Pumpkins and Parades

As I walked down the street today (Tuesday, the day after halloween) I saw a good few bit of smashed pumpkin and then a little closer to campus a false mustache abandoned on the pavement. Halloween was over for another year and I had survived the festivities pretty well OK.

Our halloween fun started on Saturday when we got the chance to help the kids downstairs and their mates with carving their pumpkins. We were a bit late and the real hard work (scraping out and emptying the pumpkins) had already been done. The kids weren't all that impressed that they weren't allowed to use the knifes, so they had to make do with instructing the adults on how they wanted them to look. My new mate Devon was keen that his looked like Ozzy Osborne. I did my best and gave him some round glasses and a grumpy face as instructed. He (Devon) seemed happy enough. Pumpkin carving was carried out with Guns and Roses and the Jackson 5 on the stereo at the 10 and 11 year olds' request.

Last night the kids, parents and a few more friends headed out for trick or treating. K and I stayed behind in order to hand out candy to the kids that stopped by. There was certainly a greater uptake than back in Bristol. The kids seemed to range anywhere from 1 to about 17. They were pretty pleasant and grateful and didn't take too many from the bowl.

Last Friday was the OSU homecoming parade. Apparently this is an opportunity for graduates to come back and go and watch the football team play and maybe do a load of other stuff that we didn't really find out about. The parade wasn't all that popular really. There were lots of people in cars waving. These people seemed to range from the mayor and head of the college down to the people that weren't quite good enough to be homecoming king and queen. When they had all gone by we got some people representing their fraternity and sorority groups and then finally when THEY had gone by we got THE BAND. It was very exciting and even though K was a little disappointed that they were just in their sweats, they gave it a good go, especially as it was getting colder and darker by the minute.

When they were done, we headed home and stopped to pick up some nice warming Stouts and Porters from the local bottle shop / drive-through beer distributor.