Nick

It's getting close to Halloween here, and in Chicago, Halloween is a Big Deal. Lots of the houses around here are decorated far more elaborately than even Christmas decorations were displayed back in New Jersey; and the party stores and grocery stores are crammed with costumes, pumpkins, little orange lights, and every kind of rubber spider, rat and creepy thing you can imagine. I have bought only a set of little orange lights from Target, and Nick here-- because he was a gargoyle, had a cute face and was on sale because he had some nicks here and there. Oh, I did buy a spiderweb tablecloth, that the cats promptly pulled off the table.

And because I just found the photo, here is Nick J. at St Basil's--he originally sent the photo upside down since he was "on the other side of the world."