No school!

No school today; we had parent/teacher conferences. I only had one with Sylvia's teacher, which went well.

All in all, not a very eventful day. Mostly we just hung out. Sylvia had a friend spend the night, and they spent the entire day together. Gary came home at noon for the conference and we ended up taking the older two out to lunch. I finished a book, went grocery shopping, inventoried the Halloween decorations.

Here in the 'hood they seem to take Halloween very seriously. We are sadly lacking in seasonal finery; we'll need to get on the stick. If we don't get busy, we are going to look like poor relations, and we can't have that. Must keep up with the Joneses (whom we actually know ... hi Sarah!). They have a very cool street, where all the trees in the entire cul-de-sac have coordinating orange tree lights. Very classy; we pale in comparison. I heard on the news tonight that Halloween is second only to Christmas in decorations (no surprise there) and that the average person will spend $59 on accoutrements. That will be easy enough, trust me.

Gary got the hot tub working; I think we'll be trying it out tonight.

Went to a nice dinner party over the weekend at our friends up the street. They served a middle-eastern meal: hummus, baba ganoush, tabouli. Mmm. It helps that he is from Palestine. The high schoolers abandoned us, opting to attend the Rock Against Racism. Alison had fun. I was up til nearly 2 a.m, which is very late for me. It was fun, but I felt useless on Sunday. I was very careful to not drink too much, because I really pay for that. I know my limiit these days; I'm no 21-year-old anymore.

So, tomorrow is back to normal. I need to catch up on some favorite programs from last week. We invested in TiVo, which is making this much more fun. I can't really watch anything before 9 p.m. (kids! grrrr), and I was tired of watching shows I like on poor quality VHS tapes when we are paying for HDTV. No more searching for blank tapes; no more setting the unreliable timer on the VCR. Gotta love advances in technology.

Sigh. Materialism. I think I just need to embrace who I am; why deny it?