Van UP!

Well, I got my baby back. My van is up and running. The problem was that my oil pump went bad. It cost me 4 bills to get it fixed, but now it seems to be running great. The mechanic, who worked on my van, said that I should be using better oil filters. I had a Fram filter and he noted that all that filter contains is some tissue paper and not much more to help filter the oil. He recommended I use Mann filters, more expensive, but better filtration. Note to self - dump the 4 or 5 Fram filters that you bought on sale.

Not much excitement during Halloween night. I had at most 10 trick or treaters. That's 2 more than I had last year. For some reason not too many kids going out at night. I guess there are enough church and school functions which enable the kids to get their fill of candy.

I recall my 1st Halloween in California, that would be in 1967. I lived with 3 other roommates and for some reason I don't remember them being home so I was by myself that night. I knew, as a child, how I didn't care for some of the small candy that people would give out on my Halloween treks. So I picked up 2 big boxes of Hersheys chocolate bars. I believe there was 40 to a box. These were the large candy bars that you pay 75 cents now. I figured, if I had any left over, great for me. People that know me know what a chocoholic I am. So, it's Halloween night, I have my candy ready and my six pack and TV, I was set. I lived in an apartment complex and knew most of the kids. I spent a lot of time in the pool and that's were the kids hung out. I figured that there would be a couple kids and that would be the end of it - wrong. The only thing that I can figure out is that there must be some sort of underground network communication that goes into effect during Halloween. I had so many kids come to my apartment. I swear there was a line formed to my doorway, and I lived on the second floor. After a few groups of kids, I noticed that some of the costumes were familiar and actually, some of the costumes didn't match. Those rascals were going downstairs and changing articles of clothing. I figured this out when I noticed that there was a policeman costume with a pirate mask. I quickly started taking note as to who I was giving candy to. At the end of the night, I had maybe 5 bars left. The next day, talking to my neighbors, they asked me if I had a party going on because of all the kid traffic at my doorstep. I just smiled and said nope, just a typical Halloween night for me.