Friday's five

I will provide a partial mini-break from Halloween musings by dishing out five recommendations for things I've been loving lately:

1. I get hooked on the oddest mix of TV shows.  This season it's "Up All Night" on NBC, starring Christina Applegate, Will Arnett and Maya Rudolph.  It's about two new parents adjusting to life with a baby.  Despite the fact that the main characters end every practically sentence directed at each other with "Babe," which I find exceptionally annoying, I love this show.  It makes me laugh out loud.
2. World Series baseball!  Readers, you are a diverse group.  I think some of you might be waiting for the leaves to fall so I stop posting pictures of them, while others are waiting for baseball to be over so I quit yammering about it.  Both groups have to wait just a little bit longer for me to move onto new topics.  If you have any interest in baseball at all, you know that Game 6 last night was a crazy game.  It was a must-win for the Cardinals, and they got huge hits in the 9th, 10th, and 11th innings to force a seventh game in the series.  I recommend that you watch that game tonight!  If the rest of the series is any indication, it won't be boring.
3. Books and book club.  I would love to recommend Cleopatra for your November reading list, if only I were more than 60 pages into the book.  My friends in book club fared similarly, but the host coordinated a wonderfully themed party last night, with the movie "Cleopatra" on TV in the background and ancient Egyptian desserts!  Thumbs up for themes!  Up next: On my Kindle, I have Interpreter of Maladies, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society waiting for me.  I think Potato Party is at the top of the list - although I will keep working on Cleopatra, too.
4. Learning how to use my camera.  I briefly noted this goal earlier in the week, but it is obviously an ongoing project.  I have a Canon Powershot SD 1100, otherwise known as a standard point-and-shoot digital camera.  So far, my biggest piece of progress is tinkering with what I think is called the "long shutter mode," which is making the lens stay open for several seconds (of my choosing) to let more light in for night photos.  (Obviously, you should not accept my explanation as any sort of official language or advice.)  I stood outside my apartment last night and probably confused some neighbors as I took two-second, four-second, six-second, and eight-second photos of the building's lights to see the differences.  So cool!  I can't wait to learn more manual functions.
5. Finally, I procured a glue gun yesterday from the fabric shop.  I want to get a sewing machine this winter, but man, a glue gun works wonders in the meantime.  I got home from book club and decided to assemble the first phase of Saturday's costume with the glue gun, with the baseball game on in the background.  The game kept going and going, so I hunkered down for the night, and by the time the game ended at midnight, I had unexpectedly finished the whole darn thing - with lots of help from the glue gun.  I am pretty happy with the final product and hope it stays together long enough for me to run 3.1 miles in it.  

I'll share the full costume in the next day or two, but because you are undoubtedly frail with all of the suspense, Reader, here is a little preview:

 Have fun this weekend!