2024 Halloween Imaging in November

Halloween this year was on a Thursday. I incorrectly guessed that people would keep their Halloween decorations into the weekend. Besides a few people having already started taking in items, a few balloons were deflated.

Imagining I might take good daytime images, initially hoped to capture more striking nighttime versions. Having less stamina than in the past, and also seeing dismantling of decorations lessened ambition for an evening pic excursion.

In the last day of movie-making, I shoehorned a few clips and pix from the rest of November during the rest of November. Look for a li'l Thanksgiving and Halloweenish Christmas peeks.

Lesson learned for 2025—take pix and videos a few days before Halloween (daytime for one session, nighttime for another session).

Visit past Halloween videos ("Halloween Decorations Galore!") and related blog articles.

Sliced-Veggie Lentil Soup

Make an easy, robust soup that contains four veggies (1/2 pound each of carrots, celery, zucchini, and yellow squash), a 1-pound bag of lentils, and ~8 cups of water and seasonings (or broth). This recipe is a process that's a cross between making my veggie pasta and my short-cut, convenient veggie lentil soup.

• The veggie pasta uses four kinds of fresh vegetables and other ingredients (pasta, mozzarella cheese, and parmesan cheese).
• The convenient veggie lentil soup uses a vegetable dry-soup packet and lentils.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients (veggies, lentils, fajita seasoning) laid out
3. Washed, trimmed, and sliced veggies
4. Sliced veggies in soup pot
5. Boiling pot of veggies in front, saucepan of lentils in back
6. Soup, ready to ladle out

Implements

• Soup pot and lid
• Ladle
• Kitchen cooking spoon
• Strainer
• Saucepan
• Plate for veggie handling
• Paring knife
• Peeler for carrots
• Temporary bowls for sliced veggies if you want (not shown)

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound each of the following vegetables: carrots, celery, zucchini, yellow squash—washed, trimmed, and sliced
• 1 pound of dry lentils, rinsed and drained
• Seasoning (Fajita seasoning works well. Also ok to refer to lentil package recipe for info.)
• 8 cups water for soup—YMMV for the amount you eventually use.

Instructions

1. Wash, trim, and slice the veggies. (My own favorite slicing device is my Presto Salad Shooter, which I've had since the early 90s.)
2. Pour the veggies and water into the soup pot.
3. Wash and drain the lentils, pour into saucepan with enough water to cover them. (OK, I'm squishy about the total amount of water.)
4. Bring both pots to boil. If appropriate, watch to ensure contents don't boil over. Skim froth as necessary. Pour lentils into the soup pot; turn down heat to simmer. Season to taste.

Note: The heating process can take about an hour. The lentil bag instructions say bring to boil, reduce heat to low, cover the pot, and simmer for 35 minutes until lentils are tender.

Post-recipe Thoughts
The veggie preparation (wash, trim, slice) can take longer than anticipated—maybe an hour in addition to another hour for soup boil and simmer. Natural stages to break up the recipe process:

1. Preparing the veggies, lentils
2. Combining, heating, seasoning

As holidays are coming around, omnivores can easily incorporate use of leftover turkey or ham—

• Use broth that you make instead of just water (adjustment for salt as appropriate).
• Add leftover meat (2 cups or more of leftover turkey or ham pieces—you know, mostly oddball sizes that you chop into consistent bites or nibble sizes).

Suggestion: Freeze excess soup in suitable serving size containers so you don't feel compelled to consume it in consecutive days till done.

New Year Ham Day

About the time I bought the turkey that I roasted a couple of weeks ago, I spied the supermarket coupon offering $10 off for purchasing a spiral half or whole ham. Hmmm, I hadn't baked a ham in maybe a few years, and the discount looked reasonable if I could find a ham that didn't cost an arm and a leg. Soooo, a couple of days before the coupon expired, I managed to find a ham priced $26.37.

The price per pound wasn't that bad—$2.99. My ham weighed 8.82 pounds. After the coupon discount, the price per pound came to $1.86. Woohoo!

On the day I prepped the ham for baking, I unwrapped it and found two packets—brown sugar and glaze. Hmmm, so how much of my $1.86/pound went for the sugar and glaze? It depends on how much you trust the alleged weight on the packets? OK, I did not weigh the ham in the store, trusting the marked weight on the pricing label.

I weighed the sugar on my kitchen scale. The scale's weight reasonably matched the label, with some flexibility for possible parallax and slop because the scale being analog instead of digital. (It's old!)

The glaze was another story! It was marked as 7 ounces. It weighed 12 ounces! I decided to weigh the sweeteners together and also toss in the prep instructions for good measure. Holy moley—a pound of non-ham stuff! Soooo, recalculating my purchase, my ham cost $2.09 a pound, although buying glaze and brown sugar separately might have been just as costly. Still a good deal.

