Further curious folk rituals of my people.

I am so thrilled with our little robot, I can't even begin to tell you. Doesn't she look awesome?

Last night at the church Halloween party she was reluctant to wear her costume or join in the fun, and we wound up leaving shortly after we got there. I was afraid that Halloween would be a dud this year, and after Michael and I had expended so much energy on the costume. But this morning at the nursery school parade she was in fine form. While the kids were marching, she broke out with a stiff-legged walk and sang a few lines of a They Might Be Giants song:

In future times, children will work together
To build a giant cyborg
Robot parade, robot parade
Wave the flags that the robots made
Robot parade, robot parade
Robots obey what the children say

( more pictures and a very short video of a dancing robot )

(no subject)

I love this anti-prop-8 ad narrated by Samuel L. Jackson:

And in case there was any doubt: Post this on your blog if you're in an opposite-sex marriage and you don't want it to be "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage cheapens or hurts it somehow.

Yes, of course. Unquestionably. Absolutely.

We have lesbian friends who are expecting a baby six weeks before we're expecting the Niblet. There is no difference between their family and ours. Their son ought to have the exact same right to be born into a stable, legally protected, societally-recognized marriage that our son will have. And the same obviously goes for our GLBT friends who don't have kids, as well. Love is love. Marriage is marriage. Families are families. Sexual orientation should have nothing to do with it.

Final installment, curious folk rituals of my people.

You know you're a city kid when your trick-or-treating route includes stops at the wine shop and the Afghan restaurant.

I expected the wine shop; last year we went in just to show Alex off because they knew her, and they hauled a big bag of candy out from behind the counter. The Afghan restaurant suprised me. The proprietor was standing on the sidewalk when we came by, and he insisted that we come in while he fetched a little bowl of candy from the bar. He kept urging Alex to take more and more.

This year the people who organized trick-or-treating in our neighborhood distributed a rough map of participating houses, which meant that we didn't have to go around in the huge, chaotic, overwhelming group of ALL THE NEIGHBORHOOD KIDS AND PARENTS TOGETHER. There were a few blocks, like ours, that had participation from multiple houses. We concentrated on those and mostly skipped the isolated houses unless they were on our route already. The nice thing about the scattershot participation you get in the city is that we had a nice long trick-or-treating experience and yet didn't come home with an overwhelming amount of candy.

It was also fun to have Halloween fall on a Friday night this year. There were a lot of people on the streets, including many adults in costume headed for parties at local bars. Alex got a bunch of positive attention from passersby, especially since she greeted everyone we passed with a cheerful "Happy Halloween!"

It was a lot of fun for me as well as for Alex. Except now my pregnancy-softened pubic bone is screaming "You walked how far?!" Ow.