Only anarchists are pretty...

Halloween plans:

Tonight:
-House party
-Perhaps Control at Rocky's

Tomorrow:
-Perhaps Bowloween at The Clique
-KH gig in E. Lansing

I'll be in my She-Hulk costume tonight:


But I still haven't decided if I can handle being green tomorrow night, too. I may just fall into my old standby: Gothing out and being my evil twin.

Have a spooky weekend, all! I'll have this year's Halloween mix listing up later today (hopefully).

The best thing I've read today, hands down. Ah, autumn, how I love thee...

...I am absolutely thrilled with the crisp, cool weather. October has arrived, and it actually feels like October. Can't wait till the leaves really start turning, and everyone focuses on Halloween. I'm in love with the air at this time of year.

Those are the words to describe the first fire of the season:





(With thanks to K and her lovely parents for the firewood!)

...I am, in fact, hard at work on this year's Halloween mix (aided, abetted and inspired by Armagideon Time), while listening to those of the last couple of years to get into the spirit of things.

And I have decided to go ahead and just believe it's fall, even though the thermometer is trying to say different (the temps for the rest of this week/weekend are just silly, thus they must be ignored - at least next week is slated to be properly autumnal).

...sort of. I'll be working from home tomorrow, so even though it's Thursday, it's sort of my Friday. Looking forward to not worrying about the alarm clock for a few days. And to staying inside in the AC all day tomorrow, as it's supposed to hit fucking 90 degrees during the day. I'm just disgusted with this hot, sticky, summery weather. I'm dreaming of crisp, cool air. It's late September, for the love of heaven. Go 'way with the heat!

Anyway, as far as plans for the weekend go, I have few:

-See waxmuse, who is visiting Chicago as of this very evening.
-Read, of course.
-Write, hopefully.

In other news, I've bought just about every Halloween edition of sappy decorating/home/"women's interest" magazines that I've found, and have proceeded to rip out all the Halloween articles (costuming, decorating, pumpkin carving, recipes, you name it) and put them in a binder (why yes, it IS orange). I think I'm probably going to do that every year from now on. Why, you ask? Other than the fact that I adore Halloween in general, someday I am going to have a house. And when I do, my house is going to be that house on Halloween. The one that the little kids are afraid to approach, and that the older kids anticipate seeing every year. The one where Halloween is in every room. The one that has a kick ass party, and hands out the best candy. And my Halloween binders will be the idea-books for that future house.

Of course now, having perused the October issue of Country Living, I just want to get a place out in the middle of nowhere and rake leaves/tend the pumpkin patch/sit by the fire. Guess it's good to have goals. I never thought I'd want to move out of the city, but neighbors like L make one long to get away.

The bus I take to and from work every day is one of those that's to be cut under the CTA's "Doomsday Plan", which is set to go into effect on Sunday. Way to go, State of Illinois, CTA, and whoever else is responsible for all this mess (I won't pretend to know exactly where all the blame should go here, I'm just pissed my commute is going to be all fucked up). Way to fuck patrons of public transport in Chicago. And special thanks to you, Senator Emil Jones, for postponing the Senate vote on funding for a week, making the Doomsday Plan a certainty. Aside to Mayor Daley: Good luck with that Olympic bid without a viable public transit system.

The first lines of the old Emily Dickenson poem keep running through my head these days: "I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?" Feeling somewhat marginalized in many ways, and working to change it. And also to keep my sense of humor about identifying with a repressed 19th century poet:


(Pic via Lolauthors.)

But at least it's nice and cool out today, which put an autumnal spring in my step as I left home this morning...

Shortish day today, as I'm heading to the Hideout Block Party tonight round 6. Not much to report other than the forecast of somewhat cooler weather for later in the weekend, which has me in a state of anticipation. I'm done with this hot and humid stuff. I'm so jonesing for fall (speaking of which, read this lovely fall piece by kiwi_grrl) that I, no joke, watched an hour long documentary on people who grow giant pumpkins on PBS the other night. (It's name: Lords of the Gourd. Awesome.) Now I have another desire for my dream home, in addition to a library, I would like a lil pumpkin patch. And I promise, it will be a sincere one.

So I will send my thanks out to the universe and/or whatever diety/dieties are responsible for making the last week of August not nearly as bad/stressful as I thought it would be. The 2 things scheduled for this week which had infused me with a dread of coming back to work were rescheduled for later on. Cheers, fate.

In other news, the trip home was nice. Time up at the cottage mum rented, which was next door to the one I grew up in, was lovely. It was less emotional and more nostalgic than I expected. Lots of rain, though, and I have a veritable colony of mosquito bites on my ankles from the night the power went out and I forgot to put on bug spray before going outside. They're finally starting to fade now, about a week later. It was good to see family and friends, and also good to be sort of away from it all for part of the time. Also congrats to M & C, who got themselves hitched on Saturday, with a full contingent of our crowd from the early/mid nineties in attendence.

