I received a grand total of zero (0) Trick-or-Treaters last night which qualifies as a new record. I attribute this sharp decline to one of two hypotheses: 1) I rigged my front porch with a weight-sensitive trapdoor (it calls you fat before it opens) and captured all the little tykes to make some steak and kid knee pie or 2) I was hiding in the back room of house with all the blinds closed and the porch light off. It is left as an exercise for the reader to determine which hypothesis is more legitimate (see also, Intelligent Design in schools).

During the witching hour, I was transcribing the Westfield fight song and making fun of the arrangement, which essentially consisted of music written for flute, clarinet, and alto saxophone, and then cut n' pasted into the trumpet, trumpet 2, and horn parts. I'm supposed to re-arrange the piece so it sounds the same, but so a seventh grade band can play it and still sound as good. I would have finished, but my old battered copy of Finale 2002 kept crashing, so I broke down and ordered the upgrade to Finale 2006.

Finale is one of those ridiculously overpriced pieces of software that releases a new version every year, even though there's not enough new functionality to make it worth the money. Yet because of the prices, it is more cost-effective to upgrade at regular intervals to get the discounted price than to wait many years and finally buy a new version at the maximum price. Maybe I'll get a free drinking glass like I did the last time I upgraded four years ago. To date, I have never actually had a beverage out of my Finale glass but once I put it on Boo!ty's head to see what she would do (it fell off and she ran away like a little girl). Incidentally, Boo!ty didn't get a chance to scare anyone last night, but she did pile drive Amber into a trash can (Amber does not have a built-in Halloween name but her Indian name can be Dances with Boo!ty). She's getting smarter -- last night she saw a door ajar so she ran into it and it opened.

Speaking of dancing, there's a new Dance Dance Revolution game out for the GameCube. You haven't seen the definition of funny until you've seen Mario do the Running Man.