Momma said knock you out!

Well, you can't win them all - looks like it was the Ray's year, and good on them! The Sox gave a good run, and I'm sure they'll be back next year - healthier (knock on wood). In other news, the job search continues in full effect (cue laser show and strobe lights), but to no avail (cut lights, use laser to cut hole in bank safe - reach in and grab stacks of Hamiltons, baby!). Actually, some stuff is on the horizon, but I can't really talk about it yet (don't want to jinx it, do we?). Spent the last weekend raking the micro-lawn. Unfortunately, there is a Sequoia parked right in the middle of the postage stamp-sized grass, which has dumped an epic amount of leaves on the property (the landlord says it is my responsibility to rake, mow and shovel). Egads. Anyhow, after filling enough bags to build a moderately sized bunker for a battalion, I spied my neighbors pushing all their refuse into the gutter. Come Monday morning, the street looked like the Paris Commune> - barricades of leaves making a herringbone pattern from one end to the other. Then, magically, a giant street sweeper suction truck came and whisked everything away. Hmmm... seems the neighbors knew what was up. We never had anything like this in Kentucky (nor Boston, for that matter). Brilliant. Halloween will soon be upon us - a lot of folks have pulled out the stops on the decorations - giant spiders hang off of garages, and headless corpses are propped up on many a front yard. In the spirit of the season I bought a discount pumpkin, gutted him for the seeds (roasted, of course - yum), and carved a likeness of Hello Kitty (is there anything scarier then the dead-eyed look of that infernal feline?). Too bad the weather was unseasonably warm - now the Jack-o-Lantern is looking rather tired ("soupy" might be a better adjective). It is so diseased and decrepit, even the squirrels and flies have avoided it.

On the top left is the kitty-esque template, below that to the right is the pumpkin before decomp set in, and below that is a lights-out view (with aluminum foil to protect the gourd and to intensify the candlepower). I keep hoping that it will hang on until the end of the month, but I'm afraid it will end up as a puddle of orangy goo. がんばって!