Sandy, don't let the door hit you on your way out

Considering our experience with last Halloween's nor'easter, this year's Sandy was a bit of a non-event here in greater Boston. We lost power for about an hour early Monday morning (last year we were without power for four days), no trees hit our house (we had two trees fall in previous storms at our last house), and all we have to do is rake up the yard a bit. And since we hadn't raked leaves before the storm, this is something we have to do anyway.

Yesterday I took the bike out and ventured down the trail.



I was able to get over and under these fallen trees (the one I scooted under looked well jammed into another tree. I moved quickly!)



Unfortunately there was no getting around this mess, but I only had to backtrack a couple yards to connect to a path that brought me around to the local middle school. The detour added only ten minutes to my grocery shopping trip.

Speaking of shopping trips ...



My husband has been urging me to kit up my bike properly if I'm to succeed at my year-without-a-car experiment, so I drove over to Burlington and plopped down beaucoup dollares for this zippered grocery bag. I'm what you might term parsimonious about certain things. I'm generous about spending money on my son or a good friend, and I don't mind spending money on food or yarn (after all, the yarn will make mittens, hats, sweaters ... practical items with a long shelf life!), but it just about kills me to crack open my wallet for an $80 bike bag. I fretted over the cost all afternoon. But I know it will be a good investment and besides, I saved about $80 in gas in the last two weeks by not driving my car so that's how I'm trying to look at it. Still, I'm feeling guilty. Damn Scottish genes!

Tonight is Halloween, my son's favorite holiday. He doesn't care about the candy ... it's all about the costume! He even mentioned not trick-or-treating this year; his friend isn't into candy either, and they were just going to walk around the neighborhood doing their ninja moves. I put a quick stop to that idea, because dammit, if I'm going to walk around in the cold with them, I want some Almond Joys, M&Ms (peanut, please), and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as a reward.