I did not consider the bone as non-ham weight. Intact hams include the bone anyway. Eh, I should have weighed the bone and fat that I cut after I portioned slices and pieces afterward, for curiosity's sake. Maybe next time. Anyway, "Ham 101: What to Know Before Buying a Ham" is a good resource for reading up on hams, and it has a handy pig diagram.

On the day the coupon was to expire, I told some lunch buddies about the deal. One friend told me later that after luch was over, she went to her neighborhood supermarket, but did not find any coupons. She said a cashier told her that they tend to pull coupons a few days before the expiration. The next day when I went to the supermarket near me, I saw coupons, even though expiered. Looks like different stores might have different policies for removing coupons.

As in my turkey preparation from last month, I looked up oven time. On Google, I encountered advice that ranged from an hour to several for the same approximate weight. The ham recipe on the tag specified an hour after oven preheating. I was amazed that the ham did take only about an hour to heat.

My pixstrip shows the empty pan, a pixstrip of the items on the scale that shows the non-ham weight, and progression of the ham preparation.

Note: Not shown—For lessening fluid evaporation, I put in foil before putting on the ritzy ham. :-) I had narrow foil, so I used two sheets, one overlapping the other one.

1. I laid out pineapple slices to see how they'd take up space, poking a toothpick at the core's hole about 2/3 way into the ham to keep the slices somewhat in place.
2. I speared a cherry onto each of the exposed toothpicks, nudging pineapple slices as needed.
3. I tore off an additional, smaller piece of foil, placed it on the ham, and wrapped the other two sheets over it and the ham.
4. After the hour of baking time, I pulled the ham out of the oven and opened up the foils. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm!

I heated the glaze and sugar as directed. It seemed a better idea than fussing with more complicated recipes that I found on the web. I especially decided I didn't want to try recipes that included having to score the ham and jam in cloves.

The next day, the glaze was so thick that when I dipped a spoon in and pulled it out, it resembled caramel-colored warm taffy. I poured in the leftover pineapple and cherry juice, microwaving and stirring until the glaze was manageable. Good enough to smear on leftover turkey also! (I'm talking abut the turkey from last month that I parceled into serving sizes and froze.)

I was amazed that the ham yielded as much meat as it did. The fact that it was spiral-cut helped the parceling-out process a lot. Now I have packets of ham in the freezer to keep packets of turkey company.

New Year Turkey Day

Turkey Day came almost two months after Thanksgiving. The meal was tasty, the timing was just about right, with the only menu item requiring reheating being the oven-roasted veggies. And the dinner guest brought in flowers in a vase and meal accompaniments—oranges, cranberry sauce, and Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake.

It'd been a few years since I decided to roast a turkey—maybe since I underwent a long period of being unemployed and had lots of time on my hands during the holidays. Another year, the refrigerator konked out about a week or so before Thanksgiving. Mercifully, it died before I bought all sorts of food in preparation for the holiday. We went out to a standard-fare TDay meal, reasonably tasty and economical. (Burp!) Brought the dessert home. (Burp more!)

I'd tried using a rotisserie at least once, as I'd mentioned in "Holiday Gadgets to Inspire or Not". I was almost tempted to retry that method this time, as I spotted some frozen turkeys at my supermarket last week that came VERY close to the 10-pound maximum for the appliance. However, my brain kept retrieving that video image from a few years ago of the turkey thump thump humping against the window with every rotation shortly after the start of roasting.

I had considered a week before the dinner that turkeys for sale would be frozen. I recalled that frozen ones seemed to require about four days to thaw in the refrigerator. One source said 24 hours for every 4 pounds, another said a day for every 5 pounds.

When it came to deciding how long to roast, I consulted a BIG-NAME paperback cookbook, which recommended 4 to 4 1/2 hours for a turkey 8 to 12 pounds. The turkey label, however, recommended 2 3/4 to 3 hours for the same weight turkey. What a time difference between the two sources!

The store excursion for the bird made me rethink about roasting a turkey after the holidays, as they were all frozen. Brrrrr!!!!! They were in a vertical, reach-in frozen food case and awkward to turn for viewing the weight and price. After turning over maybe 10 of them and finding most were slightly over 10 pounds and a couple about 18 pounds, I settled on one that weighed slightly more than 11 pounds.

I brought the bird home and made room for it in the fridge to thaw for 4 days. Settled on using a roasting pan because its oblong shape fit better in the fridge than a round pan. Almost thought about using that pan for the roasting. By the time I washed the bird on the 4th day, removed the giblets and neck, which were in different parts of the bird, I decided I'd go ahead with the round pan and lifter method.

