least seriously considering it in 2002 if I didn't outright go. I was completely done with it by age 16, that much is clear, but the transition I guess was an easy one for me.

By that time, I transitioned into the official pumpkin-carver. God knows why. I was just the only one of my brothers who could be convinced to do it. Or maybe I was the only one who was trusted with knives. I was hoping to get out of it this year but I didn't. Eric helped by doing the scooping, anyway.

It's Halloween obviously, and around here it means "Happy birthday Eric." And at school, Denny wondered when, in the decade-or-so since she'd been a college student, Halloween had become "Slutty Girl day."

I myself was getting over the worst headache in my own personal history. Back in Grade school, headachiness was my go-to illness when I wanted/needed a day off from school. That's not to say I never got headaches. In fact, most of the time I was just exaggerating a headache I had anyway. But I'd never felt anything as bad as I did last night. I ransacked the house for aspirin, tylenol, advil, whatever I could get, but could find nothing and suffered. Suffered all night, huddled under my blanket, sweating, tossing, turning, head pounding, body aching. Had barely any sleep.

This morning I was awake around 6:00 something and heard mom rustling around. She'd had some ibuprofin in her purse all along, so I've been popping those all day. I'm absolutely terrified this headache might come back and even though it says not to take more than 6 in a day, I'm definitely going to fall asleep clutching this bottle and will finish the whole damn thing if I have to. That would be well worth it if necessary.

Sometimes I worry that I think too little of people. I've always been maybe too quick to look at something someone has done and say "what an asshole." I balked privately at someone in my class (being that person's back no less) because while I was laying their CD review out on the website, I noticed they had the name of the lead singer wrong. And that was one of those "What an asshole" times, even though the name written and the real name sounded alike. But I'm a fan of the band in question and many others are too, and the mistake, however innocent, would have stuck out like a throbbing sore thumb that'd been caught in a door.

But maybe it's difficult to write A&E and not sound like an asshole. Haasim did it, because he's a hip guy who always knows when not to be overwhelmed by the glamorous-seeming side of showbiz. And some of the people working on that section today are doing it well also.

I also just realized that one of the stories in A&E this week was about the iPod's 5th birthday, even though that's really more technologythan entertainment. But it's a filler piece anyway that provided as little service to anyone s my KPI survey story I wish I didn't do, so glass houses et cetera.

My brothers bought a shower radio on the weekend. Now, that's fine, it won't hurt anybody. I won't use it, because it's loud and when I'm showering people are still sleeping for a few hours afterward. But the funny and odd thing is that the shower radio comes complete with an alarm, which begs the question: who in the hell is falling asleep in the shower??

Keep on rockin'
-Scotts