A post-Halloween scare

So last night, as I said, I pretty much gave out candy for Halloween. The turnout wasn't very impressive. I didn't pay much attention to costumes (it's hard to when all you want to do is give them candy and shut the door) but I did notice that one guy from my school. He must be a year older than me. It's weird because I had seen him around school and at my chiropractor's office but we had never acknowledged each other. But last night when he was at my door he asked, "Don't I recognize you from school?" I don't even know his name. It's kind of weird.

At one point came this little, little girl who was dressed as a fairy-princess-whatever. She was so young that she really didn't know what to do. (And who could blame her? The other 364 days of year people tell her not to talk to and take candy from strangers.) Her mom, who was with her, tried to get her to be responsive and said that it was her first time trick-or-treating, and this was her first house. Imagine! This lady picked my house for the very first trick-or-treating experience in her daughter's short, short life. I was touched in a weird way. Apparently, so was the mother. She got out a camera and took a picture of her (and me, I think). She was wasting time fumbling with it and said, "Sorry, I'm being gay." My jaw dropped and I almost would have looked like The Scream in her picture if she hadn't taken longer still. Mommy's little homophobe gets candy to ruin her little teeth with. Awww, how cute.

But the big scare occurred today. I thought that the troubles associated with Hurricane Wilma (including losing power) were almost over. When everybody was out of the house this afternoon, it started raining heavily. We learned from our neighborhood friend Kevin (via cell phone) that a transformer on his street blew up. Sure enough, when my dad tried to call the house, the answering machine wouldn't pick up. There was no electricity when we arrived back home. The clock in my room indicated that the power had gone out at 3:15. We were basically screwed. We had a generator, but my dad gave it to his friend, upon which it immediately quit working. Our gas stove was at my grandmother's house. Basically, everything was loaned out to different people because we had already gotten our electricity back. We decided to go out to dinner -- it was the only choice, really. It was 6:35; we were walking out of the house and my dad shut the door when the lights came back on. That was close.

What do they call the "@" character in various languages. Read A Natural History of the @ Sign (but note: usages tend to change, and this page is dated 1997). I happen to know that in Esperanto it's called a "heliko" ("snail").

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