After washing the bird, placing it in the round pan and latching the lifter ends, spraying some spray oil, and starting the roasting process (325° preheated oven), I fretted over whether to roast the veggies (celery, onions, carrots, crookneck squash, zucchini) at the same time or start them later. My sense of experience thought that three hours would be excessive, so decided shorter was better.

After an hour of prepping the veggies—cutting, washing, peeling as appropriate, I distributed them into the already-heating pan. More spray oil, including on the veggies. Some foil over the drumsticks and sternum. A second hour passed. More spray oil over everything.

About 2 1/2 hours of the bird roasting in the oven, I saw that the thermometer reading was fast approaching the poultry-done temperature. I turned the oven down to 300°. (The project manager in me told me it was time to start the brown rice, which has a cooking time of 35-45 minutes.) After about another half hour, the temperature already read slightly past done. OK, it was time to shut the oven off, remove the pan, and set it out for the half-hour recommended time for juices to set.

It was time to start the gravy, starting with making the roux (heating flour and oil together in a frying pan) for making gravy. The turkey lifter was handy for raising the bird so I could easily scoop broth for making the gravy with. Yum!!!!

The veggies cooled down, so I scooped the veggies with some of the broth into a Pyrex bowl and microwaved them. Afterward, I strained most of the fluid into the gravy. About the time our guest took pix, I thought hmmm, maybe I could get an article out of the event if one of the pix looked suitable. The profile view is the one I picked for the pixstrip. Amazing to me is that everything came out ready when they were supposed to. And, yes, yummy!

During the meal, our guest mentioned her attempt to prepare a turkey dinner one summer day. She was unhappy with the results—dry, weird tasting, and some other unsavory adjectives. I wondered if maybe the turkey she bought had somehow thawed and refroze before she bought it. The wrapper might also have had a hole that allowed freezer burn or odor contamination. The caution might be to buy and cook turkeys around the winter holidays when turkeys are plentiful in coming to market.

Well, I think I will roast turkeys more often than once every few years. The more often I do them, the more easy it will be to remember what to do. And I'll have blog articles like this one to remind me. :-)

Read a different type of Thanksgiving story ("Mom & A Thanksgiving Turkey: Story"). Her family's turkey flew out of the oven as though it were possessed.

MnM--Munch n Music

YouTube playlist for this article,
playlist compilation article

Was in the mood for writing about two of my favorite topics, both rolled into one. My thoughts started out with wanting to pop some popcorn with my quite-old air popper. During the course of popping, melting butter, and mixing the butter and salt into the popped kernels into a large kettle, I thought about having read kernel popping action. I read that the kernel turns inside out. So I decided to look up some youtube videos. Eureka!

• Brainiac Science Abuse - Popcorn Popping In Slow Motion (This video shows someone popping popcorn on a stove top.)
• High speed video of popcorn kernel popping at 5,400 fps
• Pop corn in slow motion

I thought about a song titled "Popcorn" and found a video, which is actually the moog music set to video. Gershon Kingsley wrote in about 30 seconds, according to background info on him. A song that sounds very similar to Popcorn is Percolator.

• Peanuts (theme)
• Peanuts (do-wop)
• Peanut Vendor (Beatles)
• Take Me Out to the Ball Game
• Palisades Park
• Java (Al Hirt)
• You're the Cream in My Coffee

I found more substantial consumables as follows. Of course, themes about music and food must include Weird Al. I did sandwich some of his videos with other food-term songs. Some of these videos are trips down memory lane. Click and get down!

• Eat It
• Chicken Dance Song
• Funky Chicken
• Turkey Trot
• On Top of Spaghetti
• Annoying Orange: Lady Pasta Song
• Rye or the Kaiser
• Bread and Butter
• Turn the Tub Around (I Can't Believe It's Butter/Turn the Beat Around)
• My Bologna
• Famous Alka-Seltzer "No Matter What Shape" TV Commercial - from 1966!

Post-TDay Travel--Part 3 of 3

YouTube playlists for this article (1, 2),
playlist compilation article

This article is the third of three parts of the Thanksgiving week travel theme. In the first article, I wrote about songs about planes, trains, and cars, based on the movie title Trains, Planes, and Automobiles. As I dove into writing about other travel modes, I wandered around from song to song. I concluded I have enough material for three parts. Part 2 is about water travel songs—boats, surfboards, submarines, ….

This article covers the rest of the travel modes I can think of. I've listed songs, artists, lyrics sites, and video sites (if possible). Take another trip down memory lane.

