I woke up this morning surrounded by cats, since it’s started to get cooler and that means more feline snuggling in our house. Then we headed off to get hair cuts because we both were in desperate need of them. There was a short period of wait between Richard’s and mine so we took that opportunity to swing by a nearby mall and meander the Halloween decorations at Target. A very goofy metal spider (which doubles as a candle holder) and a wonderful black metal tree with glowing eyes had to come home with us. Then it was back to the shop for me to get my bi-yearly trim, and we headed for home. Except on the way I suggested we swing by CostCo, and while we didn’t end up buying very much there (beyond making a ‘lunch’ out of all the samples around the store), as we were pulling out of the parking lot, I spied a Grand Opening Sale sign at a new furniture store and we decided to go in, just to look around.

Famous last words, right? We left with a gorgeous sofa table in the trunk of the car, for an unbeatable price. It matches absolutely nothing of our current living room furniture, but it’s the style we both love and it’s what the living room is going to be filled with, some day, probably years from now. And one does not pass up on incredible bargains when both of us fell instantly in love with it.

Back home Richard decided to head off to Borders to do some writing, and I stayed home to tackle phase 2 of the pomegranates, which was to drag all the bags of seeds out of our freezer (which seems so amazingly empty now that they are gone) and boil them down for juice. I don’t have any cheesecloth, but I’ve got a pile of cloths I use for cooling cookies during the winter baking season, and they were thin enough to work. So I lined a colander with one of those, and as each batch finished cooking I poured the mess of seeds and liquid into the colander and then commenced the tedious and slightly painful process of squishing all possible juice out of the (very hot, because they had just been boiled) seeds. It took me a few hours but I managed to juice them all (and filled two huge pitchers with pomegranate juice. Richard’s timing was perfect; he came in just as I was finishing the last batch.

My parents went to Apple Hill, which was amusing because we’d originally planned on going there ourselves today, but decided against it because we weren’t sure we would have been able to get there. There’ve been some pretty horrible fires all over the valley over the last few days – so many and so fierce that the air was thick with smoke and ash in the Sacramento area most of Thursday and Friday, and freeways were closed further north and east. However, my parents made it up there despite all that, and what was even better, they brought us back caramel apples from the place that sells the best caramel apples in the entire world. Naturally, we had no choice but to eat them immediately. Since it was dinnertime, those became our dinner. The apples are always so juicy and the caramel so rich and buttery and they are a complete sweet and sticky mess to eat, but oh, they are so good.

I decided I needed to get at least a little knitting done so I finished off a baby blanket for a friend’s soon-to-be-born little boy, and then because we both love cheesy zombie movies and because the previews looked like it would be fun, we decided to go see Shawn of the Dead.

It was marvelous. There were some wonderfully funny parts, but there were also some deeply poignant sections too. Despite the fact that it was a zombie movie, and a zombie movie turned comedy at that, it was actually quite well done. As much as I enjoyed the remake of Dawn of the Dead, I think we both liked Shawn of the Dead more.