Happy Halloween!

My amazing friend and colleague KR found a haunted house gingerbread decorating class at the local fancy tea and cake shoppe, The Bon Bonerie! In other words, give them money, show up to a ready made gingerbread house, icing, candies, etc. and  HAVE FUN! So, today, in the middle of grading, job applications, article rewriting and other less than relaxing activities, KR, her Mom, and yours truly spent a lovely afternoon of playing with sugar. This was followed by a late lunch, black currant tea (with milk) and a fat slice of tangerine cake, aka. Harvest Moon cake. I feel more relaxed than after a long night's sleep! Thank you KR!

If you would wander into my office next week, this is what you would see:

 Or from the side, where I usually sit when meeting with students:

Let's do a close up of the dangling spider web, shall we:

Ok, so my cellphone takes very poor quality photos, but the cobweb is only attached at the points and under the coco-puff (a kind of breakfast cereal, apparently) spider. I am ridiculously proud of it...

And lastly, when I go behind it to put the kettle on, in Dante's potentially miss-remembered words:

Now, back to work!