In Which I Apparently Still Need to Be Saved

Let me start by wishing you all a belated Happy Halloween, friends!  Hope you had a good time!

As you may recall, I seem to have gotten myself on the "Must Visit List" of a particular religious group.  If you need a little refresher, you can read about my prior encounter here.  

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday, hands down.  I decorate inside out and outside.  I buy the good candy -- no raisins or healthy treats here!

Now, my special little street is kind of tucked away, and no one really knows we are here.  Usually my trick-or-treaters are limited to my friends bringing their kids over.   I think a picture will best show you the scenario I am describing.

See the house on the left?  That's my house.  Like a Halloween beacon shining in the night.  On the right? That's the rest of my freaking street.  Not a light on in a single house!  Only the streetlight and the lights from the area down the hill.  I live in Party-Pooper Central.  I still got 3 intrepid kids though -- kids I did not know!  Very exciting for me!

What's a gal to do when she loves Halloween but never really gets any trick-or-treaters?  Throw a party, of course!

So last night I threw a little Halloween soiree.  I had all of my decorations out and lit up.  Good friends and fun times!  Everyone had a good time!  (Well, I'm assuming.  I haven't heard otherwise.)

Turned off the lights and went to bed around 2am, after a little bit of clean-up.  Nothing crazy.  We weren't obnoxiously loud, no one called the cops on us.    The important thing here is the time frame, folks.

I get up about 9am, turn on the coffee, and go outside to check that all of my pumpkins are still there.  (There's a story for that, but I'll save that for another time.)  They are still there, in all of there pumpkin glory...and I find a little something else tucked in my front door:

Join us!  Join us!!!!!!!

Are you kidding me?  Are you you freaking kidding me?!

In the seven, seven, hours since I went to bed the Jehovah's have been back again trying to save me! Apparently my status as the Spawn of Satan still holds with them, and they must now think I am trying to bring my friends over to The Dark Side as well.  

I've been told they are out in full force today, as a friend saw a group moving through her neighborhood early this morning.  

I'm not convinced this was a normal proselytizing mission though.  For starters, they didn't even ring the doorbell.  Maybe it was the same two guys I had words with last time and they decided not to chat this go-round.  I suppose they could have been scared of my decorations and didn't dare to see who lived inside. Due to the stealthiness of it all, I think it might have been my neighbor.  She might have pulled a covert op after last night's party.

Can't a gal just have a party without it being a sign that she is damned and dragging her friends along for the ride?

Let me leave you with this little piece of internet awesome:

One Month!

Do you realize, friends, that this little blog has been around for a month already?  Where does the time go?

In that month, it has been viewed over 500 times!  I call that impressive, friends.  I'd like to think that it is due to my being very funny and a teller of amusing stories, but I think it also owes a large amount to me not being afraid to make a complete ass of myself for your amusement.   Whatever works, folks! 

But seriously, thank you for visiting and reading.  Even if you never comment, just seeing the little stat that someone looked at the last entry is enough to keep me going.    What can I say -- even the tiniest amount of response is enough for me!  Otherwise I would feel like I was just talking to myself, and I tend to do that sometimes already so I really don't need another platform for it.

I feel like there should be something exciting here to celebrate such a momentous event.  Sadly, I did not realize it had been a month until about 5 minutes ago.

It's National Dictionary Day, Hurray!

After discovering that it was National Grilled Cheese Day earlier this week, I was curious.  Are there other holidays like this that I have been missing out on?  Yes there are -- a ton of them.

I have chosen to embrace National Dictionary Day, which is today.  I know it is true because I read it on the internet, and the source said they were the first to provide the list and it was validated.

According to the same website, today in also:
Baby Massage Day
Children with Alopecia Day
International Moment of Laughter Day
Pan American Day

I swear I did not make any of those up.

National Dictionary Day is a fantastic opportunity to increase your vocabulary!  Maybe you can't read so well and could stand to learn a few new words.  Maybe you have a proclivity to drop the f-bomb into every sentence and people think it is the only thing you know how to say.  Maybe, like me, you are an enormous geek and really love dictionaries.

Let me take you back in time to my college years.  The internet wasn't really around -- there was no Google, no Facebook.  I took a programming class, and it was in C Basic.   I had a Brother word processor for typing my papers.   We could surf the web, as it was, using Netscape Navigator.  There might have been more cutting-edge technology out there, but I went to a SUNY school, so we didn't have it.  And before you go thinking I must be older than dirt, I am in my 30s. So shut up with the grandma jokes.

One of the things that I brought to college was a dictionary.  It was awesome!  It was  from the 1940s.  As I was an English major and a huge geek (no change there), I liked to flip through it to find new and unusual words.  My roommate was also an English major, and she too loved my super-awesome dictionary.  We decide to make a Word of the Day game.  Each day we would flip through the dictionary to find a whacky word that we didn't know, or one that wasn't commonly heard in conversation, and proclaim it the Word of the Day.  The only qualification beyond that was that it had to be a word that could easily be used in conversation.  We would write the word and its definition on a piece of paper, and tape it to the wall in the bathroom stall so that all of our suite-mates could also get their learn on while going potty.  You're welcome, suite-mates!

We  went through a lot of words in the 3 years we roomed together.  There are two that I clearly remember, as the entire suite adopted them and loved them as much as we did.

Squiffy:  slightly drunk

Quaff:  to drink a beverage, especially an intoxicating one, copiously and with hearty enjoyment.

As you can imagine, we used the two together in sentences quite often.  An example would be, "I can't wait until Friday night!  I plan to quaff some beer until I feel squiffy!" 

Good times.

In case that is not enough proof of my love and devotion to dictionaries, allow me to tell you about my hamster.  When I was older and living off campus, I had a pet hamster.  He was the best. hamster. ever!  I had gone to the pet store in town, and I picked out a Teddy Bear hamster -- the fattest one I could find.  I believe my exact quote was, "I want him!  The fat little hamster sitting in his food bowl and smiling like a happy Buddah statue!"  I named him Webster, after Noah Webster.  He would roll around in his little rolly-ball, and you could pet him and hold him as much as you wanted.  I would take him outside, carefully supervised, so he could eat clovers and he would literally vibrate with happiness.  Sadly, he only lived about 2 years.  RIP my little buddy.

So you see, I really do love dictionaries and words.  

Just to make this a more educational post, let me share a couple websites with you.

http://dictionary.reference.com/   -- use it, love it.  When you try to use a big word to sound fancy and you don't really know what it means because you never bothered to look it up and then you use it incorrectly, it drives people (like myself) crazy.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/  -- in case you need a little help to be hep to the jive the kids are using these days.