Now I'm back in Chicago, and looking forward to the end of this week, and the 3 days I will have at home to do whatever I damn well please. I will repost birthday celebration details on Friday. Throughout the weekend there will be some cocktails, there will be some reading, there will be some writing, there will be some catching up on DVRed TV, and that all sounds lovely, doesn't it? I think so.

On a very happy note, fall is coming. Move out of the way, summer, it's time for autumn to take over now...



(Pic via Aethlos.)

...when all I want to do is stay home and read. (What? I know that's pretty much always true. Shut up.)

But seriously folks, it's hot and sticky out, the sky is consistently threatening rain that won't even cool anything off, and work's rather slow. So the books call to me. Also all the magazines with their mega-September issues. Because you know what's in September, right? Right, my birthday (celebrations for which will be at Panic this year, how fitting). Also autumn, hopefully. And autumnal fashions. It's hard to concentrate with visions of new boots and sweaters and tweed dancing in your head.

Speaking of autumn, I bought some prints from one of my favorite artists, Lewis Barrett Lehrman. These are the 3 I got (all images are copyright Lewis Barrett Lehrman):


Does Anyone Still Live Up At Dead Man's Point?
This one reminds me of Rebecca or Jane Eyre or similar.


The Enduring Mysteries Of The McPike Mansion
A real Illinois haunted house!


There's Always A Vacancy at Hauntley House
I just love this one. I had it as my computer desktop wallpaper all last fall.

The thing I love about Lehrman's work (and indeed most of the work to which I find myself responding), is that I have a longing to step into the painting. So if you like spooky scenes, check out his work. He gave me a coupon for a deal on 2 more prints when these were shipped to me (matted really nicely, too), so now I just might have to get more.

Go on, call me goth all you want, I know what I like. :)

Autumn in Chicago:



I snapped that on my phone last week on a nice walk home from the bus stop. Certainly it's not very good, but I still like the colors and the light. Especially since most of the fall-like weather and leaves are over now, as mid-November and thus winter settles in.

Thanksgiving is a week and a half away. Yay! and Eek! at the same time.

The weekend was spent not going out. I read, finally did the closet purge I've been meaning to do for weeks, and watched old movies (of course). I only ventured out on Saturday to go to the grocery store (where I must note that I found the Holy Grail, i.e. Simply Chex cheddar, a snack girlvii and I had found at a Target in Long Beach and nowhere else until this very Saturday - I was such a dork I texted her in NY to tell her, and she was such a dork she texted "Yaaaay!" right back - perhaps all the world's ills could be solved if everyone could just get the snack food they desire). The weekend was lovely, and probably the last of its kind till after the holidays. No more rest for the wicked (that'd be me) in November and December.

It's Monday, and I'm coming down with a cold, but that doesn't stop me from rejoicing at the chill in the air today. This is going to be an autumnal week, and I am going to revel in it.

I did exactly what I said I was going to do this weekend. Friday I did some browsing, and almost bought this from Hallmark:

But then I decided it had to wait. I totally have to have it, though.

Tried Hamburger Mary's with girlvii and strtmyorange on Friday night. It was good, fun and kitschy. We made it an early night, but we had a good time.

Saturday I met with a friend who is considering law school. Squelching my "don't do it!" impulse, I hope I gave him some good advice and ideas about it. Then I stopped at the Alley to do some punk-rock-baby-clothes shopping (and I will not be showing you my purchase until after I give it to courts828 this weekend, but rest assured, it's cute and kick-ass). I then met up with some other friends to watch Notre Dame lose to Michigan, which sucked. As a Michigan State alum, I'm always ready to root against Michigan, namely because their fans can be such jerks. The fellas at the bar we watched the game at were no exception.

Then I went to World Market to check out their Halloween stuff, and couldn't resist picking these up (small ones, of course):


Finished off my day browsing at Borders, where I picked up the other part of the gift for courts828, and a few more things for myself (ridiculous, I have about 20 unread books just sitting on my bedroom floor, and there I go buying more - it's truly an addiction). Spent the night in.

Yesterday was a lazy day, spent reading and, I'm not ashamed to admit it, watching the WB's Farewell thing, where they showed the pilot episodes of Felicity, Angel, Buffy and Dawson. I was always a fan of Buffy and Angel, and I watched Felicity pretty regularly as well. I did watch Dawson sometimes, but couldn't take much of Katie Holmes even back then (and the fact that she's pretty much reprised her Dawson character of Joey Potter in every role she's had since is even more clear after watching the pilot again). It is amazing, though, to see how many careers WB launched.