Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Image: Close-up on my "I VOTED" sticker.

Here in Saint Paul, the mayoral election isn't nearly as exciting as it is over in Minneapolis, but I have always voted in all so-called "off" elections. We did NOT have police reform on the ballot, only rent control. Even so, at 7 am, as the polls opened, our polling place was hopping. Often Shawn and I are the only people in the building besides the poll workers, but this time there was a steady stream of folks coming and going.  That was nice to see. Perhaps people are staying involved, even though the former presidential administration has been defeated. 

Last night, I attended the MinnSpec writing spree at 6;15 pm. I had a forgotten that November 1 would be the beginning of NaNoWriMo for every writer ever. Most of the folks who showed up were working on that. I have nothing against NaNoWriMo but it has never worked for me--except to demoralize me, because I inevitably fail to make word count. But, I got some writing done at the spree/sprint, which was good. I don't know why these kinds of Zoom "accountability" meetings work for me, but they do. I signed up to go to the one in the middle of the month right away, too.

Halloween was surprisingly nice for us. Since it was on a Sunday, we spent the day putting up decorations and carving pumpkins.


Image: My silly-face pumpkin for Halloween 2021. 

We made a giant sign to put on the door that was readable from the sidewalk that said, "We are masked and vaccinated. Trick-or-Treaters welcome." This seemed to encourage people to come onto the porch and knock on our door. We had almost as many in-person visitors as we would have had on a normal year--which is not to say very many? Our house is in a very cut-off neighborhood, being between the highway and University Avenue in one direction, and Fairview and Snelling in the other. (Out of towners, all those streets are very busy throughways.) We rarely used to get more than a half-dozen, even before the pandemic. That's about what we got this year--maybe even closer to a dozen. I did answer the door masked, and so we got to see a LOT of very smols. I was surprised how many parents were also dressed up? There was a cute set where the little was dressed as an angel and the parent was dressed as a devil. I had another very one little one who didn't want to leave our porch because we have a lot of decorations that will light up or which are motion activated and he wanted to stay and play with them all. It was pretty darned adorable.

Meanwhile, I roasted pumpkin seeds and dressed up to answer the door. I have a go-to costume, which is basically a character from Bleach, so I just pulled that out of storage. 

So I feel like Halloween, for us, was pretty much back to normal. 

In other news, I am starting to contemplate how to find myself a group to watch and discuss anime. I had a small gathering that was working, but they have shifted almost entirely over to C-dramas. And, while I have nothing against Chinese live-action, it is not Japanese anime--which is my first and only love. I joined Anime Twin Cities some time ago, but I'm not terribly active there because they don't actually talk about anime that often?? (Seriously, it's mostly gaming and cosplay.)  I miss having people I can talk to about this stuff. 

I'll be at CONFabulous this weekend. It's a virtual con, but I'm on at least one bit of paneling and I'm going to be gaming Thirsty Sword Lesbians, which I'm pretty excited about.  If you're curious, here's their schedule: http://confabulous.org/wordpress/schedule/