Why I Oughta...

It's - beginning - to - look - a - lot - like - Christmas....  At least if you walk down Randolph Street outside of the Daley Center.  I took this photo on a recent walk and you can see the guys in the bucket trucks stringing little white twinkle lights on the Ginko trees that are perched in the raised beds right along Randolph.  I covered this same thing the past few years. In 2016, the lights went up in early October . And in 2015, the lights went up in September . So, the trend continues to creep back towards Halloween.    And, I for one, don't consider this Christmas creep.  They don't keep them on once the installation is done.  Let's just count this as flat out good weather planning, right?

Back in July, we added a Crimson King Maple tree to one of the far back corners of our #newoldbackyard after finding it on sale at Menards.  It was the ninth tree we planted this season and the final one added to the arboretum before the summer heat hit.  I planted this one pretty late - in mid-July - and then we were hit with a pretty severe drought through most of August and September.  The Crimson King is a purple-leafed Maple tree with shallow roots that doesn't give much of a show in the fall, but in exchange, gives a nice contrasting color most of the summer.  Nat's folks have a big one up on Twin Lakes that I've admired and that's part of the reason why we planted this one back here. I'm posting this photo so I can revisit this tree in the Spring when it *hopefully* comes back to life with some new leaf buds.  This is now located kind of behind the big trampoline that Nat bought for the kids, so it has been somewhat out of sight, out of mind.  But,

We walked from the Grand Floridian to the Polynesian one morning recently for breakfast at Kona Cafe and on that walk, we came across this large Tiki.  He is outside one of the Longhouses, just a bit west of the Grand Ceremonial House.  In what is seemingly a random location.  But, he is big.  And angry looking.  And something that makes your stay at the Poly just a little.bit.more special.  I've written about the Tiki Room at DLR here .  And I've posted photos of some of the other art at the Polynesian including this painting  and this print that we picked up in Boutiki .  

And...belly laughs all around.  Hot pockets, too.

I've written a few times about Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party down at the Magic Kingdom in the past.  In 2015, I posted a few photos of Halloween pins and a video of the Sanderson Sisters .  I also posted a photo of a Christmas ornament - yes Christmas - that was a Mickey-shaped pumpkin .  And, finally, that same year, we picked up a few 'limited edition' pins from the party and I shared a photo of those .    This year, I'll place this year's map here in my diary to remember what things looked like and where the trick-or-treat locations were located.  You can see those below. This isn't the first Parks map that I've posted.  You can see more from Disneyland/Sea Tokyo here .  And the full archive of maps-specific posts here . Boo to you!

Just like my recent trip to the Bay Area , I spent all of about 24 hours in New York recently.  The entirety of it between Newark Airport and offices and a hotel in SoHo.  That photo above, is the view I had for an afternoon, which was pretty nice.  Back when I was working at Google and would occasionally travel to NYC, I never got below 15th Street, so this is a whole new territory for me being Downtown and all.  How cosmopolitan, eh?!?!

We marked the evening fall temperatures lately with the maiden fire in our new fireplace recently.  I posted photos of this fireplace being built earlier on the blog back in March of this year, so you can see the location of this fireplace in that post.  I've posted a bunch of pieces on our various fireplaces over time that you can check out here .   We loved our outdoor fireplace back in Elmhurst - especially during the fall - when we broke out the s'mores, so I'm thinking we'll get a lot of use out of this new one.  Here's a photo from seven years ago showing the kid's cousins toasting their marshmallows .  We didn't do any toasting this time, but there's still plenty of fall left, right?  And in this one?  We have a gas burner, so I don't have to round up kindling and work to get it started each time.