Halloween

Halloween is pretty big here. Not as big as Christmas or Thanksgiving but it's definitely up there with Ash Wednesday and Pancake Tuesday. We were invited over to a friends house last night to carve pumpkins and have a laugh. I'd never done this before but it basically involves making an opening in the top and scooping the guts out of it. It's kind of similar to removing the contents of a person's head in some mad cult ritual. Most of the pumpkin brains can be put to use in recipes. We took the hundreds of seeds and roasted them in the oven. They kind of taste like popcorn. Beautiful.

Snippets

Instead of telling long narratives about the week that was, here are some things that I experienced this week.

I was in the Korean part of the city yesterday and saw a tailor's shop that had the following sign outside "extra short men's suits". I know where I'm going if I need a suit.

There was some crazy guy wandering the streets today. He asked some old lady could he have a hug, then he asked us why we didn't have $30m dollars. Only in America.

A guy got shot and killed only five blocks from our house last week. You can see bullet holes in the wall of a hotel nearby.

Ian McNulty used the funniest phrase ever in an email to me: "as busy as a Corinthian's letter box".

I read a nice quote that brought a few tears to my Irish eyes: "I returned to Ireland. Ireland green and chaste and foolish. And when I wandered over my own hills and talked again to my own people I looked into the heart of this life and saw that it was good". Patrick Kavanagh, The Green Fool. I have no desire to jump ship here yet but just thought that this was great writing.

Apple pie

Martha and Kelley are having their "First Annual Bake Off" right now. They each baked an apple pie and various friends are consuming the pies and rating them accordingly. There is heated rivalry between the two cooks and fear in those eating the pies. If they say they like one pie more than the other then there could be problems.

We had a good weekend. There was bowling on Saturday night, at the Stardust Lanes of course. Not as much fun as the first time I was there but I did manage to score 190 points in the first game. Kudos to me.

The weather is changing fast and it is hovering around 0°C at the moment. It can only get colder from now on. Bring on the snow.

Cooking

All my cooking life I have ignored the instructions on packets. The results have been true bachelor fare. I get lucky on occasion and produce a meal that is worthy of a king. Today I decided that I would reference one of Martha's many cookery books and have a go at making rice. The old approach was to lash a few fistfuls of the stuff into a pot and boil the shite out of it for 15 minutes. Oh how wrong I have been. By following the recipe today I produced rice that one would expect in a decent restaurant. Fair play to me.

In other news, the job is going great and I am learning loads. The commute is a bit of a headache but I hope to save up enough cash to buy a car or a donkey at least. The one good thing about bus riding is that it is guaranteed free time to read/write/listen to music/plot certain deeds, etc.

I made up a joke today, possibly insensitive but I'll take my chances. Here goes. Did you hear about Superman dying? Yeah, apparently it was Kryptonite related. Ha ha ha.

Christopher Walken

Me, Kelley and her brother Michael went to Nye's bar last night in northeast Minneapolis. Nye's is probably one of the best places in the world. It is decorated like a semi-classy 1970's Vegas lounge. We're talking plastic gold glitter seating and the like. In the main room there is a piano and the resident player will play along to whatever a random patron wants to sing. There was lots of Sinatra sung last night. One man had the voice of an angel and made "Fly me to the moon" a work of art. Before we went out Michael barbequed the best steak I have ever had. He used the "Butterfly" technique. Patent pending on that. Secrecy will not allow me to divulge any more on this matter.

The back room of Nye's is where the Polka band play and the same band have been playing there every weekend for close to 40 years. The oldest band member is about 75 years old. About two years ago she was carried out half way through a set because she collapsed from a stroke. But, thanks to medical technology she made a near complete recovery and is back playing Polka music every Friday night. Last night we noticed that the drummer had been replaced for some reason. This guy was the reason we go to Nye's. Why? Because, he wears a wig that looks exactly like Christopher Walken's hair. Not joking. We are convinced that he had the thing custom made. We asked the waitress where Mr.Walken had gone. Well, it went like this.

Kelley: Where's the old drummer gone?
Waitress: Oh, they had to get rid of him, he couldn't keep a beat.

How could they do this to us? Not to worry though, his memory will live on in our hearts and more importantly on the t-shirts that Kelley sourced with his mug on the front.

That's why I love being here. Really cool stuff happens all the time.