October Summary

Happy End of October! Yes, I know it's Halloween.

This year, though we don't have kids, my husband and I have been talking a great deal about Halloween, and what exactly Christians should do with the holiday. I dislike the gory, grotesque imagery it's become steeped in recently. (I say recently, could it be I just didn't notice this stuff as a kid?) A house in my neighborhood has severed heads on its lawn. But I do like costumes, and it could be so fun for kids, minus the scariness.

In the course of our conversation, we've read several articles about the topic. This one is a good place to start. It gives the history of the holiday and discusses Christian options. I like to hear thoughts on this, so if your family has a cool Halloween celebration or alternative, let me know in the comments! As for us, we participated in a Trunk-or-Treat last week and tonight we're helping at our church's fall festival.

The least-scary car of them all: we decorated as a Texas A&M tailgate party.

Anyway, on to the summary!

October Running Things

1. About 80 miles. I cut my running mileage and did some cross-training (pool and weights) to let my foot rest and heal. Which brings us to...

2. The foot is feeling a little better. That is, when I take care of it. When I forget to ice and stretch, it lets me know.

3. I bought my first pair of ankle-length tights in, well, ever. Yes, I had been braving winter runs in leftover high-school tights--you know, the extremely shiny ones that are impossible to get your foot out of. It was time.

October Non-Running Things

1. Suddenly, new readers! In October, my blog views more than tripled. So if you're a new reader, welcome! And thanks for reading!

2. Nine books. I kind of went through a reading slump, which might have had something to do with reading Tolkien's The Book of Lost Tales: Part 1 of The History of Middle Earth. It was dense. I finished, but I don't recommend it unless you're really, really into Tolkien.
Highlights:
Looking for Alaska by John Green. This summer, John Green broke my heart in The Fault in Our Stars. (If you haven't read it, do it! But only if you want to cry). Looking for Alaska was his first novel, and I loved it.
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive A Mass Extinction by Annalee Newitz. Though this was not what I was expecting (I expected more strategies for surviving things like earthquakes, asteroids, and the zombiepocalypse, and it's actually about how the human race will survive), it was still an interesting read.

3. I discovered baked apples. At a corn maze and rib cook-off in Las Cruces, we sampled about eighteen different ribs (that's too many ribs, in case you were wondering), and where I traded both of my dessert tickets for this deliciousness:

Don't let the rib distract you from the amazingness of this apple.

I think baked apples just sounded dry and not desserty enough in the past. Oh, how wrong I was. I'm going to try to replicate it in my kitchen sometime.

 4. And finally, my favorite image from fall so far:

Hiking in Cloudcroft, NM