The first Halloween full moon in 46 years -- and the first for another 19 -- and it's fuckin' cloudy here, so I don't get to see it, or take any pictures or anything. Blah.

I don't even remember the last year I went trick-or-treating. It was one of the high school years, either freshman or sophomore year, because my mom thought I was too old, and I was mad at her for saying that. We used to get a crew together to sweep through Little Silver. Will, Brian, Matt, Joe, Ian, Phil and myself made up the core of guys I can remember from year to year. I don't know when it started -- maybe about seventh grade -- but we'd start at Will's house, which was on one end of town, and plan a route that took us through most of the residential neighborhoods, with periodic stops at other guys' houses. From Will's we'd hit his neighbors, cross over to another group of streets, make our way to the back of the graveyard, pass through the graveyard and ring the bell on the parsonage at the church, then proceed down the street to my house. Break No. 1. From my house, we continued through the streets behind my house, which meant a long, winding route that took us to Joe's. We loved Joe's, in part because his parents were The Cool Ones, the ones we could curse in front of and talk about things we wouldn't talk about with our own parents. We called them by their first names without them telling us we could. AND, they always had the FULL SIZE candy bars, particularly Hershey's. Mmmmmm .... full-size candy bars ....

After Joe's, we hit the stretch run, winding through the neighborhoods and past the school to Brian's house, where we took stock of our respective stashes, traded what we didn't like to guys who did like them for stuff they didn't like, and had hot chocolate until our parents came to pick us up, since there was the curfew and we couldn't walk home ourselves.

In grade school, there was always the Halloween Dance, which was the only dance that the sixth graders could go to. A costume was required, and one year I went as a baseball card, taking a Don Mattingly poster off my wall, gluing (or taping) it to posterboard, and having Mom duplicate his stats on another piece of posterboard. Then I wore the two panels straddled across my shoulders like someone on strike picketing. But I had to take it off after an hour so that I could dance -- and by "dance," I mean stand at arm's length with a girl and wobble from one foot to the other. Hey, this was grade school, that's how we danced.

We had a few parties over the years. Junior year of high school, we convinced Matt to have it at his place. It didn't really take too much convincing; he was willing. But we wanted it there because of the big den downstairs that would give us all privacy. Many of us were dating girls and wanted the privacy. Heather and I teamed up with Walker and his Heather as 50s couples -- Walker and I as greasers (with a deck of cards rolled up in our sleeves to look like cigarette packs) and the Heathers as bobby-sockers (socksers?). Brian was dating Joe's sister, so she was all sexy cat lady. Will was James Bond; Ian a nun (damn hilarious); Caitlin a lion; Mandy a tennis player. Jaime's and Matt's costumes escape me, but I could probably remember after looking at the picture in one of those photo albums at home.

The last Halloween party I went to was senior year of college. It fell on a Friday that also was the beginning of Parents' Weekend at Notre Dame. Bryan and I decided to have the party and tell the parents to bring costumes. Bryan and I found cool masks at the store and then just bought black capes to go with them because we wanted to wear capes. The masks didn't stay on long, of course, because they were hot and hindered our drinking of the beer from the keg -- the first keg in the presence of our parents, certainly a milestone. But Bryan's mom was a cat, my mom was Waldo (red striped shirt, glasses, red-and-white knit cap) and dad was Mr. Wilson from Home Improvement -- he put on a fishing vest and hat and made a fence out of paper and attached it to a ruler. When someone asked what he was, he put it up to his face, peer out from behind it, and said, "Howdy, neighbor!" Liz's dad came as the Unabomber, wearing dark glasses and pulling tight his green hooded sweatshirt to look like the artist's sketch of Ted Kacsinski. I should find those photos, too, so that I can see who else was there and what they were wearing, because I did get pretty drunk that night and lost track of those other details.

But since I've started working at the paper, I've had few nights off, particularly Halloween. I was off last year, and went to visit Jaime in Philadelphia, since Dave was in Germany on business. This year, he's in Ireland for work. But I am here, in the office, watching the World Series and surfing the 'net during my down time.

But, as with so many other holidays and milestones, I look at this as the Last One. The last Halloween I'll have to spend in the office and not be able to attend a party or go out to a bar and enjoy myself (i.e., make a fool of myself).

Oh, the things this job keeps me from doing.