October Favorites

It may be Halloween on planet Earth, but here on Tatooine it’s just a regular day. I’ll pull out some Halloween treats my mother-in-law sent in her amazing care package, but I probably won’t be seeing any costumes today or getting any extra chocolate.

As a side note about Tatooine, did you hear it and all its Star Wars goodness got bought by Disney? I’m kind of excited about that. Nothing like overhanded dialog to supremely kill a great epic. Just saying. But I digress.

October was a pretty great month around here. The weather has cooled in the past few weeks (meaning that daily temps are in the low 90s), the dude and I have been collaborating a lot on his art projects, we hosted friends in our home (one with a three-week-old darling of a daughter), and I’ve been trying to cram as much home-buying and mortgage know-whats as possible into my reluctant brain. And I might have made a crazy excel spreadsheet with house finance projections based on rent-income, inflation, expenses, and the like. What can I say? I’m a nerd.

Here are a few of my favorite things from October, in no particular order:

Project Runway All-Stars (TV)

The dude has been on holiday from work, so we $9.99’d this previous Project Runway season from iTunes and marathoned it. I love how design vernacular seamlessly fits other kinds of creative projects. The other day I was giving the dude feedback on a few illustrations and referred to the way he “styled” this one piece. He totally got what I was saying, even though you don’t say “styled” for illustration. Anyway, LOVE me some Project Runway. And especially loved All-Stars.

Fall Flavors (Tastes)

Autumn does not visit the Oman Gulf, so we fake it by cranking up the a/c, burning spiced candles, and making pumpkin treats. So far we’ve been devouring my favorite Pumpkin Bread, Top Secret Starbucks Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins (a recipe you have to pay for, unfortunately, but is only $.79 and soooo worth it), and Gingerbread Lattes. We’ve also been munching on Autumn-Spiced Popcorn, which I’ll share more about on Friday.

California 37 (Album)

I’m loving this Train album this month, even though I’m not sure I actually like it. It’s a poppy kind of rock sprinkled with cheesy lyrics, and I really don’t care for the first song on the album. But then I find myself surprised and happy as the songs unfold. Track 4 starts out sounding Spanish, moves through a Moulin Rouge phase, and ends up in windows-down pop. What? It’s very confused. Perhaps I just like that I should know better than to like it.

Facebook: I Want My Friends Back (Article)

You may not have noticed, but Facebook has severely jacked with what readers see. It doesn’t matter what you tell Facebook you want to see, they will decide what you will and won’t see and there is nothing you can do about it. Most specifically, if there is an entity that you hope to keep up with via Facebook, like an author or a local cafe, you’re outta luck. Most often Facebook is not going to show you the stuff you subscribe to unless the entity pays extra to make sure you see it.

If you haven’t noticed this already, try this next exercise. Click on your name in the top-right corner of you Facebook screen. Now click on the box that holds your “Likes.” Scroll through it. Have you seen much of anything from this list lately? Now click on a few of them. My guess is that several of them have been posting and you haven’t seen it. For my artist friends and fellow bloggers, this really stinks.

(Note: if you’ve actively commented on the page before you’re more likely to get notifications.)

Anyway, in a move of sheer brilliance, dangerousminds.net wrote a full article uncovering what’s been going on (complete with screenshots and actual numbers), paid top dollar to promote it to as many people as possible on facebook, telling us exactly how much it cost them.

I don’t want to spoil all the fun for you, but here’s a preview: for dangerousminds.net – a blog you’ve probably never heard of – to make sure their subscribers see their blog posts would cost them over $650,000 a year.

I’m hating facebook these days, but I LOVE this exposé.

…what about you?…

What things did you love in October?