Belatedly, we had a great Halloween in our new neighborhood. Like on our old block, all of the neighbors sit outside and wander to chat with the neighbors. Our neighbors’ daughter minded our candy for awhile so we could walk down Swiss Avenue. What a scene that was! There were even vendors selling glowsticks. There was a Dallas Police patrol car at each intersection on both Swiss and our street, so no smashed pumpkins or mischief. Some of the houses on Swiss had lines of 20 or 30 trick-or-treaters. Ed and I decided that the best strategy (were we that age) would be do gawk on Swiss, but candy collect on our street where there were not lines. The best house on Swiss had a large (fake) pipe organ on its second floor balcony. Every 15 minutes or so, fog would start billowing and a “Phantom of the Opera” would come out and “play” the organ, the scary organ music accompanied by shooting flames! Even though we had heard about this ahead of time, we were in awe.

Erica and her friend Rusty are here for Thanksgiving, with Rusty’s puppy Kali. We had our standard Thanksgiving fare (served this year in familiar silver dishes), although our turkey was done way early so I need to check our oven temperature. Luckily we were flexible on eating time, but it made everything a rush at the end. And during that rush, it snowed! The last time it snowed in Dallas was last Easter, just as we were sitting down to our Easter breakfast. Maybe I shouldn’t have put the snow shovels and luge in the attic of the garage!