Both Diane and I seem to be over the side effects of our booster shots, and the Mac I upgraded to Monterey appears to have survived the experience (though I’ll wait a bit before I update the other machines, since they run applications I depend on).

We didn’t decorate for Halloween again this year, but we still got a few trick-or-treaters early in the evening – well, actually it was late in the afternoon, a few minutes before 6. I had candy on hand to give them, of course. One little girl (I’d guess she was about 4 and a half) asked if the candy had nuts or sesame because she was allergic – luckily, I had York Peppermint Patties instead of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, so she should be OK.

In honor of the holiday, we’re going to watch the original Ghostbusters – happy Halloween!

Some of our friends are really into Halloween, and they’ve invited us to their Halloween party every year for as long as I can remember. Except 2020, of course.

But this year, they revived the tradition, and we joined in the fun. There were ample quantities of wine, cheese, and chocolate, and people to talk with who we hadn’t seen for a very long time. Vaccines were a common subject of discussion, of course – but so were travel, drum kits, and wine.

We dressed as explorers of this brave new world.

Thanks, Wendy and David!

Both of us have sore arms tonight – and we’re pretty happy about it.

We went back to Valley Med this morning for our boosters. I was a little worried, because we weren’t able to get an appointment, but I needn’t have been – no one even asked us if we had an appointment, and the process ran smoothly. They gave us the choice of Moderna, Pfizer, or J&J. We decided to stick with Moderna, since we hadn’t had significant side effects from the first two shots. So far, so good this time, too – we’re both a little sore at the injection site, but that’s not a surprise.

This afternoon, we attended a Silicon Valley Shakespeare online event where the company leaders talked about how things had gone during the pandemic (PPP and Zoom to the rescue!) and what plans were afoot for 2022 (Romeo and Juliet in Willow Street Park in June, followed later in the summer by Measure for Measure and Sense and Sensibility in rep at Sanborn Park). They’re also planning to continue some online programming to broaden their reach. SVS has been a favorite since we discovered them a few years ago, and I’m looking forward to seeing them in person again.

Tonight’s dinner was a pandemic-era favorite, Spiced Chickpea Salad with Tahini and Pita Chips. The tahini sauce was very, very clumpy and thick tonight; I tried adding more water, but it wouldn’t absorb it. I found these hints – too late for tonight, but I’m sure we’ll make this recipe again.

It was a quiet Thursday. I was Toastmaster this morning at the Silver Tongued Cats; my choice of meeting theme was seasonally inspired: “Sweet or Scary?”

We finished a bottle of Port during our Trivial Zoom call and opened a new one – I was a little surprised at the difference in color, which gave me something to photograph, even if I didn’t have much to say about either bottle.

As I said, it was a quiet Thursday!

I was Storytelling Tip Master for the Silicon Valley Storytellers meeting on October 11th. The meeting theme was “A Wrinkle in Time”, and I wanted the tip of the day to have something to do with the book. I’d read the book in elementary school, but by the time the second book in the series was published, I was in college and not interested in YA books.

Luckily, we had a copy of the book that we’d bought for Jeff when he was in elementary school. I used the opening line of the book (“It was a dark and stormy night”) as my inspiration and called on our members to start their stories in a way that drew the reader in.

It took a while, but that first line finally drew me back to the book, and I finished it today. I remembered much of what happened, but I’m pretty sure I got more out of it on this reading than I did the first time through.

We have the next three books in the series; I’m looking forward to catching up with the Murry family!