One Foot in Front of the Other

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Walk, Don't Run	Ventures	NA	V
25 Miles	Edwin Starr	Click	ES
Stroll	Diamonds	Click	D
Hitch Hike	Marvin Gaye	Click	MG

Non-car Wheelies

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Surrey with the Fringe on Top	Various	Click	BD, GM to SJ	from Oklahoma play
Bicycle Song	Red Hot Chlit Peppers	Click	RHCP
Bicycle Race	Queen	Click	Q
Bicycle Built for Two	Various	Click	Chipmunks, computer
Acoustic Motorbike	Luka Bloom	Click	LB
Little Honda	Hondells	Click	H, [imagery]	2nd video—montage
Highway In The Wind	Arlo Guthrie	Click	AG
Motorcycle Song	Arlo Guthrie	Click	AG	Significance

Mass Transit (of Sorts)

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Bus Stop	Hollies	Click	H
Magic Bus	The Who	Click	Who
Another One Rides the Bus	Weird Al	Click	AY	parody of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust"
Promised Land	Chuck Berry	Click	CB	Prominent in MIB w/Tommy Lee Jones singing with radio while driving upside down
Convoy	C.W. McCall	Click	CWM, [imagery]	1st video—movie trailer w/complete song, 2nd video—montage w/twist on lyrics

Clippity Cloppity

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Over the River and Through the Woods	Various	1, 2	Chipmunks	Lyrics for Thanksgiving, Christmas refs
Horse with No Name	America	Click	A
El Paso	Marty Robbins	Click	MR	Performance from father, then son
Ghost Riders in the Sky	Johnny Cash, Pukipu/Ramrods	Click	JC, P/R	1st video—Johnny Cash 2nd video—Pukipu/Ramrods

Up in the Sky (Not Planes)

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Superman/Can You Read My Mind	John Williams composer	Click	JW
Up, Up, and Away	5th Dimension	Click	5D
Yellow Balloon	Yellow Balloon	Click	YB
Magic Carpet Ride	Steppenwolf	Click	S
Whole New World	Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle	Click	PB&RB

Up in the Stratosphere (Also Not Planes)

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Rocket Man	Elton John	Click	EJ
Fly Me to the Moon	Frank Sinatra	Click	FS
Star Wars	John Williams composer	NA	JW
Star Trek	Various	NA	classic, Next Generation
Telstar	Tornados	NA	T	Trivia: Band member George Bellamy is father of Muse’s Matt Bellamy.
Martian Hop	Ran-Dells	Click	RD
Bennie and the Jets	Elton John	Click	EJ	All these years, I never knew it was Bennie, and Bennie’ a she. ("She's got electric boots a mohair suit")

Just Moving On

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Wayward Wind	Gogi Grant	Click	GG
Travelin' Man	Rick Nelson	Click	RN
Ramblin’ Man	Allman Brothers	Click	AB
The Wanderer	Dion	Click	Dion
Different Drum	Linda Ronstadt, Michael Nesmith	Click	LR, MN	Lyrics link plays LR's song immediately. 1st video—LR, as part of Stone Poneys 2nd video—MN (ex-Monkee), DD writer
Me and You and a Dog Named Boo	Lobo	Click	Lobo
On the Road Again	Willie Nelson	Click	WN
On the Road Again	Canned Heat	Click	CH

Post-TDay Travel--Water Water Everywhere

YouTube playlists for this article (1, 2),
playlist compilation article

This article was going to be the second of two parts of the Thanksgiving week travel theme. Previously, I wrote about songs about planes, trains, and automobiles, based on the movie title Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. As I dove into writing about other travel modes, I wandered around from song to song.

I concluded I have enough material for a third part, coming out in about a week. (Visit http://whilldtkwriter.blogspot.com/ about the first week in December for it.) This article focuses on music for a prominent mode of travel NOT in the movie title —boats (and other water travel methods). I've listed songs, artists, lyrics sites, and video sites (if possible). Take another trip down memory lane.

