Last night I got my Halloween wish, and had my 2021 Virtual Pumpkin Carving Party, for the second year in a row, with Gabriel, Lea, Tess, and Mandy. This was one fewer participant than last year, when Tess's friend Kara called in to join, but she was not present (even virtually) this year.

When it comes to Social Review points, though, the "party" still has as many people as last year, though, because last year Shobhit had a late shift at the Big 5 Sporting Goods job he no longer has, but this year he was home, and for a little while near the end of the two and a half hours or so that the FaceTime call lasted, Shobhit came into the bedroom (where I did my pumpkin carving this year) and joined in on the conversation, largely about the baby Mandy and her husband David have been fostor parents for now for several months.

But, Shobhit did not carve a pumpkin. Neither did Mandy, actually; she said she did not find the time to go buy one at a store, so only four of us did "pumpkin projects" this year: Gabriel, Lea, Tess and myself. And only Lea, Tess and I did any actual carving; Gabriel sort of chopped one of his multiple pumpkins into "feet" and then affixed a small set of wings to make a pumpkin version of Morris the Hundun creature from the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Tess, by contrast, carved six different tiny little pumpkins so she could put different colored lights inside each of them and called them "Infinity Stones" (also from the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Lea, on the other hand, made an adorable portrait of Noodles the Pug, A-list celebrity dog from TikTok. Lea was done quite ahead of everyone else, which was astonishing.

Anyway. I remember making a comment last year how I would be all about doing this again this year, even if it were possible to gather in person, but who knows whether we'd be able to by even a year later, although I hoped we could. And the thing is, every one of us is now vaccinated (Gabriel, Shobhit and me even with booster shots; I don't know about Lea actually), which would indeed make it far, far safer for us all to have gotten back together in person this year. But! Gabriel remains insanely vigilant about not hanging out indoors with people outside his household, especially in the time of the Delta variant (transmission rates are significantly down from their September peak, yet still hovering around what the previous peak had been before Delta). Even beyond that, it's kind of a minor miracle we got Mandy to join us even virtually, what with her baby (and also, to be diplimatic, let's say: her general personality); also, the geographical distance between them and me is always an issue even in the normalest of times. Honestly, this scenario works well even setting any COVID considerations aside.

I do stil really miss being able to get together with Gabriel in person. We'll get back to it one of these days. Perhaps for my Birth Week next year, just like happened last year. Here's hoping.

As for my own pumpkin, I only came up with this year's idea yesterday itself, and it's . . . fine. Not my best, and far from my worst (you can judge for yourself after browsing "Matthew's Pumpkin History"). I just knew I didn't want to have to spend the kind of time I had to spend on my "PCC Spooky Markets" pumpkin last year, and wanted something simpler. I settled on "Love Skull," or basically a cross between a very simple skull outline and the heart-eyes emoji,

Lea was relatively enthusiastic about it. "It's cute!" I find it satisfactory. I did make the boneheaded move of carving out the outline of the skull without realizing the whole inner part would just fall out, leaving a giant hole—but, that was pretty easily fixed with three toothpicks (which Mandy said actually added to the look). Also, having the inner part of the skull face out of the pumpkin actually made it easier to carve out the heart shaped eyes.

In any case, the whole event was really fun—I even texted everyone later to mention how much I appreciated it. We did get a very brief appearance of David, when Mandy moved her phone over to show us him standing in the kitchen eating ice cream straight out of the carton. And then there was the rather comical moment when Mandy's mom, Janet, suddenly popped up behind her. In the end the whole thing yielded 33 shots for this year's photo album on Flickr, or technically 31, since two of those are animated gifs I made out of other photos. One is of Mandy's mom behind her; the other is of Mandy and Lea both goofing off and getting way too close to their cameras.

Also, as always, you can get more detail in the captions below all the photos.

The party had been scheduled for 8:00. Gabriel was not ready to start until about a quarter after, and it wasn't until I harassed her via text that we got Mandy onto the call, just before 9:00. Most of my photos, of course, are screenshots of the video chat, which I have gotten pretty skilled at getting in candid moments. The last of these was taken at 10:44, when Lea was showing us her Halloween cookies she had baked.

Ever since I moved my work station back to the office, my home "work desk" is getting cluttered with other stuff, not least of which is our old TV monitor I had in the guest room until Ivan moved back in with us back in July. So, before the party, I had to clear all that stuff off and line it up on the bedroom floor; then cover the desk with magazine pages for protection from pumpkin guts. On my way home from work, I had gone down to the storage unit in the building garage to get the pumpkin carving kit I bought years ago and still works quite well.

Last year we did this call over Zoom, and I called in from the living room. But, we had no roommate then, and Shobhit was gone at work until 9:30 that day. Ivan was home last night, until he left for his night shift around 9:15 (he's actually out of town tonight for three nights; he's taking himself on a small getaway to Portland) and so was Shobhit, watching TV, so using the living room, and particularly the dining table Ivan now typically uses to sit at for dinner around that time, was no longer feasible. Well, my "work desk" found another useful function. Also, Gabriel was able to loop Mandy in via FaceTime, as we all have Apple devices and there were only three feeds needed to connect rather than the four we had last year.

And, it worked out well. I'm super happy we were able to make it happen, and I feel relatively confident we can do it again next year.

[posted 7:46 pm]