Not much in the way of Halloween festivities this year. During the last day or so d.w. has started having a few contractions, which have been strong enough to be irritating and distracting, but sporatic enough that we know there's a long way to go yet.
Not that Halloween is all that great a holiday between the onset of puberty and when one has children. Our only real Halloween-y option for this year was to get really trashed partying with a bunch of other 20- and 30-something grad students at somebody's house. No thanks. I mean really, isn't that the kind of thing you get over by the time you're, I don't know, 19? Oh well. Maybe I was just born a curmudgeon.
Anyway.
I recently came across a mostly-exposed roll of film (film? What is this thing called "film"?) in d.w.'s old (but really fantastic) SLR. It's always so exciting finding old rolls of film and getting them developed. The days spent speculating and wondering, waiting for the lab to finish it, make the anticipation unbearable by the time you actually see the photos, reliving forgotten memories (or else seeing 36 shots of your garage door, from that time you finally got around to calibrating the light meter several years ago).
Why am I telling you all of this? Well, the negatives I got back contained a few pictures d.w. and I took before leaving for a costume party last year (See? Costumes? Halloween? Get it?). I could lie to you and say that it was a Halloween party, but I won't, and it wasn't. It was better: it was the Friends of Science.
Every year we ecology grad students get together for a night nurturing our inner scientific superhero (or supervillain). Last year d.w. and I partook in the festivities (and I must say I was a little, but only a little, better than d.w. at keeping the camera still...):
Meet first the Arboriculture Avenger, leading the charge against bad pruning and other horticultural crimes. Her nemesis is of course Sprawlo ("Paving the planet for Jesus!"). Not sure exactly what our respective superpowers were supposed to be. Maybe we didn't get that far. Most people didn't. I mean, it's hard enough just trying to come up with ideas like the Lepidopterrorist, the Decominatrix, and Semivario-man ("Minimizing nugget variance!"). Trying to figure out logical superpowers is another story entirely. Besides, for a bunch of science nerds this pretty much amounts to our total creative output for the entire year.
d.w. is, of course, the exception. Those art students always are...
Fantastic costumes, ZD and DW. You're definitely my kind of nerds! I love it.
Posted by: MetroDad | 01 November 2006 at 09:42 AM
I hate to break it to you ZD, but that was actually two years ago. We really do need to get out more often.
Posted by: dear wife | 01 November 2006 at 11:46 AM
Wow. Now I feel particularly pathetic...
Posted by: zygote daddy | 01 November 2006 at 02:24 PM
I always wanted to start the halloween tradition of dressing up as my favorite paintings. My husband told me it was too nerdy. I think this proves him wrong, ZD! This is said, well, typed, with love, of course. :)
Posted by: Lauren | 01 November 2006 at 09:06 PM
Wow...I knew my bro was a big ole science nerd, but apparently I had NO idea! I'm glad to see you two own it so well :)
Posted by: Auntie M | 01 November 2006 at 09:27 PM
Nerds!
Funny though.
Still no baby yet, eh?
The suspense is killing me.
ALTHOUGH Cheeky was a week late, and I think the extra time in the womb mellowed her out. So there's that.
Posted by: CroutonBoy | 02 November 2006 at 12:40 PM
Lepidopterrorist? What, you'll wave your antennae at me? Or maybe you'll convice thousands of your winged brethren to converge upon the World Bank and fly in the faces of those evil capitalists?
Reminds me of "Killer Bees" by The Bobs: The bees, the killer bees are coming, spreading fear and terror in the land...
Posted by: Henitsirk | 07 November 2006 at 08:02 PM