Pumpkins, layout and burning effigys, oh my!

I carved a pumpkin on Halloween, and threw it out yesterday already, because it got super mouldy, super fast. It took us a few days to get a candle for it, and when I pulled up it's lid, it was full of fluffy-cotton-candy-like mould. And, one of its eyes was green and puffy. Very, very cool.




My flatmate, Sutsi, who is from Korea, saw me carving away at the vegetable (or is it a fruit? It has seeds.) and looked a little freaked out. She later asked me if I was going to wear it on my head, and I think she took a liking to the little feller after... Nice that I could bring some Canadian culture to my flat...

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I just finished the first edition of our class newspaper. We all switch jobs around each week, and being as I'm the only one who knows how to use Quark, I got to be the Designer this week. That means I've spent the past three days building a newspaper from scratch and then laying out most of it. Thankfully, only ten pages.

How was that particular experience? It was like a September Gauntlet, but without all the fun parts. That'll make sense, hopefully, to any Gauntleteers, and be perfectly unexplainable to any non-gauntlet folk.

I'm running out of time, so I'll post two sets of PDFs right now, and the rest this weekend. Here's the cover, and pages 8 and 9--I've got a story on the former.

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London is fun right now, as today is Guy Fawkes day. Historically, Guy Fawkes was a catholic (which in British history means he was Bad) who tried to blow up parliament a long time ago. So, the Brits celebrate this by burning effigys of Fawkes and setting off fireworks. For some reason, the real celebrations don't start til tomorrow, but the past week has sounded like a war zone. It's legal to set off fireworks here, up til a certain time at night, so people have been pretty much going all week.

Another good thing about London right now is the new Bridget Jones movie opening up this weekend. While I'm sure it'll be a good flick, and all that, what it really means is there are posters on buses and in bus shelters and on walls advertising the film, which means that everywhere there're giant photos of Colin Firth and Hugh Grant (and a fat Renee Zelwegger, but that hardly turns my crank).

The weather is still nice, too. It's like fall in Calgary, in those few weeks between end of summer and the snow falling. Warm and sunny during the day, but a little sharp at night--my favourite kind of weather.

Hopefully tomorrow's nice, as we're heading to Brighton!