The great Halloween debate

In the church community there is a long-standing debate about Halloween and whether or not Christians should take part.

As a child, my parent's let us go out for Halloween. We dressed up, went door to door and shared our candy with them when we got home. We were never allowed to dress up as something scary or evil, which really didn't bother us. There are so many other harmless costumes to choose from.

We did sometimes attend the "Hallelujah" parties churches held. Usually, everyone there was some sort of Noah's ark animal and you got WAY less candy than you did from Trick-or-treating.

I understand the reasons for people not wanting to take part in Halloween. There are a lot of evil costumes and movies and stories surrounding the occasion. But generally, kids who are trick-or-treating aren't thinking about any of that. They're thinking about their fun costume and the candy they'll get.

This year, we're handing out candy at home. And when we have kids, I'm pretty sure we'll let them go trick-or-treating, with certain stipulations about costumes. I think it's mostly harmless fun for kids and not something that will shake the faith we are trying to instil in them; it didn't for me.

Another couchsurfing weekend

Our couchsurfing friends Barbara & Jochen stayed with us again this weekend. It was really nice to have a couple people over on a Friday night instead of just me and my dog. We watch old episodes of The Office, which does have a German version, but it's very different apparently. The American version is much funnier.

On Saturday we did go to the film festival. I definitely didn't love the movie (or the overly long self-centred Director's Q&A), but Barbara and Jochen seemed to like it, so that's good.

After the movie, we had a Settler's of Catan re-match, with AJ participating this time. AJ even won a game! I still can't beat them.

On Sunday AJ and I carved our pumpkin - design to be released next weekend.

I love weekends!

Barrie Film Festival

The Barrie Film festival has been going on for the last two weeks. AJ signed up months ago to volunteer. He is all about the film festival movies. Especially the documentaries. Me, not so much.

I find film festival movies, local or otherwise tend to be very artsy and not very plot-driven. This is about the opposite of what I would request in a film. I like movies for their ability to entertain me and transport me into a story. Much like books. I'm all about fiction, while AJ loves non-fiction.

Last year, AJ and I saw Art & Copy, a film festival documentary about advertising. Being my chosen profession, I was definitely interested and really enjoyed it.

This year, there are a few that might look interesting, but nothing I couldn't live without seeing. However, our couchsurfing friends are coming back for another stay and they want to go see This Movie Is Broken, which is one of the few films I thought maybe I would enjoy.

So, on Saturday I'm going to check out the movie while AJ sells tickets. I'm sure it will be great, but I'll probably still go back to my guy meets girl, guy screws things up, guy and girl make up and live happily ever after movies.

30 by 30 Reading List Update

Next on the list was the favourite of my friend Meaghan. Meaghan is an English major and has bookshelves full of wonderfully colour-coordinated books, so I was really interested to see what her favourite book was. She said she had a really hard time picking, so she just chose one she thought was good.

Her choice: Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner

Nikolski is a Canadian book originally written in French. It seemed to translate well into English since I didn't really notice any weirdness in the wording. It is the story of several characters who end up living in Montreal and are all interconnected.

Sorry to Meag, but I can't say I was really a fan. I just didn't get it. It definitely wasn't meant to be a plot-driven story, which is normally what I enjoy. It was very much about the day-to-day lives of the characters and a bit about why they turned out the way they did. I didn't find a lot of character development and there was no resolve to any of the issues that arose. It actually took me quite a while to read because I just couldn't get into it.

I think this book is great for a very specific audience - one which probably doesn't include me.

Caloriefest 2010

It took a couple months of planning to get us all together, but we finally made Caloriefest 2010 happen. My friend Ashley, her 2 kids and I drove to Trenton to meet up with my other friend Ashley and continued on to spend a day with our other friend Lauren in Kingston.

We planned on making it a weekend of girl time - chatting, hanging out and eating food, as the name would suggest.

It was such an awesome weekend for me. I absolutely love spending weekends with AJ, but there's something so refreshing about having a girls weekend.

We took the kids to the park, walked around Kingston, got ice cream, roasted marshmallows and stayed up later than I have in months just chatting around the campfire.

I've been friends with these awesome girls since high school and it's so amazing that we're still really close through moves and marriages. We're already planning Caloriefest 2011 to go down in Ottawa sometime this winter.

The kids woke me up at 7:30am with cuddles - 

can't really complain about that.

We spent hours climbing the jungle molecule.

Best hats ever, no?

Ashley and I were both suckered into giving
piggy backs. It's those big adorable eyes.

I need to write more

I have this problem that I tend to get really excited about things and go crazy working on the project. If it's a short-term project, I work like crazy until it's finished and it's awesome. Long-term projects, however, I struggle with. My 30 by 30 (which I've done a lot with, but I've mostly done the easy ones so far), the blog, working out - I'm all about it for awhile and then...nothing.

So, a couple people suggested the other day that I just write on my blog several times a week, no matter what. There doesn't have to be a big special occasion or 30 by 30 entry. Just write something that I'm thinking about. Make it short. Just write.

Therefore, today's thought:

I love pomegranates. They are a lot of work to get at, but so delicious. The other day, I finally saw the return of the pomegranate in the grocery store. I was so excited! They were a bit small, but it's early in the season. I bought 2.

I went through the whole bit, put slits in it, submerge in water and pull apart. The seeds sink to the bottom and the other stuff floats to the top.

The seeds were a bit white, but that's okay. Until I tasted them. Not okay. Definitely not ripe. So disappointing.

Maybe I'll give them a couple more weeks.