Surfboard Travel (On the Water)

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Surfin' USA	Beach Boys	Click	BB
Surfin' Safari	Beach Boys	Click	BB
Hawaii Five-O	Various	NA	classic, 2010
Wipeout	Surfaris, Ventures	NA	S, V
Pipeline	Chantays, Ventures	NA	C, V	1st video—Chantays' Lawrence Welk appearance: Check out the Beatles' suits, pre-Beatles
New York's a Lonely Town	Trade Winds	Click	TW
Surfer Joe	Surfaris	Click	Surfaris
Surfer Girl	Beach Boys	Click	BB
Catch a Wave	Beach Boys	Click	BB	same tune as Sidewalk Surfin'
Sidewalk Surfin'	Jan and Dean	Click	J & D

Boat Travel (Also on the Water)

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Sea Cruise	Frankie Ford	Click	FF
Come on Down to My Boat	Every Mother's Son	Click	EMS
Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)	Enya	Click	Enya
Sailing	Christopher Cross	Click	CC
Come Sail Away	Styx	Click	Styx
Advemtures in Paradise	Lionel Newman composer	NA	LN
Sloop John B	Beach Boys	Click	BB
Sail On, Sailor	Beach Boys	Click	BB
Beyond the Sea	Bobby Darin	Click	BD
Blue Navy Blue	Diane Renay	Click	DR
Kiss Me Sailor	Diane Renay	Click	DR, DR & ER	1st video—live performance 2nd video—duet w/Ed Rambeau, one of the song writers, who also wrote and recorded "Concrete and Clay"
Brandy	Looking Glass	Click	LG
In the Navy	Village People	Click	VP

Underwater Travel (In the water)

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Yellow Submarine	Beatles	Click	Beatles	Legos video animation
Pink Shoelaces	Dodie Stevens	Click	DS	“He takes me deep sea diving in a submarine!”
Sea Hunt	David Rose composer	NA	DR

The catchy song that takes you from land to water is "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" (Brian Hyland): lyrics, video.

Turkey Week Travel--Planes, Trains N Cars

YouTube playlists for this article (1, 2),
playlist compilation article

The day before Thanksgiving is supposed to be the most heavily traveled day, at least for flying. I'm thinking that lots of people travel during the entire week. As we're rapidly approaching the big day itself, I'm bringing up a Thanksgiving-theme comedy movie and putting a music wrapper around it. Planes, Trains & Automobiles. which came out in 1987, stars Steve Martin and John Candy. From the IMDB site, the short introduction states, "A man must struggle to travel home for Thanksgiving, with an obnoxious slob of a shower ring salesman his only companion."

The movie title is about the modes of travel that the two main characters use to get from here to there, and there, and there, …. The time setting is long before 9/11, and well before TSA. It's amazing how air travel rituals have changed. Even now, maybe especially now, who knows the next paths that air travelers follow, willingly or not?

This article focuses on music that feature the movie's three modes of travel—planes, trains, and cars. I've listed songs, artists, lyrics sites, and video sites (if possible). During my web research travels, I had encountered songs that featured additional travel modes. Having accumulated lots of references, I'm publishing two parts. For this part, take a trip down memory lane with songs that feature the movie's travel means. The second one—well, wait for it (the next article). Let's say it'll be another trip with more ways of locomotion to sing about.

Planes

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Leaving on a Jet Plane	Peter, Paul, Mary; John Denver	Click	PPM, JD	Catch the duet with John and Mama Cass Elliot.
Daniel	Elton John	Click	EJ
Jet Airliner	Steve Miller Band	Click	SMB
Back in the USSR	Beatles	Click	PM; Beatels	Paul McCartney in Red Square 2003, Beatels—decent Aussie tribute band
Eight Miles High	Byrds	Click	Byrds

Trains

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Night Train	James Brown	Click	JB
Midnight Train to Georgia	Gladys Knight and the Pips, 2012 Yale Whiffenpoofs	Click	GK & Pips, YW	I encountered links to the Yale Whiffenpoofs during research for this article.
Midnight Special	Johnny Rivers	Click	JR
City of New Orleans	Arlo Guthrie	Click	AG younger, AG older	Arlo sounds the same after all these years.
Folsom Prison Blues	Johnny Cash	Click	JC

Automobiles

Song	Artist(s)	Lyrics	Video	Comment(s)
Fun, Fun, Fun	Beach Boys	Click	BB
Little Deuce Coupe	Beach Boys	Click	BB
Little GTO	Ronny and the Daytonas	Click	R & D
Hey, Little Cobra	Rip Chords	Click	RC
409	Beach Boys	Click	BB
Pink Cadillac	Natalie Cole, Bruce Springsteen	Click	NC, BS
Hot Rod Lincoln	Commander Cody, Asleep at the Wheel	Click	CC, RB
Mustang Sally	Wilson Pickett	Click	WP
Sister Christian	Night Ranger	Click	NR	"You're motoring, What's your price for flight …"
Little Old Lady from Pasadena	Jan and Dean	Click	J & D
Nadine	Chuck Berry	Click	CB
Maybelline	Chuck Berry, Johnny Rivers	Click	CB, JR
No Particular Place to Go	Chuck Berry	Click	CB
Drive My Car	Beatles	Click	Beatles
Vehicle	Ides of March	Click	Ides
Taxi	Harry Chapin	Click	HC
Cab Driver	Mills Brothers	Click	MB
Low Rider	War	Click	War
Beep Beep	Playmates	Click	Playmates
Shut Down	Beach Boys	Click	BB
Dead Man's Curve	Jan and Dean	Click	J & D

