Good Candy, Bad Eggs On This Day, October 31st, All Hallows Eve. What once served as a spooky New Years Eve tradition for the ancient Celts (which they called Samhain) was ultimately appropriated by Pope Gregory IV in 840 AD to serve as the daylong vigil preceding the Feast of All Saints. Even so, the Christians preserved the pagan festival's spooky trappings anyway. Cunning bastards, eh? If I remember my catechism correctly, this day is also know as �All Souls Day� for which I could get a plenary indulgence (read: Get out of Hell Free Card) for going to confession and praying for the souls in Purgatory. These days, from what I understand, confession is hardly necessary anymore, but is still encouraged, mostly due to its therapeutic nature. I never found confession to be therapeutic, mostly because of my excessive guilt complex (which in of itself should mean that I�m a very very good Catholic) and I spent a bit of time in my college years going to confession for my �rage� when what I really needed was pharmaceuticals � which only took me 10 years to figure out. So anyway, I�m spending the evening handing out questionable candy to kids -- questionable in the sense that it�s hard mint candy, but with a gooey chocolate center. It�s not terrible candy, but the bottom line is that it�s receptionist�s-desk-candy-bowl-type candy, which means that I�m directly in the HOV lane headed to �Old Curmedgeon-dom� which includes owning too many cats, shaking my fist at the neighborhood kids, and giving out Halloween candy that may result in retaliation by eggs. I just really wanted to get rid of the stuff. In other news, we got a phone call from my MIL last night, which is unusual, as they don�t call without a purpose. From listening to Hubster�s end of the conversation, my first thought was that someone died, which immediately made me go all jibbly, because I remembered that Aunt H was scheduled for knee replacement . . . but then Hubster said the magic acronym, DUI. At this point, I knew immediately that the call was regarding one of Hubster�s brothers, W, who has a long history of alcohol abuse, and it seems that he has now gotten his second DUI. This has resulted in his car being impounded (which the ILs had to wire money for him to get it back) and he�s lost his job again. He is currently scheduled for court in November and we expect that he�ll be in jail for at least 90 days � so he�ll also lose his apartment as well. MIL, however, was very worried because W is not answering his cell phone, and the manager at his apartment knocked on the door and put a note on the door, but no one can seem to get a hold of him. Therefore, Hubster has to drive down to Tucson this weekend to look for him. A fool�s errand, we both think, although neither of us want to think the worst, but it�s hard not to. And on the other hand, Hubster does not want to start being W�s �caretaker� in any sense of the word. However, W will go to jail, lose his apartment, and will eventually get out and be homeless and jobless and alone in the city. Hopefully, Hubster will be able to locate W and get him some groceries and stuff . . . but we�re afraid it�s just going to be the beginning of a painful process for us, but we also feel terribly guilty that we simply don�t want to be involved just because of our location, etc. etc. etc. . . Gah. I really hope he�s okay.
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