Happy Halloween!!

Halloween has long been one of my favorite holidays.  Everyone should love an excuse to open your imagination and pretend to be someone else for a night.  Halloween 2003 was my first date with my wife Audra - I was dressed as Neo from the Matrix.  I asked her years later if I had chosen to be dressed like a clown or something silly, if we still would have ended up hitting it off that night.  She said probably not.

Halloween had historically been a big drinking night for me as well.  Being dressed like someone else and being drunk gave me a total cop out on reality, as well as everyone around me.  It's odd to think that as I was running around as a child, gathering pounds of candy, that I should have been much more concerned about drunk drivers rather than kidnappers.

I had a really busy week so I will go back to talking about drinking games after this.  A few years ago when I was not drinking I spent Halloween sober, and I actually had a bummer of a time.  I dwelled on that night in particular when evaluating how drinking impacted my behavior/attitude at parties.  I concluded that I was hanging around a lame crowd of people that night.  I never saw any of them again.  The truth is, several Halloweens since had been upset by alcohol.  Complications from not being able to drive, waiting in line to get into bars, looking for cabs - sorts of things that are directly the result of drinking, is what has caused several Halloween nights to end up in shambles, canceling out any benefits the drinking may have initially caused.