Visit my other music-topic articles:

• Moe-SKI-Toe--I've Got Me Under Your Skin
  Info about mosquitoes, accompanied by links to content and images, my parody "I've Got Me Under Your Skin", and links to my target song.
• Fish Fries Telephone
  Mini-lesson about commas and an abbreviated parody of Lady Gaga and Beyonce's "Telephone" song.
• Bad-Prose Rants from Lady Wawa
  Technical communicator parody (abbreviated) of Lady Gaga’s monster hit “Bad Romance”.
• Body Parts Express
  Huey Lewis' "Hip to be Square" triggering thought of "hip" as a body part rather than a social attribute, which results in my article about various body-part usages in songs and expressions.
• Year-end Fun-AT-tix and More Same Song Titles
  Seasonal homophones for year end and more same-song-titles/different-song examples.
• Dual-theme "Weird Al" Yankovic Songs
  Weird Al parodies that capture music from one song and integrates lyrics and visuals of his vision from another song.
• Same Song Titles, Different Songs
  Example songs that have same song titles but are different songs entirely.
• Some Wordplays Placed in the Wicked Play (and Other Wicked References)
  References to "For Good", "Defying Gravity", "I'm Not That Girl", "As Long as You're Mine", "The Wizard and I". I also include some background about main Wicked characters.

Q4 Lights N Decor, Halloween Sights N More

More and more, appearances by outdoor lights and decorations have been creeping backward and forward in the calendar in the 4th quarter. What formerly had been prominent displays only during the end of the year started showing up near Thanksgiving, staying around into the following year. This year, Halloween lights and decorations seem to have started as soon as early October.

In past years, simple paper-bag-shape lights lining driveways and walkways seem to have made way for Christmas lights, air-pumped lawn balloons, tree-hanger illuminators, and other lawn decorations. During the years that Christmas displays have become more elaborate, illuminating, and animated, Thanksgiving themes have been creeping in as if they were preludes to the BIG EVENT. Think inflatable pilgrim-outfitted turkeys.

In more recent years, Halloween decorations have gone on display since much of October. There are ghosts and ghouls, jack-o-lanterns, black cats, graveyard scenes, and more. Lights? Lots! A few years ago, they seemed to be primarily orange. Black is a common color for Halloween, but pretty impractical. This year, I've seen several houses that have multiple-color lights.

I think a possible trend could be lights and decorations that segue from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas. Well, maybe not all three events. You CAN have common items for Halloween and Thanksgiving using a harvest theme—pumpkins, orange lights, straw brooms, maybe more. Thanksgiving to Christmas might be less likely for common items. Hmmm, maybe make up an inflatable turkey wearing a red suit? (Yow!) I think that's a worthwhile marketing idea, maybe not too far-fetched! In any case, multicolor lights can make it through all three holidays, starting in early October through a few weeks in January.

Technologically, I wonder how feasible it might be to make strings of lights that are programmable for color. I know there are already light strings that blink, flicker, and chase. If someone could come up with lights that are programmable for motion and color, the lights would be REALLY multifunctional. Maybe a three-color lights gadget (red/blue/green) in a string of many that can display any one color or combination? Maybe a chasing-lights rainbow display? Programmable lights for color could be useful even for Valentine's Day and Easter! Well, one possible obstacle might be the association of red lights to a different meaning ("red light district").

For decorations versatility, companies could come up with inflatable balloons of cutesy kids that wear velcro-fastener outfits of holiday-theme clothing. How about witchy or batty for Halloween, pilgrimy for Thanksgiving, Santa Clausy for Christmas, …. Further use of my hypothetical kid balloons could include outfits with red hearts for Valentine's Day. For Easter, they could wear springy outfits (maybe including duck-bill hats and rabbit-ear headgear) and hold Easter egg baskets.

It might only be a matter of time before marketeers successfully induce mass use of outdoor decorations for Valentine's Day and Easter. They are very good at getting people to prep for those days, seducing us to buy holiday main-course food, desserts, and candy. Speaking of which, we sure don't need to wait for THOSE events to start in on the consumables. There's a lot going on this quarter!

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For more articles about Halloween, enter "Halloween" in the search box at the upper left of this window. Or find and click "Halloween" link at Partial Index of Keywords section (just below Popular Posts section).

