Ahira's Hangar

have a great one!!

(The weather here is pretty damp. We had a big rain storm last night that soaked everything and knocked down a ton of leaves).

It's damp here, too - no big storms, just small but persistent rainfall throughout the week.

Hope everyone's enjoying Halloween - in one way or another! Not much trick or treating in my neighborhood. I didn't buy any candy anyway, so I would be embarrassed if anyone knocked. Not that there's much chance of that happening anyway, being in an apartment. If I were ambitious, I'd consider volunteering to stay by the front entrance to hand out treats, but don't know if that would go against management policy. I miss my trick-or-treating days when I lived at home.

I'm just surfing horror movies on the tube. I might go see Paranormal Activity tomorrow. I hear it's a really scary film - low budget piece that works on your imagination like Blair Witch Project.

We had been invited to a bonfire/party but decided not to go because of the dismal weather. Likewise, we had not a single trick or treater - we usually get a least a few here.

Our satellite dish was damaged in the big Friday night storm, so no TV until Directv gets out here on Monday afternoon to fix it. So we have been watching movies - the best one so far Brotherhood of the Wolf.

Surprisingly, we did have a trick or treat knock on our door, since Halloween isn't really a big thing in Oz. And it's not to do with the weather, coz it's warm and sunny... it used to be celebrated more than it does now. I'm not sure why it has diminished... anyway thought i'd share that with you

Over here, we have the opposite...it appears to be celebrated more as time passes. It's still pretty rare though. Although the nightclubs etc usually do themed parties, as do schools and similar groups/organisations/whatever.

--A

*nodding*

I don't remember much regarding candy before my tween years, but the idea that possibly drugs were injected or razor blades were inserted into apples inpinged on my consciousness around '72, when I was 12. Churches and youth organizations have been down playing the idea of trick-or-treat and promoting organized parties instead ever since. I guess the generation of kids that was raised with that idea has taken it to heart here in the states, and very few kids go trick-or-treating to neighbors/strangers homes anymore.

I think it is all part of where you live. At our last house (in an established neighborhood of a city) we would get a couple of hundred a year. Here, out in the country, we usually only get a handful, as most of the neighboring kids head into town to get more closely spaced together houses/loot.

The highlight of the day yesterday was seeing a peregrine falcon sitting on a branch of our magnolia tree right outside our kitchen window. There are nesting pairs from tall buildings in Detroit and Ann Arbor, and one must have made it to our tree. We have a bunch of finch feeders in our yard, and the high concentration of tiny birdies flitting around must have looked like a cafeteria line to the falcon.

That's cool with the falcon!

The best movie I caught during the week was M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. I had not seen it before, so maybe it's a bit amazing that I managed to avoid seeing spoilers for this movie since its release in 2004. Shyamalan's movies are noted for their surprise plot twists, and yes, the one in The Village really got me. (IThis film was apparently panned by a lot of people, but I thought it was brilliant and thought-provoking. It goes beyond a conventional horror movie.

Nowadays, our shopping malls seem to be where most of the trick-or-treat action takes place. I have no real problem with that, but I'd be sad if the door-to-door tradition totally disappeared. I mean, part of the "spooky fun" of Halloween is being out there in the night. A brightly lit mall just isn't the same. But I can understand it if parents are motivated by a concern for safety, as well as desire for convenience.

That's awesome. My absolute favourite of the raptors.

--A

Our eyes can atest to the recovery of the raptors and birds of prey in this area after decades of intense conservation efforts following the DDT environmental disaster which nearly caused the extinction of many species. We see eagles flying over semi-regularly, saw an immature one (still all brown) fishing daily at the lake cottage we rented for Labor Day weekend, there is a colony of fishing hawks at Kensington Metro Park, falcons are back and nesting in the area - and my husband and the crowd were treated to seeing an entire migratory flock of Great Blue Herons flying over during he last high school soccer game at districts in Dexter. Reportedly that brought the game to a halt as the kids, the refs, and the crowd were all agog at that once in a lifetime sight (and sound) of an entire flock of twenty of so of the rare solitary hunters.

That's very cool, Duchess!

I've whined elsewhere about the lack of trick-or-treaters at my house over the weekend, so I won't bore y'all with it here.

I'm just glad that the satellite dish is fixed, so the guys can watch football this weekend (talk about whining).

Y'know, Pam, you're not exactly encouraging marital accord amongst the newlyweds...