Halloween etc.

I probably should have picked up on this years ago (shows how sketchy my Catholic observance has been here in Australia), but the Feast of All Saints is not a holy day of obligation in Australia! I've just spent the last 20 minutes trying to find the mass schedule for tomorrow for both the cathedral and the little neighborhood Catholic church, and was mystified because it seemed like just another Thursday. Well, it is -- huh!

Tonight is, of course, Halloween. Margaret and some of her friends actually did the best they could to manage trick-or-treating, but it's always problematic here. Very few households actually do the candy thing, and quite a few people get very combative toward the poor kids, shouting and insulting them and pretending like it's grovelling to the Americans to give a kid some candy on Halloween. (Yes, by the way, literally shouting. At kids. And insulting them.) We had about a dozen kids come by our house, but we live up a horrific hill, which limits the numbers we get.

In other news, I can't see my horse until Christmas, as the farm he's boarded on is in lockdown due to equine influenza. That really sucks.

Tomorrow I start my NaNoWriMo journey: to see if I can write 50,000 words in 30 days. I'm not a particularly fast writer, so this will be quite a challenge to me. Partly it's because I tend to daydream a lot when I write, and partly it's because I feel I need to see as far as the next bend in the road, at least, so I can get my characters there. This will be an exercise in writing blindfolded. In writing chaotically, extravagantly, riotously. In subverting, and perhaps dethroning, the Writing Demons. I'll let you know how it goes.