Holiday Gadgets to Inspire or Not

Over the years during the holiday season, I have smiled bemusedly at gadgets hawked on TV as prospective gifts. Thoughts that popped up in my mind have usually been one or more of the following:

• Really? A saucepan would work, and most people already have one.
• Gee, another appliance to take up shelf, cupboard, or drawer space.
• Does that gadget really work?
• [price, usually ending in .99] sure seems like a lot for what that thing is supposed to do.

Gadgets in the past that trigger one or more of my above thoughts include the hot dog cooker, hamburger cooker, butter melter, toaster-sized deep fryer, and rotisserie. I admit I succumbed to having bought a deep fryer and a rotisserie (different times). The deep fryer is long gone, it never seeming to have delivered goods as expected. An additional concern was what to do with the excess oil. I donated it so long ago, I don't remember much about the oil or device anymore. As for the rotisserie, it had great promise, especially for roasting turkeys under 10 pounds. The key is "10 pounds". Almost NEVER have I found such a peewee turkey in a store.

My most recent turkey experience with the rotisserie was maybe two years ago, when I trimmed some turkey body parts to make it weigh under 10 pounds. The cooking process was underwhelming. The turkey was eventually too big around to gracefully fit in the rotisserie cavity, circumference-wise. After some time of the turkey rotating and roasting, the meat contracted lengthwise but its girth expanded, which exposed the imbalance of my insertion of the spit into the turkey. (Spit—funny name for the turkey immobilizer, as spit also means to eject [something] from the mouth—also, the action's output.) The meat began bumping and thumping the window door until the cooking time finished (whirr, thud, thump, whirr, thud thump, ...).

My roast method now includes placing the turkey on a turkey lifter that's inside a 16-inch diameter cake pan, parking a meat thermometer in it, than roasting according to recommended time and temperature for its weight. (I admit, I also own a pair of poultry lifters , which I have used occasionally but forgot to last month.)

Two electric versions of products I saw advertisements for recently were an electric cookie gun and electric wine bottle opener. They are real products, but they make me think of the gag gift Spencer's used to sell—the electric fork. Anyway, I can't see myself foregoing elbow grease to get electric versions of a cookie gun or wine bottle opener.

Anyway, as I was in my local drugstore waiting for my photo order for outgoing greeting cards, I used the half-hour wait time to browse a merchandise area for gadgets. I felt I hit some sort of jackpot. Not only were these items amusing to me, but they neatly fit into the 99¢-effect pricing, which I blogged about in November.

I am omitting urls for the products I have listed below, as readers, if they want to acquire additional details, should research to satisfy their own satisfactions, including finding product reviews and price comparisons. For many of the products, the premises and/or prices leave me speechless and commentless.

Point 'n Paint
(wholesale distributor, IDEA Village; $19.99)
The package states "No tape" and "Paint entire room in less than an hour". (Please, no heckling about the text case.)

Save a Blade Automatic Razor Sharpener
(distributor, Exceptional Products Inc.; $19.99)
The package says "up to 200 shaves from a single blade".

Emjoi Tweeze (distributor, Tristar Products, Inc., $19.99)
This item comes with 2 AA batteries. The packaging states "Easily removes facial hair except eyebrows".

Touch N Brush Hands-Free Toothpaste Dispenser
(distributor, Allstar Products Group, Inc.; $19.99)
No electricity. No batteries.

Set of 12 Bottle Tops Turn Your Drink Can Into A Bottle
(Tele Brands, $9.99)
Packaging states "Snap top onto standard cans" and "Keeps Carbonation Longer".

One Touch Hands Free Can Opener
(distributor, Harvest Direct; $19.99)
You place the unit on top of a can, after ensuring that you have inserted 2 AA batteries ("sold separately"), then press the button. The opener walks around in a circle. Actually, I used to own an electrical can opener, which had long ago departed for the great scrap heap in the sky. Can't say I miss it. Besides making do with a hand-crank opener occasionally, I see that many cans these days have pull tabs, further reducing the need for using an opener.

Emson Egg Genie
(distributor, Emson; $19.99)
With this appliance, you can cook up to 7 eggs at one time. Eh, I always thought a saucepan was versatile enough.

The hamburger cooker of yore seems to have evolved into two newer types to reflect a more recent selling of hamburgers—the "slider". The gadgets I ran across were the Big City Slider Station and the Chicago Slider. (I think previous name attempts have been "mini-burger" and Burger King's "Burger Buddies". )

Chicago Slider
(distributor, East West Distributing; $19.99)
This gadget makes four square burgers and uses electricity. Scoop meat into the cavities, close the clamshell lid, cook.

Big City Slider Station
(distributor, Harvest Direct; $19.99)
This gadget makes five round burgers and uses a stove top. Scoop meat into the cavities, press down with its mating part, cook.

