Sadie was a big hit in her Cindy Lou Who outfit this Halloween night.

Pretty good likeness, if I do say so myself.

She went out with the pumpkin, soon filled with a dozen or so candy bars she’ll never see.

We let her have a little bit of a lollipop. She was pretty excited by that, but was all done after only a couple of licks.

I felt bad a little later, though. We let her answer the door when one of the neighborhood trick-or-treaters rang. The ten-year-old boy was dressed up in a skeleton mask, and poor little Sadie screamed. She was so scared — and the boy was petrified. It took me fifteen minutes to calm her down at bedtime.

I hope Thanksgiving isn’t quite that exciting.

Hooray!

This was a fun team to watch, and, with Ellsbury, Pedroia, Beckett, Matsuzaka, Lester and Buchholz, next year is looking pretty good too.

It’s fun to live in the city of champions.

P.S., damn you, Fox. Let’s try starting the games a little earlier next year.

Technorati Tags: Red Sox

Literary style by the numbers
Steven Johnson — author of Interface Culture, Mind Wide Open and other excellent books — does a quick analysis of sentence length and word complexity for several prominent authors. Interesting conclusions.

The Comcast fiasco
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Passive voice is redeemed for web headings
Interesting! This is what happens when search-engine optimization comes up head to head with principles of good writing.

Programming lessons from Sales — sharpen the saw
I’m always trying to find new ways of looking at old problems. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but it’s almost always worth the time investment.

I was a pre-teen Glicknick
Tales of Larry Glick with lots of links. (Via Universal Hub)

America’s most important issue for 2008 (with a little bit of salty language)

The lottery industry
BS is also prevalent in the business world, as you can see from this entirely content-free quote:

W. Bruce Turner, the chief executive of Gtech, puts it another way. “Gtech has played a key role in fostering the success enjoyed by lotteries today,” he says. “We have grown to be the world’s leading solutions provider to the lottery industry because we focus on creating the greatest value for our customers, which results in higher returns to the good causes they support.”

If you feel a wave of bliss flowing in from Holliston this morning, you can thank Sadie. She decided to sleep until 6:30 in the morning, instead of the more traditional 5:00.

Everyone else in the house applauds this update to our schedule. The sun is shining and the birds are singing. Hallelujah.

We have a good article today on what the World Series means for hundreds of local businesses. It’s a good time to be in the hospitality business here in town.

We don’t benefit in this particular way from the World Series, but we certainly aren’t going to turn away all the additional people reading the Globe and hitting the site for the next couple of weeks.

Oh yeah, it’ll work out pretty well for those who bought furniture from Jordan’s, too.

Some exciting news to report! Towards the end of March 2008, Sadie will become a big sister. We’ll know boy or girl within a few weeks; that should help with the planning. We’re all pretty excited, though I think I’ve blocked out some of the uglier realities of the first couple months with a new baby.

And, who knows, maybe within a couple of years I’ll be find myself a nice comfortable rut — my first since late 2002. Since then, I’ve had at least one major life thing in flux at all times. It keeps you on your toes.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before — I’m going to be better about updating the blog more often. Here’s some linky goodness to get us back on the right track.

ZipSkinny for Holliston
Neat little application giving you a visualization of all the census data for a given zip code. It’s good info; we’ve dropped all the Massachusetts ones into the crawl.

Oh Joy! Breakfast with the boss
How do you manage work/life balance when other people try to schedule you for breakfast or dinner meetings? I’m going to steal the “buy you lunch to pick your brain” responses.

Asking “why” can be dangerous if your father is a professor
Sadie has started asking “Why?” all the time. I’ve started answering her. She may come to regret asking.

Opening night of the Bruce Springsteen tour
Jimmy Guterman gives his thoughts on the opening night of the Bruce Springsteen tour. I went to my one and only Springsteen show in 2002. Geez, over five years ago — hooray for the blog archives!

Tips for making your tech resume less awful
Not relevant for me at the moment, but always good to keep the resume up to date — and not awful.

I’m doing a bit of housecleaning around the site and realized that I have a bunch of pictures from the Philadelphia Zoo that I never got around to posting. Check them out:

Balloon
Bearded pig
Cheetah
Flamingoes
Giraffe
Hippo
Kangaroos
Lion
Meerkat
Peafowl
Red panda
Rhino
Tiger
Tortoise

This Columbus Day wasn’t a total washout; Sadie loved stomping in the puddles.

I probably should have put her in boots, though. I’m not sure the Mary Janes are in real good shape right now.

We’re spending the weekend in fall-cleaning mode. The air conditioners come out of the windows and the down comforter comes down from the attic.

If only it weren’t 85 degrees right now….

Now that Sadie’s all mobile and filled with energy, we’re constantly looking for new and interesting ways to entertain her. Last Saturday, we went to the Roger Williams Zoo in Providence, about 45 minutes away.

It’s a pretty good zoo, with one of the highlights being the brand new baby giraffe. He was very cute:

Sadie mentioned that the crowned crane should really try putting some ponytails in her hair. That will help with the slight sticking-up problem.

You’d be surprised how many things you can climb on at the zoo.

It’s all a lot for a little girl to take in. Sometimes she just needs to sit and ponder.

Sadie’s school has a perfectly appropriate playground for toddlers. Sadie continues to pine for the big kids’ playground on the other side of the fence, though.

I’m not sure I’m happy about her literally climbing the walls.

Sadie and I visited the McGilvrays on Sunday and found, yet again, that everyone loves playing with a cheerful toddler. Sadie especially liked playing catch with the soccer ball. She pretty much has heading down, as Auntie Karen captured in this picture.

Sadie’s transition from babyhood began in earnest last week. Sadie is now sleeping each night in her big-girl bed. She and Bear are both very excited by the development.