Halloween anticipation.

Here's an awesome little time-waster of a site: carve your own virtual jack o' lantern!

I love Halloween. I ordered 100 glow-stick bracelets last night, in the hopes that I can avoid buying a ton of candy that will end up in my mouth rather than the trick-or-treaters' bags. I hear there are some little Halloween Play-doh packages out now, too, and I might try to track some down in case we have a ton of kids or I want to offer a choice.

I know it's all about the candy, but I would have been thrilled with a glow-stick bracelet as a kid so I'm hoping the little ones will be, too.

One of my favorite things about Halloween is all the classic horror movies that they show on Turner Classic Movies. This year they seem to be planning a Vincent Price marathon on the evening of the 31st, with some generic scaries playing all day long.

One blissful Halloween 6 or 7 years ago, American Movie Classics had a terrific four-day Monsterfest, with all the oldies (Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman) as well as some great sci-fi monster movies and a few spoofs like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. It was fantastic!

Then the next year AMC changed formats to all commercials, all the time, and the definition of "classics" became "any cheap 1970s-80s crap we can scrape up from our library." Not that I'm still bitter or anything. But oh, that was the best Monsterfest ever that year. Sigh.

I checked AMC's schedule this year, and while they are playing a few of the oldies (stacked full of commercials) they're mingled with stuff like Halloween, The Exorcist and Child's Play. No, thanks. See, I like scary movies from the era before they became truly scary!

He got a birdie.

Todd was playing golf Monday afternoon when a friendly pigeon started following his group from hole to hole. It started diving at a couple of the guys, like it wanted to land on them.

After a few more holes, Todd decided to see if it would land on his arm. It did.

Then it walked up to stand on his head.

And it stayed there all the way back from the golf course out to the parking lot.

Stayed there while he put his bag in the car.

Stayed there as he slowly sat down in the car.

I think he was seriously going to try to bring it home with him, but then had second thoughts about the accident a panicked bird in his car might cause. Also, his bird-averse wife might have had a thing or to to say about his new pet pigeon.

But at least he got a picture with his golf buddy.

Oh, and his golf game dramatically improved about the time the bird showed up. Coincidence? You decide.