As I have all the equipment I think I need now, I'm short of cabinet space for new gadgets, I'm skeptical of them working, and I prefer to spend the money on other items, I hope Santa isn't inspired to bring me any of the items I recently spotted and listed. Maybe I'll ask for things not available in stores or online. Can't tell; otherwise, wishes might not come true. Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving Day Menu, From a Language Perspective

Being someone who thinks about the English language a lot, I often think of associative terminology. In my topic about Thanksgiving Day food, I'm putting a twist on it and injecting some flavor into the discussion, language-wise. Turkey is at the top of the food list. For vegetarians and vegans, skip reading "turkey", or discontinue reading this article. Other items are (from the top of my head) potatoes, sweet potatoes (sometimes interchangeably called yams), cranberry sauce, dressing (aka stuffing), gravy, and pumpkin pie. What about veggies? They'll roll onto the scene. I'll bypass food discussion pertaining to all-day football, as that could be an entire subject by itself.

Turkey: Legend has it that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national symbol rather than the eagle. Google results indicate Franklin was displeased with the choice of the eagle, but not entirely clear that he lobbied for the turkey. More recently, in the previous century anyway, turkey has become an unflattering term. "Jive turkey!" was a derisive insult often uttered by George Jefferson of The Jeffersons TV show. Turkey has been a term used to label a bad movie; even better, Golden Turkey Awards go to both movies and directors. Cold turkey as a term does not refer to the temperature of the bird. One other Turkey is the country, which always makes me go "hmmm" when I think of it in conjunction with another country that makes me think of food—Greece.

Potatoes: We have Mr. Potato Head, couch potato, hot potato, .... Regarding edible potatoes, there seem to be lots of ways to prepare them, serve them, and buy them already prepared—baked, mashed, twice-cooked, scalloped, fried, liquified or nearly liquified into soups, chunked into salads, etc.

Sweet Potatoes and Yams: This subtopic required googling for "sweet potatoes vs yams". And wow, what a load of results! Here's one link that has descriptions for each—http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/sweetpotato.html. Sounds like yams are not as common as sweet potatoes in my neck of the woods. Oh, well, as Popeye might say, "I yam what I yam and I yam what I yam that I yam!" Maybe Popeye doesn't handle hot potatoes, sweet or not. Anyway, let's move to a sweeter topic—Swee'Pea, his adopted baby. That brings us to ...

Sweet Pea(s): Peas—those Crayola-green spheroids. Oh, if they're canned peas, they have that odd olive-green color about them. Sweet Pea does seem an odd name for a baby. Nevertheless, Tommy Roe made a hit song in the mid-60s named "Sweet Pea" about a girl. (Well, this looked like a good area as any to shoehorn "sweet peas" as a candidate vegetable for the Thanksgiving Day meal.)

Cranberry Sauce: The first time I saw cranberry sauce, it came out of can. It resembled jelly that you dish out with a knife or spoon. It retained the shape of the can and the utensil characteristic used to serve it up. It didn't pour like a sauce. Even odder, I didn't consider it tasty for such a pretty color. Still don't. Even its liquid relative—cranberry cocktail—isn't that appealing to me.

Dressing and Stuffing: I think these terms are strange names for the same food—flavored and moistened diced bread that contains other items—celery, onions, sage (predominant flavor!), .... Stuffing, as a term, makes sense, particularly when it's actually placed inside the turkey. Dressing, as a term, makes no sense to me. Related, the term "salad dressing" makes sense, as you're dressing a salad. Turkey dressing? I don't see turkey dressing dressing a turkey like I see salad dressing dressing a salad.

Gravy: Good gravy, gravy train, Gravy Train. Good gravy—this expression has nothing to do with good or gravy. It's a polite and not-that-common expression of surprise. The two kinds of gravy trains pertain to implicitness of advantage, the proper-noun expression (dog food) having been named from the lower-case gravy train. Eh, let's leave the Gravy Train at the station and move on to pumpkin pie. (I rethought my initial intent to hyperlink to Gravy Train. Readers are on their own for this googling.)

Pumpkin Pie: These two words can evoke lots of language imagery separately. Pumps have kin? What kin they look like? Lotion pumps? Miniature oil-drilling pumps? OK. There are some etymological roots for pumpkin, but they all sound like slacked pronunciation devolution to me, since the word pump has no kinship with the word pumpkin. As for pie, besides the edible ones, I also think of pi and pie charts.

What's after dessert? How about antacids? Anyway, I hope this article has provided some food for thought. May your Thanksgiving Day be a good one, with plenty to be thankful for.