Witches and devils and… a gorilla with a pizza?

I finally finished my Anthropology research paper and handed it in, so I’m free! No more study for this year!!! Which means I can finally concentrate on all the other things I should be getting done – like catching up on writing my blog, maybe…

Yeah, right.

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Lytteltonwitch had her bookcrossing halloween party last night. Because she’d left it so late to invite anyone (because she wasn’t sure if she’d be up to it yet after her operation), it was rather sparsely attended – just me and MrPloppy, and rarsberry – but we had a good night anyway.

When MrPloppy and I arrived lytteltonwitch was busy decorating her house with even more snakes and spiders and witchy things than it normally boasts (which is saying something!), so MrPloppy helped her to hang the high up things, while I created spooky rat-like things from marshmallows and liquorish (they started off as spiders, but it was too hard to keep that many legs attached, so they turned into rats). Eventually rars turned up, having got a bit lost, and after chat and nibbles (and one set of trick or treaters, who got given books (of course) and ghostly lollypops), we donned our costumes and (leaving MrPloppy behind to guard the nibbles) hit the streets ourselves.

A few photos of our preparations to go out (excuse the blurriness – MrPloppy was taking the photos, and isn’t used to my camera):

Lytteltonwitch appears to be casting some sort of spell. Actually, I think she was bewitching the hood on my cloak, because this is the only time all night it stayed on my head properly – the rest of the time it was either falling down over my eyes, or blowing off.

A devilish rarsberry.

Packing my basket of books. I’d wanted to get a proper cane basket of the witch with basket of apples type, but they’re really hard to find (when did that happen? I remember having to have one for cooking class at school, and we just went to a shop and bought one), so I ended up with a not very witchy plastic substitute.

The non-spooky plastic basket problem solved: just add snakes!

When I asked MrPloppy why he took this picture, he said “I was taking pictures of scary things, and I thought her video collection was pretty frightening”. Sorry lytteltonwitch, MrPloppy has spoken – not only is your music frightening, so are your videos.

Loaded down with baskets and bags of halloween-themed books (so many that lytteltonwitch was in danger of tearing her stitches until rarsberry came to the rescue and carried her bag), we set out in search of trick or treaters to give books to (as well as releasing a few in random locations along the way). Our walk took us a bit further than we’d planned – we’d originally planned to just walk up to town and back, but in the end went on a huge loop via the hospital and arts centre, and back through Sydenham, that according to my rough plotting of it on Google Maps, was about 7 km long. No wonder we were all starting to feel a bit tired by the end!

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We decided that anyone we saw in costume would get a book, as well as any kids we saw, or anyone who smiled at our costumes. Lytteltonwitch brought along more of the ghost lollypops for the kids too. With only one exception, everyone we offered a book to was thrilled to get it, so even though we probably won’t get many journal entries from the exercise, we made a lot of people happy, which was the point, really. My favourites were the kids who made their dad stop the car (he’d just dropped someone off at the hospital and was starting to pull out of the car park) and hung out the car windows to get their books, the two boys who weren’t in costume but did a great monster impression when they saw us, and the teenagers outside McDonalds who rejected the teen books I handed them in favour of kids’ books which they thought were much cooler 🙂

My list of released books:

Given to people:
More Ghost Stories edited by AL Furman
Skeleton Cave by Cora Cheney
It’s Too Frightening for Me by Shirley Hughes
Haunted Island by Joan Lowery Nixon
Devil’s Jump by Peter Doyle
The Girlfriend by RL Stine
Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man by Wendelin van Draanen
Spellcaster by Katey Brown
Grizzley Tales for Gruesome Kids by Jamie Rix
The Devil’s Redhead by David Corbett

And released into the wild:
Prime Evil by Judith Kelman
Camp Fear by Carol Ellis
The Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens edited by Peter Haining
Night Terrors by Charles L Grant
Urn Burial by Robert Westall
Bane by Joe Donnelly
Escape of the He-Beast by RL Stine
The Snow Ghosts by Beryl Netherclift
Kitchen Wizard by Deborah Jarvis
The Hulk by James Schamus
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

The night was topped off perfectly when we got back to lytteltonwitch’s place and ordered a pizza, only to have it delivered by a gorilla! There were still a few spooky books left over, so of course we had to give him one – Little Pet Shop of Horrors by Betsy Haynes seemed appropriate 🙂

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While I’m posting pictures, here’s one I uploaded but don’t think I actually got round to posting:

We’re decorating a pile of notebooks for the convention goody bags, and a few weeks ago I made a start on my share. Since then I’ve been too busy to do any more, but hopefully now that I’ve got my study out of the way I’ll have a bit more time (except I’m going up to Auckland at Show Weekend, and Wellington the weekend after… my free weekends are disappearing fast!) so I’ll be able to get on with the rest of them. I’m pretty pleased with how the few I’ve done have turned out, anyway – it’s fun playing around with different ideas and techniques on them.

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Since I haven’t posted for a while, it’s probably time for a catch report, too.

My recent catches have been a study in contrasts, really – two b
ooks finally reporting home after years in the wilderness, and the rest caught almost immediately.

• The House of a Thousand Lanterns by Victoria Holt – one of the many books we slapped pre-numbered labels in at Next Stop on one of our Dunedin trips in 2005.
• Pray for a Brave Heart by Helen MacInnes – proof that you should never give up on books. Released in May 2003, and finally gets a journal entry nearly five and a half years later!
• Change of Heart by Julie Garratt – and at the other end of the scale, a catch within a couple of hours of releasing.
• The Book of Facts Volume 2 by Isaac Asimov – another very quick catch.
• Kit in Boots by Jane Gardam – this one was so quick I didn’t even get time to make release notes.
• Gray Squirrel – caught the day after release.

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In other news, we won lotto! Before you get too excited, it was only 4th division, so netted us a grand total of $96, but that’s the first time I’ve ever won anything on lotto, so it was still exciting. Of course, it’s also the first time in many many years that we’ve bought a ticket, so that could have something to do with it… I don’t think we’ll be making a regular habit of buying tickets though – we’re both too much of mathematicians to be able to ignore the incredibly low probability of ever winning more than you spend on the tickets.

We invested our enormous winnings wisely on a couple of DVDs.

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Currently reading: Impassioned Clay by Stevie Davies
Currently listening to: Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

ETA: Forgot to mention, I decided to go with the fridge magnets in the end. I sent them off today, so I hope the recipient has a fridge that isn’t wooden or round…