Weekend update

Highlights, in no particular order, of my weekend:

Did the whole trick-or-treat thing with the girls. Calista was Sailor Moon. Keela was Princess Annalise from the Barbie "Princess and the Pauper" DVD. Both made a haul on candy from our neighborhood. They had a great time. Once they had so much candy they couldn't carry their bags o' loot anymore, we separated the cheap, yucky candy out and added it to the cache we were handing out to the trick-or-treaters coming to our house. Mixed in with the candy we were handing out were a goodly number of limestone rocks. When the adolescent bullies of the neighborhood came 'round (usually without costumes, just saying "Gimmme candy") we took great delight in slipping the stones in their bags in lieu of the good stuff. Too bad we didn't get the opportunity to see them exclaim "I got a rock!" later on in the evening.

When the hordes of kids tapered off, we went indoors and watched our video of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown followed by the DVD of Young Frankenstein. The latter is not, as the case would have you believe, "The Funniest Comedy of All Time!" It's not even the funniest Mel Brooks film (that would be Blazing Saddles, of course). But it's a darn good riff on the old James Whale films, and is utterly inspired in its lunacy at times. Good stuff.

The Aggies got upset by Baylor on Saturday. This is Bad. Let us never speak of it again.

Turkey City was interesting, to say the least. As usual, some of the comments regarding my story, "Prince Koindrindra Escapes" were quite helpful, others less so. To further muddy the waters, the story prompted the widest variety of responses of any piece of fiction I've ever submitted to the Turkey City meat grinder. Don Webb floored me by saying my piece was by far the best of the workshop, and ending with "I am in awe." Then I was promptly brought back to Earth by Jessica Reisman, who hated it with a passion and lamented that every time she finished one page, there was another after it she had to read. The other responses generally fell somewhere between the two extremes. Needless to say, some rewriting is in order.

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