I got candy from the little general store even though I wasn't dressed up. The other dude there suggested for my costume concept, "serial killer," on the premise that they look like everybody else.

Ha, that's mine, only I say "Sociopath". Today, I happened to be wearing red shirt and black pants. So I quickly made up "I'm the Devil in disguise"

We had almost everyone in costume tonight but I live I a very white neighborhood and I heard some of my neighbors complaining about people who "obviously were not from our neighborhood" (they were brown) coming and trick or treating. I don't get that. I mean, other than racism, what is wrong with going outside your own neighborhood?

My rule is, no treats (I give pretzel packets instead of candy) for kids over 3 feet tall. Mostly. I set up early for the toddler set and run out really, really quickly.

The neighborhood big-deal is a quarter block from my house. It involves an urban 'hay ride', bouncy castles, balloon tricks, games and sometimes a petting zoo.

My favorite family this year included a homemade Hellboy (SO clever) and four Star Wars characters. The mom chortled to her husband, "Hey, it's the nun who knew you were Galacticus a couple of years ago!"

Yep. I wear my nun's habit every year. I'm famous for it...apparently. Tons of people ask me to bless them and one fellow looked a bit scared when he said,"That's real, isn't it." Sort of like what one would say about a realistic _gun_.

Dang. I did not grow up Catholic, but it sure seems the archetypes are strong!

Okay--I'm uncool. Who's Galacticus?

Galactus, I believe. Marvel Comics, Eater of Worlds, creator of the Silver Surfer.

We always have at least 50 kids. I get cranky about the teens without costumes who want candy, too. My rule is porch light goes out at 8. Since I have parent conferences pretty much nonstop from 7:30 to 5:00 tomorrow, I'm going to bed shortly.

I got wiped out of candy in less than 90 minutes and easily should have tripled my candy purchases. I was worried I was going to have a lot left. Clearly I underestimated Halloween here.

Gosh, the little ones were adorable. And, actually, most of the big ones too. Almost everyone costumed too. Many Iron Men. Many zombies. And the tiniest Batman I've even seen.

First girls told me I should paint Puppycat black because she was sitting in the window by the door when they walked up.

I was shocked at how many of the groups were being chaperoned by the dads. That was nice to see. Involved parenting and stuff. Or looking for chocolate.

We always have around 200 trick-or-treaters. This year we gave out little glow sticks, which went over very well. We closed up at 8:30 and put up a "We are all out. See you next year!" sign. It was a very nice Halloween-lots of cute little ones and not too many annoying teens. One thing, I don't recall parents wearing costumes when I was young, but most of the parents accompanying their kids were in costume tonight. Is this an L.A. Thing or a 2012 thing?

I would say that about half the parents I saw tonight were dressed up.

The nice thing about tonight was that once I turned off the porch light, no one else came.

I don't recall any dressed up parents though.