these are a few of my favorite things...

Now that many of my coworkers have disparaged Halloween as being a “non-holiday” i must claim it as one of my very favorite holidays (along with New Year’s—which those very same co-workers would also probably call a non-holiday). I'm not really sure what it is about Halloween--whether it's the idea of dressing up (New Year's, of course, is another masquerade kind of holiday), pretending to be someone else; the parties; that nip of fall in the air (i just love fall); and then there are the decorations...
One of my biggest weaknesses is acquisitiveness. There are certain items that I am just driven to have. Halloween decorations are one of them. Of course books are another...

But hand in hand with Halloween decorations goes my mask collection (about 200 or so at the moment). I think that at one point i decided masks were a perfect decorative collectible for me because they were unique, expressed my love of theatre, and i because i find the whole idea of masks in and of themselves fascinating. One of my problems is i don't have quite enough wall space for all of them (just as i don't have enough bookcases)

I have what they call an addictive personality or at least that's what many personality tests tell me--goes hand in hand with depression (which is a foregone conclusion). And by the by, the diagnosis on that front is double-depression which basically means i am chronically depressed and experience bouts of major depression--fun, aye? Anyway, back to the addiction issue, even given this pre-disposition to addiction i don't seem to be physiologically disposed to addiction, how do i know this--well back in my younger, self-destructive days, i did QUITE a bit of experimentation, or should we say OVER-experimentation with QUITE a number of substances and not a one of them "stuck" (luckily enough). Now this physiological uniqueness of my body has been observed in a number of situations (the most common refrain i hear in physicians' offices is "Hm, I've never seen this before", in fact if i EVER hear "This is quite common..." i think, hm, you better check again, or well there is more to this story and i am always right) but again i am sidetracking. The way my addiction(s) manifests itself/themselves is in my collections. It is rather interesting that they have managed to amass themselves since i do hate shopping so (in fact my hatred of shopping has managed to enable the addiction in some strange way because i would rather just buy something RIGHT NOW and get the whole thing over with than extend the damn shopping trip any longer).

So along comes the Internet, curse and blessing that it is. And me being a librarian with my superior research skills...all the better to feed that addiction...HAPPY HALLOWEEN

...or should that be blessed Samhein