Sliding into Month Eleven of the Year

The "fun size" candies start coming home as early as mid-September.

​I'm a sucker for a good deal, and it's appealing to load up on the cornucopian selection of kid-sized chocolate bars in the grocery store. Probably a signifier for an under-served childhood.  

And without fail, the supply fails to meet the trick-or-treating demand. Somehow, we find ourselves in a darkened house with only three or four dejected-looking candies lurking at the bottom of orange plastic jack-o-lantern when the sun sets.  

It's like the Halloween miracle: the feast of the ever-dimininishing supply of caramel-peanut-goodness.

On the other hand, the Viking outfits turned out well.

If not for the football game, we might have entertained ourselves by roaming the neighborhood, thumping our battle axes against our sheilds.  

Solidifying our reputation as the local oddballs.​

And with this annual candy ritual complete, we mark the halfway point of the football season. Followed rapidly by the slightly panicky realization that the Earth has nearly completed its annual circuit.

Although it's random (Is the solar system really a Capricorn? Dour and humorless? Seething with ambition?), the closing of the calendar brings NaNoWriMo. Whoohoo! 

The National Novel Writing Month is (I guess) a bit like running a marathon: it's ridiculous and miserable and neato and difficult.

​Competitors/participants have 30 days to write a 50,000-word novel.  That's a short novel, but even more –– it's a tiny chunk of time for a mountain of words.  The math says 1,667 words each day.  

With time taken out for Thanksgiving and various sailing and traveling days, my average would need to jump up to 2,273 words a day.  Gah!

Not saying I am going to finish, but...

The sword is mightier than the battle-axe. And that battle-axe HAS a battle-axe.