Rice pudding and Halloween parties

This has been a pretty wonderful October. 12 years ago Andy and I got married in October, for a wide variety of reasons. However, every fall I am thrilled that we chose to do it in October, as this month has traditionally been blessed with Indian summer weather. This year, we spent our anniversary weekend in Minneapolis for a medical conference. Andy worked Saturday morning, then surprised me with diamond earrings and dinner reservations at Il Gato. Great food, great company, and zombies as far as the eye could see...
You see, apparently we were in the cities at the same time the annual Zombie Pub Crawl was happening. Every where you looked, there were zombies. 10,000 of them. My personal favorites were the Bride Zombie - complete with real wedding dress and full cathedral train - and Where's Waldo Zombie. My cousin, Erika (whom we had a great lunch with that day!) stated that a sexy zombie had tried to crawl into their car through a window after they had dropped us off at our hotel. While I don't doubt that a zombie attempted to do so, I do doubt her classification of "sexy." In my experience, there is no such thing as a sexy zombie. The most disturbing aspect of the weekend was not the cab driver that got lost several times and finally just asked us to get out NEAR our restaurant because he couldn't find it. It was the Zombie Santa Claus that we rode in the elevator with on the way down to the lobby. That is just wrong. On many, many levels.
Today, while fondly remembering the zombies of last weekend, my children are at a Halloween party at a neighbor's house, Andy is on call, and I am suffering with the worst cold I have had all year. I'm feverish, freezing, and my head may explode any moment. So I am making chocolate chip muffins and rice pudding, and doing laundry. Because that is what you do when you are sick.