Happy Halloween!

A favorite pastime of Halloween is of course dressing up in costume. I'm sure everyone recalls hitting up their neighborhood for kid drugs, AKA candy, that your Mom promised would rot your teeth out. You always had to eat around the razor blades. Remarkably, it didn't rot my pearly whites. In fact, I never got my first cavity until I was in college. I guess that is pretty good for a Crest kid. Even in college we would dress up and have parties. One of the most memorable costume ideas I had was when my frat brothers and I decided we would dress up like a box of tampons. We wrapped each of our bodies in a blanket of white foam and made little white cardboard hats that resembled the applicator tip of a tampon. Then we attached a rope to the top of everyone's head to make the cord. We all stood in a giant makeshift box painted with the words "Tampax Multi-Pack" and displayed ourselves on the front law of the frat house drinking ourselves sick. Ahh, those were good days.

Besides dressing up and getting free candy, Halloween is about pulling pranks and carving pumpkins. Now I won't discuss past or present pranks I may (or may not of) pulled because I really don't need to be arrested - kidding. Although I can safely/legally discuss carving pumpkins. In previous years I've prided myself on exceptional pumpkin creations. Ok, that is stretching it. My best carve job was when I cheated and used one of those stencils to make the silhouette of a cat's face. This year, I felt as if I needed to up my skills a notch to impress my niece who was about to carve her first ever pumpkin. Now keep in mind she is not even 2-years-old yet, so her expectations are probably not all that high, but for whatever reason I thought my design needed to be original...a one of a kind masterpiece. So with knife in hand (my hand, not hers), we began project pumpkin.

If you recall in one of my previous posts, I had a date with my niece a few weeks back. I had taken her to a pumpkin patch where we found the best pumpkin, correction - The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. We enjoyed some time together picking out pumpkins, taking a hay ride, throwing around Autumn leaves and finished the day off with ice-cream. Then later on I helped construct a magic wand for her to be use with her Princess costume. I had promised to take her around for Trick-Or-Treat and I would be dressed up as her frog/prince. I might tell more on that story perhaps another day, but for now, let's get back to the pumpkin carving. After having a deep discussion with her on how we should go about the design and with her being highly distracted by the pumpkin guts, she decided I should make a "boo face". Thankfully, I can carve 2 circles for eyes and one giant oblong circle for the "boo mouth". Project complete - masterpiece stunning! However, the pumpkin photographed in this post remains one of my all-time favorites.

Here is wishing everyone a Happy Halloween! While the ghosts and goblins are out Trick-Or-Treating tonight and leaving flaming bags of poo on your front porch to stomp out, I will be yelling and cheering live from Heinz Field as I take in Monday Night Football. My Steelers take on the Ravens! So while all of you are stuffing your faces full of chocolate and wiping the doo-doo off your shoe, turn your TV on and see if you can locate me in the stands. My seats are on the second level from the field, around the 40 yard line, near the open end of the stadium, right behind Cower's bench. I should be easy to spot. I'll be that one guy screaming his head off in the Steelers jersey. Yeah, nobody will resemble me in the least. ;)