Well, Halloween at the Maynard household was pretty good. I didn't dress B up in his silly Bee costume again; I figured the 5 minutes on Saturday was enough torture.

But I was thrilled with the Trick-or-treaters in our new neighborhood! We had a ton of them! We ran out of candy for the first time in years! And the kids were in costumes. Some were pretty bland, others were inspired. My favorites were these two girls with a Goth vibe. I complimented them on thier costumes and one of them said "We're dead!" and I said, "Yeah, that's what's so cool about them".

Yeah, I used the word cool in a sentence in talking to 9-year olds. Not only am I a dork, I'm an old dork.

Anyway, the last time I handed out candy was back in Decatur and while there were a decent amount of Trick-or-Treaters, some of them didn't bother with the costumes. Kind of pissed me off. You want free sugar, you gotta cough up the cute costume. At least make an effort! A lot of these kids were Mexican; I suppose it's a cultural thing. Being kids, they caught on to the free candy bit but the costume requirement got lost in translation.

Jon, Brenden and I celebrated while watching Land of the Dead, George Romero's latest flesh-eating zombie movie. It was okay, plenty of gore and all, but I hate to say it: I liked the remake of Dawn of the Dead better. And I'm a Romero purist! I don't know what it was - all the heavy-handed messages were getting in the way of all that zombie action. And dammit, if you're going to have Dennis Hopper playing the bad guy in your zombie movie, I *insist* that he gets eaten alive!

No, Brenden didn't actually watch the movie with us. He was out like a light; I kept trying to wake him up because our schedule's a little messed up because of Daylight Savings Time. Damn government meddling. It's all George Bush's fault!