Happy Halloween!
Halloween costume
Ollie’s Dragon Costume – Behind the Scenes
Where’s Waldo
So, at work they take the Halloween costume contest *pretty* seriously. This year, our office decided to go all in, and went full on Where’s Waldo mode in downtown Chicago.
If you want to play along, you can download a hi-res version of the photo here, and you can see the full cast of characters to look for here (and if you really can’t find one of us, you can find the cheat-sheet here).
I will tell you that I am a bit difficult to find, but not because I found a particularly sneaky place to hide. It happened to be VERY WINDY that day, so at the time the picture was taken my cape was about 6 feet over my head, my beard was covering my face, and I was laughing like a lunatic.
See, the thing is, we had to take this picture about a week before Halloween. While I’m sure it would have been awkward walking around the streets of Chicago in a wizard costume on Halloween, it certainly added a little something to be doing it NOT on Halloween. It was all “Ha ha, look at that guy dressed like a wizard!” on the way across the bridge, but suddenly it turns into “AAAHHHH WTF” when someone comes around the corner and discovers a random wizard with his beard up his nose laughing like a lunatic. At least one person saw me, turned around, and noped on out of there.
In fact, the day of the photo shoot I had just gotten into my costume when I realized I had a web-meeting with people in California. “Uh, why are you dressed like a wizard?” one of the guys said when I sat down. “Casual Monday,” I replied, and it was never brought up again for the rest of the meeting.
I guess they really have gotten to know me around the office.
Laura Ingalls Wilder sees a Spooky Ghost
Happy Halloween!
Halloween Recap
This year, Ollie and Evie went as a gnome and a fairy, respectively.
We were worried about Ollie and his beard, especially since he made early noises about not being very keen on the thing. I couldn’t say I blamed him; that beard was something. However, a more dedicated actor there never was, and he pretty much refused to take that thing off, doggedly wearing it until late in the night.
Once again we descended into the absolute madness of arguably the most Halloween-y street in Chicago. Craziness. Thousands of kids and adults in costume consuming hundreds of thousands of pieces of candy. This year, there was also a 100 foot long, singing, “composting worm” haunted house, in which Oliver and I were consumed, digested, and ejected out the rear. Seeing how small he was, they made sure not to make it too scary, but Oliver was completely unfazed by the whole thing. In fact, when he saw someone hiding and waiting to jump out, he literally pointed and laughed at him. Evie, on the other hand, decided not to be consumed by the thing at all.
This year we actually knew someone who lives on Harper, so we had a convenient base of operations. As far as the kids were concerned, the best part about this arrangement was that they actually got to hand out candy. They *loved* it. Both kids thought this was better than doing actual trick-or-treating. We don’t get a single trick-or-treater at our house, compared to the thousands that came to this house, so I will grant them that it was a lot more fun than doing it at home. Evie was particularly hardcore about it, dutifully handing out candy for hours, and only relinquishing her spot reluctantly when someone else wanted a turn.
The kids stayed up about as late as they ever have in their lives, but all in all, probably the best Halloween we’ve had yet.
Shane Halbach 