Day 320 - Halloween

With any luck, I've mowed the grass for the last time this year. It really didn't look that bad, but both my neighbors mowed their yellowing lawns yesterday, so I was shamed into doing the same. Winter is definitely on the way. I even turned on the furnace last night for the first time. Amazingly, it worked.

The cool Fall weather is bringing more and more people and their dogs to the Wagging Tail dog park on Sunday afternoons. There were lots of dogs today and Dash finally found a playmate. There was a cute little Vizsla puppy that he took a shine to and it was fun watching the pair running at full speed through the dog park.

It must have been idiot day at the park behind our house when we took our regular walk later in the day. We passed a group of picnickers who had somehow managed to set a tree on fire. The odd thing was that they weren't even trying to put the fire out. They were laughing and talking near the smoking tree and continuing to eat their barbecue. Finally someone filled a bucket with water from the lake and threw it at the tree. They missed. Were drugs involved in this strange spectacle? Well, I don't think eating Halloween candy caught the tree on fire. About a half mile further down the path, we saw two guys trying to hit flying birds with a radio controlled model airplane. The birds seemed to evade the plane pretty easily, but once again it was a strange thing to encounter.

We don't get many trick or treaters these days. Most of the kids in the neighborhood have grown up and left home. There are some younger families at the end of the street, but parents don't seem to let their kids roam the neighborhood in costumes anymore. The kids still go trick or treating, but they are driven around by their parents to friends houses that often aren't even in the neighborhood. It's a different world now. Our parents would just turn us loose and we would roam around for hours in the dark collecting candy from strangers. Too bad today's kids don't get to experience how much fun it was to grow up in a world without fear.

In honor of Halloween, we have an M&M'S watch for you and Dash looking curiously like a spaceman in a low budget Japanese science fiction film. He was supposed to be The Tinman from The Wizard of Oz, but unless Dot was standing right next to him in her Dorothy costume, people would always think his costume represented something else.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day