Halloween: The Final Moments of Freedom

Christian's 1st Halloween

I have been crazy busy at work. I started teaching an overtime class last Sunday, which means 3 days a week I'm at the office for 11 hours. Even with all that time I've found it hard to stay on top of things at work, let alone keep you all updated. So a little bit of catching up is in order.

The last bit of freedom I had was the weekend of Halloween. On the Friday before we got together with some friends for an all soup dinner (that is to say, witches brew) and watched Halloween-themed TV shows (though the Great Pumpkin didn't go over quite as well as the most recent Simpson's Halloween episode). We dressed Christian up as a pumpkin, but he didn't want to keep the costume on for long.

Our Halloween Pumpkin

The next day, Halloween proper, we visited Lyssa's friend Gita, who she knows from a Mother's playgroup. There were four little kids there, all dressed up. One, a Bulgarian boy named Boris, had facial hair drawn on and it terrified Christian. He'd run away in fear. When they wiped his face clean to feed him they got along much better.

They had a ton of Thai and Lebanese food for us to eat. It's a combination I've never though would work (let alone for Halloween, but then again Halloween doesn't really have its own specific food besides candy), but it was definitely delicious. It made up for the fact that the weather is still in the 90s, the leaves aren't changing color, there's no candles out for All Soul's Day, and overall there's no indication that autumn is upon us.

Lyssa was able to take Christian to get a blood test (at the ominously named Al-Borg Laboratory, which would translate to "The Borg Laboratory." We trust Christian won't be assimilated). Sometime this week we should get the results and find out exactly what food he has an allergy to, so we can keep him away from it, which will be good, since we've been trying to feed him three solid (and messy) meals a day.

Christian enjoying a meal

At work, students have been getting ready for the midterm (this coming Saturday) and handing in cause and effect essays. Their topics are all pretty bleak: AIDS, diabetes, depression, and teenage suicide to name a few. Aren't there any happy causes or effects left in the world?

With the little free time I've had I've been putting together proposals for presentations. This morning I put together a proposal to present at the TESOL Arabia conference in Dubai this March. I feel pretty optimistic about it. I had a proposal accepted to present at the Puerto Rico TESOL conference the 20-21 of November. So that's going to be my first real business trip. It's going to be a lot of travel in a very short time (basically half-way across the world and back in one weekend) and involve a 7-hour time difference. I'm not really sure when I'm going to sleep. But one thing is for certain, I'm going to eat as much famous Puerto Rican cerdo as possible while I'm there.

So at any rate, it's going to be a busy month. We'll do our best to keep you up to date on it.