October: Pests, Plants, Birthdays and Halloween, complete with Pumpkins

Okay, I have had it with aphids. Those little suckers have to die. I'm instituting a scorched earth policy and getting totally new plants. Including a bunch of succulents, which they seem to ignore. I've found that the local ant population have decided that my flowerbeds are the ideal place to build a satellite colony, complete with eggs and infested with aphids. I've tried the organic way and along with the thousands of dead ladybugs, I'm done with it. We're going with pesticides, people. I've tried being good, but it just doesn't get any results. I've also decided not to grow any more edible herbs until I've killed every last aphid. I hope our chemical pesticide companies know what they're doing.

October 13th, Saturday - On a good note, we met some lovely people at Amy's housewarming. I look forward to getting some good avocados and tangerines when they start dropping from the trees she has in the backyard. I got them some star jasmine, which smells so wonderful, it just makes you feel good. If Daryl and I ever get a house here in LA, (Ha!) I want some star jasmine all around my house.
Can you tell who's going to win this one?

October 18-22, Thursday - Monday - Daryl and I took off for SF for pumpkins. I didn't get to eat at any of the restaurants I wanted to go to, but it was nice to hang out with old friends. We played games and caught up with people and generally had a good time. This time we flew up instead of drove and we played video games all the way on Virgin America. It was fun. I almost didn't want to get off the plane. It was certainly less stressful than driving, although since we spent all the money on the flight we didn't rent a car. I was so ready for a vacation. Although, next time we're eating where I want to eat.

October 27th, Saturday - Mo's Birthday! We had a lovely dinner with Mo and Lucy at the Cheesecake factory in Pasadena. I hadn't seen Lucy for a long time. She regaled us with stories of her past history as a restaurant hostess in super fancy places and having a crying fit in the closet on her first day. Yowza! I look forward to seeing that incident in her next screenplay. Mo's the last of the 1970 crowd to have her birthday and she will forever hold it over me that I am older than her by 5 months. Respect your elders, isn't that what they say, Mo? :)

Since it's also really close to Halloween, Daryl and I went to a Halloween party with our friends from TWoP! The theme of the party was "Anything British..." so we went as Fish and Chips. Daryl created these outfits from mattress foam, housepaint, and old towels and bedsheets. Mo was kind enough to lend us her overhead projector so we could make transparencies of the London Times and trace them onto our outfits. We ran out of grey metallic paint so we used the rust and purple to fill out the colors. We won a prize, which I shall treasure, for the Most Humorous Costume. I loved our costumes so much I had Daryl mount them to our bedroom walls. I am not kidding.
Here we are as Fish and Chips.

Can you see the DW references in the headlines?




Rose and The Doctor, of course.

No party is complete without Mary Poppins.


October 31st, Wednesday - Halloween - In the annual pumpkin decorating contest at work, I actually won a prize! I made my pumpkin, Sully, from Monsters, Inc. because we had tons of blue colored copies that came out wrong and I wanted to reuse them, instead of just dumping them. Honestly, I just love decorating pumpkins.
I think this one won the best prize.

I got most colorful.

Of course Jack Skellington won, too!