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You may catch more flies with honey, but you catch more little boys dressed as spiders by handing out free candy. It didn’t take Wesley more than one house to realize that this was the best day ever. By the second house he was trying to go inside. If they give out candy at the door imagine what they have stashed away in the living room.

We only went around one block and it went pretty well. It is a little different here than in Washington. The weather is so warm (it is 10p here and still 69F) that a lot of folks sit around on their porch, driveway or lawn and hand out candy. Wesley was a little intimated by them if there were more than a few especially if they were in costume.

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This year for Halloween we decided that Wesley was going to be a spider (I couldn’t figure out how to make a snowman without a sewing machine) and that Jillian would then be a fly. A nice little theme. In the spirit, but not gruesome.

Here is the step-by-step for the costume creation starting with the spider.

We decided early on that Wesley would have eight legs total. His own two arms, his own two legs and four extras. I wanted Wesley to be the spider, not be wearing a spider. I mounted the legs, made out of pipe insulation, to cardboard with nylon ties.

Next we created the body parts using a can of expanding foam insulation. It is light, cheap, and can be made any shape you want. It cures in about an hour (longer if you make it as deep as we did). It puffs as it dries and sticks to darn near anything. I wore latex gloves and safety glasses. The thorax was sprayed directly over the legs and the abdomen was sprayed onto a paper bag and then placed over a sponge to give it a curve and make it look fuller. I ran out of foam and could have used more, but it turned out okay.

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I completed my longest run ever this morning.  7.39 miles and that doesn’t include the .45 mile warmup jog.  I think my longest previous run was near 6.7 miles and was about 16 months ago.   It was also the longest time-wise I have ever run.  1 hour and 12 minutes.  Had I been running alone I probably would have been done in around 1 hour 5 minutes, maybe a little less.

I organized a couple of friends from work for the run.  It worked out okay, but they ended up running a bit slower than I would have normally.  That was probably a good thing as I had a sore foot.  The slow pace made for a nice easy run.  We ran my usual loop twice through the park.  I probably could have done another loop if I had felt like pushing myself.

Next week is a step-back so my long run is a only 5 miles, but I do increase my sorta-long Wednesday run from 3 to 4 miles.

I’m actually pretty excited that I made it.  I had two really lousy runs in a row this week.  Tuesday was okay, but nothing exceptional. Wednesday and Thursday were just awful.  I felt like I was running through molasses.  Every step was so much work and I was running so slowly.  I had serious doubts about today.  If I can stay healthy the marathon is actually seeming doable.
So yippee for me!

I don’t write often about Jillian. She just doesn’t do much each day that lends itself to writing. She doesn’t talk, run, break things, or throw herself off of things.  Or maybe I’m just not that good of a writer.  But she does one thing that deserves mention here.

She farts like a man. I don’t mean she asks you to pull her finger, I mean that when she farts you think that it couldn’t possibly have come from such a small cute little critter. It is loud and rumbley. And it happens all the time. I often can’t tell if it was Amber or her daughter. Not that Amber farts, but if she did I would have to check with her to see which of them was the culprit if they were in the same vicinity.

The upside? It doesn’t smell. Yet.