Our hot tub spa was hooked up, filled and tested by the electrician yesterday and the spa specialist arrived in the early evening to give Tom a lesson in tub maintenance.  Last night we hot tubbed in our own spa for the first time.

Tom starts working as a real Microsoft employee officially on Monday.  They've already assigned him a shared office, laptop, and he's started learning about his project.  Meanwhile, he's finishing up with Tata Group.  He wanted a week break between the two jobs, but that isn't going to happen.  He's ecstatic about finally being a Microsoft employee.  He's had this as a goal in the back of his mind for the last eight years, ever since he reentered Computer Science.  I have mixed feelings about this.  Mostly, I'm very happy for Tom, and I know he will be good for Microsoft; meaning he will have a positive impact on their production.  I'll have to think twice about referring to my husband's employer as the "evil empire".

We got 51 trick-or-treaters this Halloween and I was congratulating myself for having a positive influence on our neighborhood....  But when I asked some older tricksters why we got more than twice as many kids this year they said "it was damn cold last year."  I was thinking that I was at the forefront of some sort of revival and they tell me it was just the weather.  Oh well, whatever it was, if they had fun, more will do it next year.

Our Hallows party was a blast.  We had an unexpectedly small crowd of 13 and I made food for 40 (we're still eating it).  There was a good mix of people, we feasted, I told a spooky story, we showed slides, and I even got around to a card reading.  We had decorations, spooky music and lighting, and even a motion-detection rattling bone startler.

This page, the November colors and that's it for now. .

The boss's trip to Dutch Harbor has been rescheduled for very soon, so he and I will be able to install the new firewall together.  That should work well.

I STILL haven't done anything about my ISP and Majordomo major headaches with SeattleLinuxChix.  I need to call tech support but I need to have some time when I can do it.  That hasn't happened yet.

Last week I ran 7/8 of a mile 3 days and 3/4 of a mile one day.  This week due to a busy schedule and rain I haven't run yet, hoping for this afternoon

With Hallows and the Hot Tub Spa installation behind us, I want to now concentrate on our home accounting and the Seattle LinuxChix email, stuff that has been put off while I did more urgent tasks.

Oh yeah, I need to put away all those Hallows decorations.

We had a couple of hard rain and wind storms that have taken most of the leaves off the trees.  You can still see a few reds and yellows.  We had our first morning frost last week.

I've seen a lot of junkos at our feeders lately, even feeding from the feeder itself instead of from the ground.  A female Anna's hummingbird comes to the feeder irregularly.

The air has gone one step colder and we are having rain and wind storms more frequently.  We've started to have that Winter overcast that can go on for days without a break.