Today was bottling day for my unnamed Dunkelweizen — I was able to confirm that it hadn't been contaminated, but it's hard to judge much else from an uncarbonated, room temperature sample.

Bottling takes forever, hours from start to finish if you clean everything, but I had some good podcasts to listen to (My Brother, My Brother, and Me is tailor-made for this and many other occasions) and I'd still rather be packaging five gallons of beer than mowing the lawn or putting together that toilet downstairs. Let future Dan worry about that stuff, if he gets to have all this delicious beer.

Halloween was fun. I went as Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter and no I didn't know beforehand that was a recently published book — although I'm not too surprised. After so, so many years of bad costumes I had decided it was worth spending the time and effort on something good, and I didn't regret it.

My plans for a low-key get-together on Friday fell through (basically: people either couldn't come or flaked, and because I'd sent out an invite rather than just calling around, I was stuck at home in case someone did show: lesson learned) but on Saturday everyone came over to pre-party here. We watched Scream, played a half-round of Last Night on Earth, then headed out to Kevin's friends' party.

As was pointed out a few times, Kevin apparently hadn't seen these people for five years, but it turned out to be a good time nevertheless. The party had good costumes, and there was a large garbage bin that had ingeniously been turned into a cooler for four kegs of homebrew. I remember a bit of conversation with a guy who'd dressed as Philip J. Fry, and then playing many rounds of Tippy Cup without losing one.

The next day Jenna, Kevin, Jess and Our Bold Hero went to Brasa for breakfast and then to Dixie's for their great Bloody Marys. I take partial credit for that plan. Because as usual I had neglected Saturday when planning my Sunday, I got next to nothing done for the rest of the day, unless you count giving out treats.

I have to say, the costumes were noticeably better this year, probably because (like me) all the kids had gone to the huge Halloween costume shop that popped up on the main drag near my house. There were a lot of classic costumes this year, vampires and pirates and fairies, and the best were probably these two little twins that were both dressed up like vampires.

I love giving away candy to trick-or-treaters, but after last year's poor turnout I wasn't expecting so many visitors and so I ended up running out of candy after about an hour. Next year I'll have to double or triple my candy supply so I can keep doling out candy by the fistful as is my wont.

Snickers this year mainly, if you're wondering. Because of that great commercial with the disturbing fake lady. I love that commercial.

Bottling notwithstanding, tonight is my night off — at the spur of the moment yesterday I got together with my Lost buddies Markie and Matt for happy hour and a flick. (The movie was Dance of the Dead, a B- zombie movie that I've been sitting on for a few weeks now. Maybe a little better than you'd expect.) I felt more-or-less fine today, but I've got hunting this weekend and I've been going through my hard cider recently at a pretty steady clip.