All Hallows Party

We invited the usual suspects (i.e. those who would probably have been over to role-play anyway, had there been no party) and had a (very small) Halloween Bash. Mostly there was what was to be expected at a nerd party - one on the computer, two playing the Wii, others lounging, carving pumpkins, eating, or chatting.

And what pumpkins they were!



Brian, Elizabeth and I created the first flight, with DBF carving a fourth that put all ours to shame.


(From Right to left: Brian's grin of evil, Elizabeth's friendly, albeit toothless smile, and my emo pumpkin of ultimate sadness and heavy bangs.[Click to see the tear!])


(Nick's amazing Cat-from-Trigun-modeled-after-the-Bobblehead-next-to-the-printer hands-down winner of the night.)

And we decorated with gorgeous bouquets, as I am a very lucky girl whose man believes in flowers, even when it's not prom.



And after some late-night boardgaming, I went to sleep, but not before writing the first few sentences of my NanoNovel!

Typos are purposeful- I'm not allowed to fix them until December. It's rules.

Charles Donnet coughed slightly, and shook out his delicate linen napkin, a fine dust of powdered sugar and lemon peel drifting to the old tiles, laced with vein-like blue markings. the floor was old, far older than the parvenue walls and ceilin, rebuilt after the great Modernism riots, when hordes of new thinkers banded together to tear down the baroque, highly decorated vesiges of the past, covered from prying, outside eyes by the other side's war, the conflict outside their world, which caused them grief, but could never truly touch them. The floor throbbed with the centuries of coffee, wine, and tea spilled on its tiles, with the lingering echoes of a million conversations still bouncing their sounds off it's cool surface, whose beautiful, shell-like delicacy belied their strength, their eldest stamina. He adjusted his cravat, dabbed at his small, precise moustaches and blinked in a somewhat bewildered manner at the denizens of his own café, at least those of the morning shift. He had never been up before ten in his life, that he could remember, and today the light seemed impossible, both too bright and too gray at the same time, like a thick layer of impasto zinc white beside he shining purity of titanium blanc. He snifffed at his uncouth brothers in mind, and, in donning his hat, managed to doff it slightly to the room at large, without applyuing any attention or effort beyond that of placing it on his smooth, Brilliantined waves.

He stepped outside the café and onto the cobbled streets f the Shadow city, the Second city, his home. His lodgings were nearby, as were the homes and rooms of any of his compatriots. None of the myriad citizens of the Shadow city would dream of living too far from their café. There was such a thing as loyalty, after all. For some people, at any rate, thought Charles stiffly, though even his stilffness held within it a seed of his languor, Like a starched shirt after a long ball, beginning to soften, or a straw boater in the heat of summer. His stick clacked against the pavement, and was greeted by those who recognized the sound of his promenade, a leisurely tattoo tripping along the stones, or the instantly recognizable scent of his button hole, the gorgeous lily that was worn only by him, grown specially for him in the city, worn by none other. He shuddered again at the early-morning coffee-drinkers, their flat caps pulled down over their foreheads, shirtsleeves (where they appeared at all) rolled up over the powerful forearms of men who performed physical labour, whether to earn their livelihoods or to acheive their ideological aims. Charles didn't see the difference. Sweat, even the honest sweat on a good man's brow, was ugly and uncouth, unless extolled on a clean, slightly musty page written by some Victorian romantic poet. Nonetheless, his errand provided him a certain vigor beyondthat inspired by his usual mild exertions, and he added a slightly jaunty swing to his step, in honor of himself, a man out and about, on business, even at quarter to ten.

He brought his stick upward to cock his hat slightly toward a young Communiste with large green eyes peeking from underneath a drivers' cap bearing a red button reading "Trotskyist Students' Alliance". She responded with a nonchalance born of long aquaintance with his breed, whatever fascination awakened by his threadbae nobility neutralized by her disgust with his decadent ways and lack of social consciousness. He grinned at her lack of reaction and smoothed his well-fitted coat with his dove-gray gloves.

He took the steps down to Cab Savage's subterranean flat, carefully avoiding rubbing his coat against the flaking blue paint beginning to peel away from the old brick walls. He'd swore ina most ungentlemanlike way when he discoevered his morning coat had been ruined by these walls, and had lay his roth that never more would he return to "The Savage hole" as he had termed it, in his genteel fury. In this situation, however, it being far too earl for morning calls, Charles decided his oath cou;dn't bind him, particularly in his third-best coat. He was, nonetheless, careful to leave a sizeable gap between, as his shoes tapped down the steps lightly and quickly.