Yay, Halloween season is here! That means it’s time for our annual “sit in the driveway and hand out candy” party! OK that sounds pretty lame but we look forward to it every year. Big pot of chili, fire pit, 15 lbs of candy and it’s a party. As close to a party as I care to get, anyway. Speaking of parties, we actually attended one this weekend. Our friends Michael and Alaina hosted the yearly blind-beer-tasting up at their house. Always a grand time. It has grown progressively larger over the years, as these things tend to do. This year featured 33 different beers to taste and rate. Well beyond my attention span, I might add. It was a great time as always, despite the fact that my entry did not win. Tasteless savages. Actually I do not recall what did win… Probably a Zima knowing this crowd.

That party pretty well ate up our weekend. In other local news is the big power outages, AGAIN. What a farce. Luckily (knock on wood,) our house has not been impacted yet, but it is uncomfortably close. I spent a good amount of time Sunday shopping for generators, just in case. You know, something similar to the one I sold for next-to-nothing in our garage sale last year. Because who would ever need a generator out here, right? Good grief. Actually the party hosts lost power the day of the event. How convenient is that; You invite 70+ people over and the lights go out. Luckily they were able to secure a loaner generator and get it hooked up in time, which performed admirably. In the “what a drag” news, one of our favorite wineries is no more, having burned down in the Kincade fire. We’ve been members there for a few years and always look forward to a visit when we get down that way. Actually, I think we have a shipment waiting for pickup; Something tells me we can write that one off. It was a very cool building too, it’s just really a bummer. To top it all off, the suspected cause is faulty power lines. Apparently these shut-offs aren’t doing a whole lot of good.