Three day weekend. Most people have their minds on their kids graduation or summer vacations starting. The ideal slow news weekend 3pm news drop opportunity. Wonder if we'll get any surprises today. Santos resigning? Feinstein retiring? I worked in political journalism for a short period (writer, very junior). The specter of the late afternoon, holiday weekend news drop always loomed heavily, at least for me. Reading about it is far more fun!

The American people resigning themselves to Trump vs Biden?

Finally caught the German 2022 "All Quiet on the Western Front" this weekend. Simply blown away about how good this movie was. Highly recommend if you haven't seen it. Best version of the great book I've seen. There is an english language track if you aren't into subtitles. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016150/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf8EYbVxtCY

I watched the English track a few months ago. Very good movie.

Great film. I had it in my top 5 for 2022. Does a good job of portraying the realities of war and also the seeds of WW2.

Great film. I had it in my top 5 for 2022. Does a good job of portraying the realities of war and also the seeds of WW2. That tank scene - wow one of the best movie war scenes. And yeh, origins of WWII - maybe the best I've seen it done as well. The other takeaway - the counting of war dead. I didn't realize german dog tags were made that way until I saw the movie and looked it up afterwards. Made to be broken in half for easy counting / notification of the war dead. image://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/8XIAAOSwa0BkBb9x/s-l1600.png

Read this - particularly the German section about war identity tags. Details why they were changed. https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/identifying-the-dead-a-short-study-of-the-identification-tags-of-1914-1918/

A few minutes ahead of game 1 of the World Series and so far I've seen: Anti-Mike Garcia ad (CA-27) Anti-Ken Calvert ad (CA-41) Anti-Will Rollins ad (CA-41) Anti-Derek Tran ad (CA-45) Pro-Michelle Steel ad (CA-45) Pro-Steve Garvey ad (CA-Senate)

A few minutes ahead of game 1 of the World Series and so far I've seen: Anti-Mike Garcia ad (CA-27) Anti-Ken Calvert ad (CA-41) Anti-Will Rollins ad (CA-41) Anti-Derek Tran ad (CA-45) Pro-Michelle Steel ad (CA-45) Pro-Steve Garvey ad (CA-Senate) Enough to make you root for the Yankees I bet!

Happy to report we made it 2 hours and 5 minutes this year without running out of candy. Last year we made it 45 minutes. We gave out Skittles, Starburst, pumpkin shaped Reeses Peanut Butter cups, and my favorite Zero Bars. Skittles seems to be the favorite this year. My neighborhood has good Halloween cred and is made up of an abnormally high number of dentists per capita - who give out king size candy bars. I suspect this relates to sustaining their business.

I live in a new neighborhood; last year there were maybe 35 kids. This year the number was closer to 85 before we got cleaned out. We'll be prepared next year.

and my favorite Zero Bars Yeah, those things are great. We had trick-or-treaters for about two hours, and managed to give away about 3/4ths of the candy we'd bought. Probably about 40 kids, which is typical. Some years we get about twice that many. I'm guessing those are years when it's like 65 degrees on Oct. 31st.

I don't know how many kids we had, but I gave away 130 pumpkin shaped Reese Peanut Butter cups 52 Zero Bars 20 Skittles 20 Starburst Thats about 220 with probably about 10% double dippers and parent consumption. I'd estimate somewhere between 175 - 200. When I ran out of Candy, I ended up giving out Water to kids who were thirsty (kinda surprised they were so thirsty but we do live in a hilly development). So this probably brings us up to about 200-225 kids.

Unseasonably warm for trick-or-treat this year here in Western PA. Runs 6-8 in our neighborhood, but typically stems quickly after nightfall about 6:45 or so. But the mid-70s temps meant a steady stream of trick-or-treaters all the way until the end of the evening. Ran out of candy for the first time in years. I may have had some part in this. Two variety bags worth of Three Musketeers, Hershey's Milk Chocolate, Reese's, Kit-Kat, Whoppers, Milk Duds. Obviously, a (shameless) Hershey's homer. Mallow Cups are a local favorite as well, among an older demographic.

A few minutes ahead of game 1 of the World Series and so far I've seen: Pro-Steve Garvey ad (CA-Senate) so, how hard can Garvey lean into "Hey, I also played for a Dodger team that beat the Yankees in the World Series" now that the Dodgers beat the Yankees in the WS?

Signing off for a bit. Heading out for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, maybe back sometime around New Years. Trying to stay offline as much as possible. Wishing everyone a great holiday season whatever you celebrate and whoever you celebrate with. Hope you make some good memories. A little housekeeping, I've entered in as much of the certified results as I could in Colorado. 5 of 64 counties as of this evening are still outstanding of certified results (Boulder, Lake, Rio Blanco, Costilla, and Dolores). Most of the State House and State Senate certified results need to be entered along with the District Attorneys. CO Results can be found of this link https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CO/122598/web.345435/#/reporting Cert results in New Mexico will probably be made available when I'm gone, but heres a link to them https://www.sos.nm.gov/voting-and-elections/election-results/