Ready or Not (Random Tuesday)

And now, bits of random news and pictures from around here, linking up with Stacy's Random Thoughts at Stacy Uncorked.  

It’s time for The Great Neighborhood Candy Exchange, and we are as ready as we can ever be. 

One of my Monday clients rescheduled for this afternoon for health reasons, so i may be late for handing out candy.  It’s okay, Sweetie enjoys doing it, too, and since i’ll have it all set up for him, he can start and i can finish.

The neighborhoods have been getting their spooky on:

Little Girl has been busy making treat bags, and Bigger Girl has been busy making plans for the wedding of two of her friends.  Because she is now an official minister in the Universal Life Church, she has registered with the state and can perform weddings.  Said church only has two tenets:  be excellent to each other and respect each other's beliefs. She's just glad she can perform the wedding for her friends and save them some money (their only costs will be the marriage license and punch and cookies for the officiant and witnesses).

Sweetie got his new boots with his birthday money, and he is as happy as a kid at Christmas.  He's been talking about these boots forever, the ones with the steel shanks for arch support and real stitching so they can be resoled and reheeled when they need it and thus last forever.

This especially makes sense when you find out he has more clothes and shoes than i do, and spends more time and money on his hair than i do on mine.  He's a musician, and all musicians have that prima donna in there someplace.

The weather has been lovely, the parts of the pet geranium that have survived the dog are repotted into two separate pots and seem happy, and Tripod SissyCat and i are spending most evenings on the porch, her nice and cozy in her fur coat and me wrapped in jackets and clutching my rice sock.  No, it isn't that cold, but it only takes temperatures below 70° for my body temperature to drop and my fingers and toes to turn to ice cubes.  That's one reason i am willing to visit almost anyplace, but i don't want to live full time anywhere but a desert or the Deep South.   Well, maybe Hawaii or Tahiti, but i'd have to be rich to live either of those places.

Happy Halloween everyone!  May you receive only treats and no tricks.

Today is:

Admission Day -- Nevada, US

Allantide -- Cornwall, England

All Hallows Eve -- Christian

Apple and Candle Night -- Wales

Books for Treats Day -- San Jose, CA, US (give gently used books to kids, not candy -- feed their brains, not their cavities!)

Chiang Kai-Shek Day -- Taiwan

Day of the Seven Billion -- day in 2011 the UN declared the world population to have reached 7,000,000,000  

Dias de los Muertos -- Mexico, esp. Michoacan and Oaxaca (through Nov. 2; ceremonies, sand sculptures, decorated altars, and parties through the nights in the cemetaries)

Dookie Apple Night -- Newcastle, England

Duck Apple Night -- Liverpool, England

Feast of Sekhmet Bast Ra -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Festival of Inner Worlds -- Pagan (fight between the old and new year)

Founder's Day -- Girl Scouts of the USA (Juliette Gordon Low's birth anniversary)

Ghostwriter's Day

Hallowe'en or Beggar's Night

Increase Your Psychic Powers Day -- originated in England in the 19th century, some celebrated on the 30th

King Father Nordom Sihanouk's Birthday -- Cambodia

National Candy Apple Day

National Knock-Knock Joke Day

    Knock, Knock

    Who's There?

    Police.

    Police who?

    Police stop telling knock-knock jokes!

National Magic Day -- Society of American Magicians (in honor of Harry Houdini, who died on this day in 1926, and who was president of the SoAM)

National UNICEF Day

Nut-Crack Night -- England; Scotland

Old Celtic New Year's Eve

Out of the Broom Closet Day -- Pagan, Heathen, and all earth-based and ethnic religions

Reformation Day -- Protestant Christian (trad.)

    Official Holiday -- Germany; Slovenia

Samhain (northern hemisphere) / Beltane (southern hemisphere) -- Druids, Gaels, Welsh peoples, Neopagans, Wiccans (begins at sunset)

Scare a Friend Day -- just not so much that he/she isn't a friend any more

Senior Absurdity Day -- Horace Mann School, Bronx, NY, US (a day the kids look forward to each year)

Sneak Some of the Candy Yourself Before the Kids Start Knocking Day

St. Quentin's Day (Patron against coughs)

St. Wolfgang of Ratisbon's Day (Patron of apoplexics, carpenters, paralysed people, stroke victims; Regensburg, Germany; against apoplexy, paralysis, stomach diseases, strokes)

Thump-the-Door Night -- Isle of Mann

Trick or Treat Night

Vetmaetr -- Norse Calendar (Winter Nights; beginning of winter, the New Year, and the start of Odin leading the Wild Hunt)

Youth Honor Day -- Iowa, US

Anniversaries Today:

Mt. Rushmore is completed, 1941

Nevada becomes the 36th US State, 1864

Birthdays Today:

Robert "Vanilla Ice" Van Winkle, 1967

Adam Horovitz, 1966

Dermot Mulroney, 1963

Rob Schneider, 1963

Peter Jackson, 1961

Larry Mullen, Jr., 1961

John Candy, 1950

Jane Pauley, 1950

Deidre Hall, 1947

Stephen Rea, 1943

David Ogden Stiers, 1942

Ron Rifkin, 1939

Michael Landon, 1936

Dan Rather, 1931

Michael Collins, 1930

Barbara Bel Geddes, 1922

Dale Evans, 1912

Ethel Waters, 1896

Chaing Kai-shek, 1887

Juliette Gordon Low, 1860

John Keats, 1795

William Paca, 1740

Jan Vermeer, 1632

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Car Talk"(Radio), 1987 (national debut, ten years after their start as a local show in Boston)

"Jamaica"(Musical), 1957

"Capricio Espagnol"(Rimsky-Korsakov Op. 34), 1887

"Tamerlano"(Handel opera, HWV 18), 1724

Today in History:

Ezra reads the Book of the Law to the Israelites after their return to Jerusalem from exile, BC445

First All Hallows Eve observed to honor all the saints, 834

Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg church door, marks the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, 1517

Georg Ludwig van Hannover is crowned as the English King George I, 1714

Execution of Girondins at Paris during the Reign of Terror, 1793

Sir Humphrey Davy of London patents the miner's safety lamp, 1815

A standard uniform is approved for US Postal workers, 1868

A tropical cyclone hits Bengal, about 200,000 die, 1876

John Boyd Dunlop patents the pneumatic bicycle tire, 1888

Arthur Conan Doyle publishes "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", 1892

Dedication of the Lincoln Highway, the first automobile road across United States, 1913

The Battle of Beersheba of WWI marks the last successful cavalry charge in history, 1917

The first of 160 consecutive days of 100°F + temps at Marble Bar, Australia, 1923

World Savings Day is announced in Milan, Italy by the Members of the Association at the 1st International Savings Bank Congress, 1924

Mt. Rushmore sculptures are completed, 1941

The United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal, 1956

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two security guards, 1984

EgyptAir Flight 990 traveling from New York City to Cairo crashes off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 on-board, 1999

Yachtsman Jesse Martin returns to Melbourne after 11 months of circumnavigating the world, solo, non-stop and unassisted, 1999

Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station, which has been continually crewed since, 2000

Surfer Bethany Hamilton loses her left arm and 3 liters of blood in a tiger shark attack; within a month she would be back on her board, and competing again within the year, 2003

The NYSE reopens after its first weather related shut down since the late 19th century; the two-day closure was due to Hurricane Sandy, 2012