It's been a wild and crazy night. I'm quite intoxicated at the moment... Forgive any weird things that show up here (spelling, grammar, broken links, etc.) I'll fix anything I screwed up tomorrow.

Sammy and I first stopped at her brother's house to meet him and his roommates. Then we started the trek downtown. The boys were dressed in rented fursuits, actually. (I inspected the heads to check out the construction.) It was a little creepy, having a white rabbit, a very scary looking skunk and a pink bear following us.

It was a blast, let me tell you. The streets were packed with people, freaks, monsters, and objects of all sorts walking around. There were many Austin Powers and Darth Mauls and Princess Amidalas. Also present were the usual strange costumes: a guy covered from head to toe in dead grass stems, leaning against a tree and grabbing people who walked by. The skeleton in the tuxedo on stilts. The Jolly Green Giant with a very evident penis. The twelve foot tall white... um, thing with a pumpkin on top. Lots of drag queens, vampires, general monsters, the Village People, Devo, ninjas, etc.

I saw a few walking cigarette packs (one was my brand!), a refrigerator stocked with beer (he was popular), an eight foot tall bowling pin (at first I thought it was a tampon), a used tampon (which was much better done than the bowling pin had the bowling pin actually been a tampon), and a very realistic Christmas tree. The fashion police gave me a ticket for "wearing too much black" and a Hari Krishna gave me a flower. I was accidentally socked in the nose by the boob fairy. Our Care Bear, skunk and rabbit entourage kept getting into tussles with other animals: another rabbit, a dog, a tiger, and a donkey.

There was also a weird thing: someone wrapped themselves in a big piece of egg crate foam and taped long balloons to them. I have no idea what that was supposed to be.

I think part of the fun downtown on Halloween is the interactions between characters. Say someone dresses as Nixon and comes upon a secret service agent. The agent will shadow Nixon for a few steps, checking out the crowd for him. Or if a drag queen meets up with a "doctor," he'll get a brief and very public gynecological exam. Or if two bands full of Kiss members meet, they'll argue over who gets the only drummer.

It was fun. But I had something else on my mind tonight.

Friday morning, a guy I went to high school with passed away.

He didn't die in an accident or foul play or anything like that. He had leukemia. He'd fought with it his entire life. I remember he would be gone for weeks in high school because of problems. He made it through college, and worked for a law firm while getting his masters in engineering.

He would have gotten his masters next spring.

Since high school, I haven't really seen or talked to him. Most of what I heard about him came through the grapevine in bits and pieces, but I've always marveled that he'd been able to accomplish so much despite his illness.

He was 25.

He was only a month older than I am.