11/10/2004 Archived Entry: "Halloween, And Other Stories"

Halloween was a bit of a let down this year. For that matter, many of them have been since we've been here. The notable exception being last year when we went to Philadelphia for the private Crüxshadows concert, which had The Last Dance opening, and which veritably rocked.

The major downer usually is the complete lack of trick-or-treaters, both here and in Elmsford before. Our grand total the year before last was something like 4 or 5 or so. This year we got 2, and that's counting Dylan, the kid from upstairs. The frustrating thing is that we live in suburbia, one would expect plenty of kids, and we definitely make sure that the path to our door is well lit, so that people know we exist. So this was another Halloween that made me a tad sad. I wasn't even home for our second trick-or-treater, a ninja turtle, I'd gone to pick up food at the local Chinese/Japanese restaurant, and saw him and his father walking away just as I got back.

Our annual Halloween party was postponed to the week after Halloween, mostly because the week before Halloween we were in Washington D.C. and the actual Halloween weekend was packed for pretty much all our friends. So this Saturday was our little shindig. Karen, unfortunately, couldn't make it because she wasn't feeling well. Tom brought Audrey along, and Kit and Kreestof came as well. A small group, but I had a good time. We ended up watching a bunch of movies and talking, as well as eating.

We'd mandated costumes this year, and for the most part that was successful. Tom wasn't feeling too good either, so he didn't dress up. Kreestof came in some kind of evil monk/Star Wars emperor dark hooded cloak get-up, Audrey was a character from Inuyasha and Kit came in ratty clothing, signifying the state of the nation's democracy. Even though I'd worked on it a lot, I'd not managed to finish our costumes. I did get PreZ's Beetlejuice pants to a wearable state, so he had those on, with a white shirt, black tie and the requisite make-up and hair colourings. It looked good.

I wore my costume only for a short period of time. Because of the fact that I'd run out of time, I'd not had time to hem the skirt and permanently take in the petticoat, so everything was safety pinned. After almost tripping on the skirt hem a number of times, I changed back into my pants and shirt again. My red tie also hadn't arrived on time, which was a key element in my costume. The costume in question was Mina Murray (Harker) from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie. The movie itself isn't too great, though up until the Venice scene it's pretty good, but there are some great costumes in it. The one I was going for was Mina in a long black skirt, a white blouse, with a burgundy red scarf or tie, and a double breasted long coat.

The coat never made it out of the mock-up stage, but I did finish most of the petticoat and skirt, the blouse I bought, though I think eventually I want to either buy or make a nicer one to fit the outfit. One day hopefully I'll also find burgundy red silk velvet for the scarf as well, but the two times Kit and I went to the fashion district they were out.