Halloween Disco

As the "no Mums or Nannas" week continues, Dad earned his Halloween stripes spending a couple hours cutting out bone shapes and double stick taping them to Nik's long underwear. Mom had already made Isaac's viking costume. The results speak for themselves. Isaac's disco party was from 5 to 6. Nik's was from 6:30 to 8. So Dad stayed inside with Isaac while Nikolas played outside with Kelvin (pictured here with his sister, Crystal) and other boys. Once the older kids were let in at 6:30, Isaac and Dad went home to play some chess. We all ate sausages grilled at the Halloween Disco, which reminds me to mention here that NZ sausages are really really bad. They have no texture or flavor. Even the kids think they suck. We'll wait until we visit Germany for some genuine Bratwurst.

Tomorrow night is Oct 31st, so the kids plan to go house to house for candy, but this pagan holiday is not as widespread in NZ as it is in the States (esp. Utah). We'll see what kind of booty they obtain. I plan to go "beer or treating" with them--I'll tell the locals that this is how we celebrate Halloween in Logan, UT...reminiscent of the Puerto Rican Parranda, where a gang of your neighbors and friends knock on your door well into the night and start singing until the owners let them in and feed them and throw an improptu party. I recall the parranda season being sometime after Halloween and before Thanksgiving (yes, they celebrate that holiday in Puerto Rico, but solely for the eating and drinking pleasure). Speaking of P.R., I saw that a major fire erupted with the force of a small earthquake at a refinery or storage facility just outside of San Juan, in Bayamon. The black soot and smoke blew offshore, so the health risk was greatly diminished. The lack of air pollution is a great benefit of living on an island. It is also a reason that 70,000 New Zealanders are diagnosed with skin cancer every year. No air pollution, less ozone, and being situated closer to the Sun during the Souther Hemisphere Summer make NZ and Australia skin cancer hotbeds. Much more so than the equivalent lattitudes in Europe. The schools require students to wear wide brimmed hats and sunglasses to go outside at recess ("tea"). I think they should burn lots of used tires to block out the sun, but I guess the wind would dilute the effect. Doesn't the latter sound like a Republican solution to the problem of recylcing tires ("tyres") and the rise of skin cancer? It reminds me of Utah rep. Chris Cannon stating that cattle grazing in the UT desert is beneficial as the bovines "fertilize the soil". Apparently he never hiked in the San Rafael Swell where cow patties from the cowboy days still sit unpreturbed. Now a cow patty in NZ is recycled quite rapidly given the rain and humidity. Butt I digress...