Halloween day was “my day,” meaning I was in charge. I don’t always plan these things out too far in advance, and so this Saturday morning found me looking online at our favorite cheap movie theater. A movie called The Time Traveler’s Wife caught my attention. I knew nothing about it, but clicked on it and read the tag line. It seemed interesting enough to risk $2.50 on, so the early afternoon entertainment was set.

The Time Traveler’s Wife was a story about a man who could jump around in time, but he had no control over it. He does meet a girl (several times throughout her lifetime, in fact), and they do get married. The movie follows the courtship and married life of the two, and while the story follows the time traveler for much of the movie, the film did a nice job of showing you the wife he inadvertently leaves behind. As a bonus, the movie was filmed in Chicago, where we used to live. Mer and I both found the movie thoughtful and liked it very much – highly recommended.

Later in the day, we decided to go pick up pumpkins and then go out for a walk at the Ledges park. Every year that we have been married, as well as for a few years before that, Mer and I have carved pumpkins. It is our oldest tradition, with the only other one that we even have being having a Christmas tree every year that we have been married.Once we had picked out the on-sale pumpkins (score for the procrastinators!), we headed over to the Ledges, where the view was very pretty, but the wind was very cold. We did not stay long. We went home and dropped off our pumpkins.

Eating out seemed like a good idea, so we headed to the Valley to go to the pub where we had the $6.00 worth of coupons (from the playbill from the week before).

Point of interest: if you are teetotalers, you may want to avoid a pub/bar on Halloween. Clue one – you pull up to the strip that has the bar, and it has a sign up that reads, “Six great bars, one great party!” Clue two – as you get out of the car, a tour bus (yes, a tour bus!) pulls up and disgorges soon-to-be-disgorging revelers in full costume. Clue three – as you walk up to the door, you see through the glass two women going into the bathroom, presumably looking for the rest of their costumes. Clue four – as you get back in to the car to quickly leave, you are passed by a “police woman” in a miniskirt carrying real handcuffs.

I ended up driving through the Valley to get to the west side of Akron, where we had a much quieter meal at the Macaroni Grill, a restaurant where we had a gift card to. We both ate too much (the bread is wonderful), and were able to come home happy and with a half pizza each.

Once home, I prepared the pumpkins for carving. Mer always has a ton of grading to do, so I scoop all the seeds and stuff out of the pumpkins for her, so she can concentrate on being creative. I was not feeling too inspired this year, so I carved a candle. After the fact, I wish I had carved a pumpkin inside of a candle. Ah well. Mer’s pumpkin was much better than mine. Our cat Emma has a bunch of mats on her back that make her fur stand up. We have jokingly called her “stegosaurus kitty,” so that is what Mer carved this year. What was cool about our pumpkins is that mine was thin enough so that the whole pumpkin glowed orange; Mer’s allowed enough light through that there was an image of a stego-cat on our ceiling that was kind of eerie to see. The tradition lives on!