My first halloween

I've been ridiculously excited about celebrating my first Halloween ever. All the decorating and celebrating and dressing up - the whole scene is right up my alley. So it's been with much hand-rubbing glee and excitement that I'd been anticipating the festivities of this weekend. And seeing as it was my first halloween ever, I wanted to go all out, no holds barred. The elbow-little-kids-out-of-the-way-and-go-trick-or-treating-myself kind of all out. "You're disproportionately excited about this," Seagull cautioned me. And of course he was right - but hell, you can only celebrate something for the first time once, right?

So my halloween weekend has consisted of three parties and a batch of cookies.

I'd promised all the peops at work that I'd bake and bring in some Halloween cookies. And my big mouth talked about it all week so that on Thursday morning I suddenly found myself faced with the daunting task of actually having to deliver on all the big talk. So I woke up early to spend a nerve-racking two hours baking numerous batches of cookies, packed them neatly into plastic tupperware, and brought them into work. To my pleasure, within an hour, all the cookies were gone. "Mmm, thanks for the cookies, Ficali, they were yummy," people kept commenting all day as they passed me in the corridors.
Tip of the day: Baking cookies and taking them into work is a very simple and quick way of getting popular and making friends. And is just so gratifying.

Friday evening, a bunch of us from work headed down to Philly for a party. To sum up the evening: Large Mexican dinner, *giant* margeritas (is it really legal to make margeritas in pint glasses?), tasted a Yuengling for the first time, realised that even rubber spiders can make the blood crawl (and oh, oh they were everywhere!), and a rather unfortunate event that left my hand stranded in another girl's butt pocket. "Man! I think that was supposed to be me, not you," Schaffs said, shaking his head. But that's a story for another time.

Late that evening we returned to the hotel rooms we were sharing, and omg omg omg, Danby snored so loudly and continuously the entire night. I tried the usual pillow-over-head trick, but nothing could drown the thunderous roar. And it wasn't just me, everyone could testify for this. After an entire night that left us all tossing and turning in sleepless frustration, Danby was the only rested person by morning. He grinned sleepily at us, "sorry guys, I think I might have snored a little last night. Hope you guys got sleep". We all turned to gawk at him.

On Saturday, I donned full costume and headed out with Rohinton and Jeet. Being a gypsy fortune teller was thrilling, if nothing else then for the unbelievable amount of beads, rings, bracelets and other ornaments I was legitimately licensed to wear. The woman at the store counter gave me a funny look as I passed her six bead chains, a few rings, and a whole batch of bracelets, none of which seemed to go with each other. I gave her the look to say, hey don't look at me, missy, you're the one selling this stuff. Instead I came off looking rather sheepish. Conclusion: I liked being able to jingle-jangle wherever I went - I might even consider it as a full-time profession.

I can't believe Halloween happens only once a year. When I'm the president-ess I'm going to rectify that.