I haven’t vanished off the face of the Earth. It’s just been a bit of an insane weekend. Yesterday we went and got both of the cars thoroughly washed then went for a massive shopping trip at CostCo. Today we went to the pumpkin patch and got ourselves a couple of massive pumpkins; based on the trouble I had getting them out of the car and onto the porch, I estimate that each pumpkin weighs at least two hundred pounds; though I suppose in reality they’re probably only about fifty pounds each. No, really. For some reason, I took it into my head that I wanted a really, really big pumpkin. Next weekend we’re going to carve them, and we’ve already started hunting down saws.

The pumpkin patch we went to is one of the rare ones where they actually grow their own pumpkins instead of shipping them in from someplace else. Some of them are still on the vine, even. They may be the most sincere pumpkin patch I’ve ever been to, though the fact that they have a website — coolpatchpumpkins.com — may negate that.

The pumpkin patch also has a huge corn maze, which I love. We paid our fees, got our map, and headed in. I’ve always wanted to wander through the maze using the “always turn right” rule the entire time (you can solve every maze in the world by turning right at every intersection), thus maximizing the time we spend wandering in the hot, dusty corn maze, and thus maximizing our fun. After about half an hour of this, though, we’d had enough fun and decided to break out the map to make our way out the old fashioned way. That’s actually kind of fun, too.

Anyway, in the spirit of the season, I present to you the following resource, which should come in useful, as well as a bit of related dialogue from a classic film.

A very important resource

“Do you mind telling me WHOSE brain I put into that body?”

“Abby… someone.”

“Abby who?”

“Abby… Normal.”

“Abby… Normal?”

“Yes, I’m quite sure that was the name.”